Information Technology Challenges Research Articles

Self-limited single nanowire systems combining all-in-one memristive and neuromorphic functionalities

The ability for artificially reproducing human brain type signals’ processing is one of the main challenges in modern information technology, being one of the milestones for developing global communicating networks and artificial intelligence. Electronic devices termed memristors have been proposed as effective artificial synapses able to emulate the plasticity of biological counterparts. Here we report for the first time a single crystalline nanowire based model system capable of combining all memristive functions – non-volatile bipolar memory, multilevel switching, selector and synaptic operations imitating Ca2+ dynamics of biological synapses. Besides underlying common electrochemical fundamentals of biological and artificial redox-based synapses, a detailed analysis of the memristive mechanism revealed the importance of surfaces and interfaces in crystalline materials. Our work demonstrates the realization of self-assembled, self-limited devices feasible for implementation via bottom up approach, as an attractive solution for the ultimate system miniaturization needed for the hardware realization of brain-inspired systems.

A Blockchain-based Service Provider Validation and Verification Framework for Healthcare Virtual Organization

Virtual organization and blockchain are two newly emerging technologies that researchers are exploring their potentials to solve many information and communication technology unaddressed problems and challenges. Health care is one of the sectors that are very dynamic and it is in need of constant improvement in the quest to better the quality of cares and reduce cost. One of the hotline of research in the sector is the use of information and communication technology to provide health care and this is where the concept of virtual healthcare is relevant. In virtual healthcare patients and care providers are collaborating in virtual settings where two of the most difficult challenges are verifying and validating the identity of the communicating parties and the information exchanged. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework using blochchain technology to address the health care provider and record verification and validation issue. The framework is specific to healthcare systems developed based on Virtual Breeding Environment and Virtual Organization. We outline and explain each step in the framework and demonstrate its applicability in a simple healthcare scenario. This paper contributes towards the continuing effort to address user identity and information verification and validation issues in virtual settings in general and in healthcare in specific.

Usability Efficiency Analysis on E-Learning Websites

The challenge of website-based information technology is how to channel information globally quickly and precisely. The goal is that the website is not still visited by visitors, especially for e-learning website. But many challenges for e-learning service administrators. E-learning website should provide good usability, so that interaction with learners can be done quickly and precisely. The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficiency level of usability on e-learning website in case of sasmoko.com by using Nielsen model. Data analysis was carried out using the descriptive analysis technique and the next percentage was assessed for the efficiency criteria. The results of the analysis proved to improve usability on sasmoko.com site, so it can support lectures of Research Methods as blended learning.

Development of a defect monitoring system (DMOSYS) for building maintenance at polytechnic

PurposeThe current maintenance management method has affected the efficiency of the building facility management at Polytechnics. Many issues such as poor service delivery, inadequate finance, poor maintenance planning and maintenance backlogs have emerged due to the usage of conventional method application (paper-based form and unsystematic database. The purpose of this paper is to review existing literature and case studies project of the technologies in maintenance management at Polytechnic, and subsequently to identify the challenge in improving the current maintenance management technologies.Design/methodology/approachThe purpose of this paper is to review existing literature and case studies project of the technologies in maintenance management at Polytechnic, and subsequently to identify the challenges of information and communication technology (ICT) implementation for strategic defect diagnosis and decision-making in improving the current maintenance management technologies. Eight Polytechnics are selected on the basis of the major problems of using the conventional method in the comparison to investigate the maintenance management practices in each Polytechnic. There are around 32 Polytechnics in Malaysia and most are using conventional methods.FindingsThe findings reveal the need for a more sophisticated maintenance management system that provides guidelines for decision-making processes with the implementation of ICT. The interview results also reveal irregularities within the Malaysian Polytechnics’ maintenance management database. The system architecture and the information system prototype are presented to integrate the information database and maintenance management processes in improving the building diagnosis approach and decision-making process for managing building maintenance.Originality/valueThis new system is expected to become the successful technology in assisting the maintenance contractors, clients and developer for effective management of maintenance defects at Polytechnic.

The Information Technology Challenge in Teaching Senior High School Geography in Ghana

The use of information technologies in the field of geography, an important discipline in social sciences, contributes to rendering abstract phenomena and concepts concrete, thereby increasing high school education students’ interest in geographic education. This study evaluated the extent to which information technologies has been diffused in high school geography lessons in a metropolitan area in Ghana, by focusing on geography teachers use of information technologies in teaching. In all, 40 geography teachers from 15 selected senior high schools in the metropolis were used for the study. Numerical analysis and descriptive analysis techniques were used in the analysis of the research data. Results indicated that the use of information technologies in teaching geography lessons in senior high schools was limited. The geography teachers attributed the inadequate use of information technologies to insufficient equipment, insufficient skills on the part of teachers, and inaccessibility to the available equipment. The research further indicated that teachers did not receive adequate training in the use of information technologies in their teacher preparation institutions and therefore, lacked the needed skills and were reluctant to use technology in the classroom to enhance teaching and learning. DOI:10.2458/azu_itet_v6i1_antwi

Generation of maximally entangled states and coherent control in quantum dot microlenses

The integration of entangled photon emitters in nanophotonic structures designed for the broadband enhancement of photon extraction is a major challenge for quantum information technologies. We study the potential of quantum dot (QD) microlenses as efficient emitters of maximally entangled photons. For this purpose, we perform quantum tomography measurements on InGaAs QDs integrated deterministically into microlenses. Even though the studied QDs show non-zero excitonic fine-structure splitting (FSS), polarization entanglement can be prepared with a fidelity close to unity. The quality of the measured entanglement is only dependent on the temporal resolution of the applied single-photon detectors compared to the period of the excitonic phase precession imposed by the FSS. Interestingly, entanglement is kept along the full excitonic wave-packet and is not affected by decoherence. Furthermore, coherent control of the upper biexcitonic state is demonstrated.

Impact of information & communication technology on legal education, legal profession/practice and law librarians

The paper explores the development of Information and Communication Technology and its possible changing impact on legal education, legal profession/practice and law librarians while giving an overview of some of the parameters which determine the relationship amongst information technology and legal profession/practice and its possible impact on the Law Librarian. It also delineates the functions, impacts and challenges of information and communication technology based law library system. This study is based on the review of primary and secondary literature, which includes books, journals, documents, seminar papers etc. Relevant literature were also collected and consulted through internet browsing. However the pace of