10970909
MAPGrid: A New Architecture for Empowering Mobile Data Placement in Grid Environments
The rising popularity of mobile applications and devices has brought about an enhanced interest in infrastructure support for mobile computing. Our work focuses on the development of a mobile grid infrastructure called MAPGrid (mobile applications on Grids), where grid resources are exploited as proxies to enable advanced mobile applications. However, intermittent availability of grid resources presents challenges for data-intensive mobile applications. In this paper, we propose novel methodologies for placing mobile data on grid proxies. We introduce a notion of two-tier architecture for MAPGrid, where the upper tier captures grid related features and the lower tier represents features associated with mobile environments. We further develop an intelligent mobile data placement mechanism that effectively balances tradeoffs between replication cost and data access cost by leveraging knowledge of grid availability and mobile data request patterns. Through extensive experimentation, we illustrate the superiority of the proposed techniques over several popular data placement strategies.
2369938
Human-Currency Interaction: learning from virtual currency use in China
What happens when the domains of HCI design and money intersect? This paper presents analyses from an ethnographic study of virtual currency use in China to discuss implications for game design, and HCI design more broadly. We found that how virtual currency is perceived, obtained, and spent can critically shape gamers' behavior and experience. Virtual and real currencies can interact in complex ways that promote, extend, and/or interfere with the value and character of game worlds. Bringing money into HCI design heightens existing issues of realness, trust, and fairness, and thus presents new challenges and opportunities for user experience innovation.
13286603
Privacy in Online Social Networking at Workplace
Employees using social network sites (SNS) at workplace is a fact. As companies are further embracing social media, how if at all does this practice affect the work dynamics? While privacy has been a hot topic in online social network research in general, there is little work investigating the privacy aspect of this practice at workplace. This paper aims at starting the groundwork towards filling the gap. Based on a review of existing literature in social networks and workplace studies, we hypothesize a number of potential privacy issues in this work practice and suggest future research directions in this area.
1173197
Situating Productive Play: Online Gaming Practices and Guanxi in China
Economic activities in and around online gaming in China are often correlated in the West with practices of gold farming, or selling in-game currency to players for real money in online games. What can we learn about online gaming in China and about online gaming and online sociality more broadly when we look at economic and other "pragmatic" practices through which online gaming becomes meaningful to players? In this paper, we present findings from an ethnographic study of online gaming in China's urban Internet cafes to discuss implications for game design, and HCI design more broadly. Considering the ties between socio-economic practices, development of trust and culturally situated imaginings of self-hood and otherness, brings to the fore how online gaming in and of itself constitutes the means for practical achievements in day-to-day management of guanxi (social connection).
14397325
Constraint-Sensitive Privacy Management for Personalized Web-Based Systems
This research aims at reconciling web personalization with privacy constraints imposed by legal restrictions and by users' privacy preferences. We propose a software product line architecture approach, where our privacyenabling user modeling architecture can dynamically select personalization methods that satisfy current privacy constraints to provide personalization services. A feasibility study is being carried out with the support of an existing user modeling server and a software architecture based development environment.
269891
Respecting Users' Individual Privacy Constraints in Web Personalization
Web personalization has demonstrated to be advantageous for both online customers and vendors. However, its benefits may be severely counter acted by privacy constraints. Personalized systems need to take users' privacy concerns into account, as well as privacy laws and industry self-regulation that may be in effect. In this paper, we first discuss how these constraints may affect web-based personalized systems. We then explain in what way current approaches to this problem fall short of their aims, specifically regarding the need to tailor privacy to the constraints of each individual user. We present a dynamic privacy-enhancing user modeling framework as a superior alternative, which is based on a software product line architecture. Our system dynamically selects personalization methods during runtime that respect users' current privacy concerns as well as the privacy laws and regulations that apply to them.
21906808
The Theory and Application of Rough Integration in Rough Function Model
The definition of the rough integral Pawlak proposed is improved. New notions are proposed, which are respectively the rough integral on a constant interval and the roughly integral upper limit function, and so on. By comparing with the definite integral of real functions, the properties of rough integrals are analyzed. Giving the concept of mean value of discrete functions, the mean value method for rough integration is derived. At the same time, the intermediate value theorem of rough integration is proposed and its geometric significance is analyzed, which provides a dependable theoretical tool for rough integral operation, etc.. Conclusions including the existence theorem of rough primitives and the fundamental formula of rough calculus are proposed. By the representative of discrete functions, the method of computing a primitive is given, by which basic formulas for rough integration in common use are derived, and the method of rough direct integration is obtained. There is also the method of rough integration by parts for rough integrals which is like that of definite integrals. Thus the recurrence formula for rough integration is deduced, in which the integrand of the rough integral is in the shape of the product of a rough power function and a rough exponential function. It is pointed out that integration by substitution is not applicable for rough integral operation.
20214518
Extensible Indexing Support in DB2 Universal Database
Publisher Summary Emerging database (DB) applications require the scalable management of a large quantity of complex data, together with traditional business data and flexible querying capabilities for business intelligence. Object-relational databases or universal servers are component database management systems (DBMSs) developed to support applications. They leverage the mature relational database technology that provides scalability, reliability, and recovery. They enable users to introduce application-specific types and methods into a database. These extensibility features can be seen as infrastructure for providing plug-in components that extend the built-in repertoire of database types and functions with support for additional, nonstandard data types. Tables in a database may contain user-defined objects such as geographical shapes, images, and semi-structured or unstructured text documents. This chapter presents a high-level framework of indexing for user-defined types. The framework allows users to concentrate on the semantics of applications and user-defined predicates without being concerned with the low-level details of locking, recovery, buffer management, or balanced search-tree updates. It is tightly integrated with the database engine and enhances the value of underlying access methods, built-in or user-defined, in a database system by supporting indexing on new data types and indexed scans using new predicates.
12250963
Boosting for Learning Multiple Classes with Imbalanced Class Distribution
Classification of data with imbalanced class distribution has posed a significant drawback of the performance attainable by most standard classifier learning algorithms, which assume a relatively balanced class distribution and equal misclassification costs. This learning difficulty attracts a lot of research interests. Most efforts concentrate on bi-class problems. However, bi-class is not the only scenario where the class imbalance problem prevails. Reported solutions for bi-class applications are not applicable to multi-class problems. In this paper, we develop a cost-sensitive boosting algorithm to improve the classification performance of imbalanced data involving multiple classes. One barrier of applying the cost-sensitive boosting algorithm to the imbalanced data is that the cost matrix is often unavailable for a problem domain. To solve this problem, we apply Genetic Algorithm to search the optimum cost setup of each class. Empirical tests show that the proposed cost-sensitive boosting algorithm improves the classification performances of imbalanced data sets significantly.
45310315
Enterprise Modelling Based Services Orchestration
Aiming at the problems of system integration and cross-system interoperability, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) provides a new integration method and system infrastructure. The key for SOA development and implementation is services encapsulating and orchestrating of applications through certain mechanism so as to operate a complex business. Current workflow technique, business process modelling notation (BPMN) and business process execution language (BPEL) have made very meaningful attempt in this field. But these process modelling technologies have semantics incompleteness when they describe processes in multi-platforms and multi-departments environment. Regarding service-oriented business process modelling technology as the kernel technology, this paper presents the concepts and expression method of process collaboration, proposes services orchestration solution based on process collaboration, specifies service models' expression method and service modelling process through case study, and points out the role of business process modelling in services orchestration.
16403865
Contamination Level and Speciation of Heavy Metals in Sediments from Yundang Lake, Xiamen
Yundang Lake is an important area for living and traveling in Xiamen Island. Severe pollution and sedimentation have been found in the lake, and then the dredging is needed. In order to assess the pollution level of dredged material, sediments from 6 stations in the Yundang Lake were sampled for heavy metal contamination, speciation analysis, and adsorption-desorption experiment in April 2003. Heavy metals concentrations varied from 21.96~848.38 mg/kg for Cu, 51.11~398.25 mg/kg for Pb, 121.60~4301.25 mg/kg for Zn, 0.00~14.71 mg/kg for Cd and 0.70~31.18 mg/kg for total Hg, respectively. The average concentrations of metals (Cu, Zn, Cd, and total Hg) are almost much higher than the secondary standard criteria of national marine sediment quality. According to the mean values of pollution index (Pi), the order of pollution level for heavy metals is as following: Hg ≫Cd ≫Zn ≫Cu ≫Pb. The results from the concentrations and Pi values of selected metals suggest that the study area has been significantly contaminated with heavy metals, and the plan that transferring dredged material to the dumping area must be forbidden. Similar chemical fractionation distribution for each metal is found in the outer lake and Songbai Lake, except for Hg. The main fraction for selected metals is the residual species, except for Cd in station Y17. It indicates that those heavy metals exhibit low biological availability in study area. Both speciation analysis and adsorption-desorption experiment show that the effects on the heavy metals in disposal area resulting from dredging at the Yundang Lake are not significant and the dredged material is fit to be stored at the reclamation region.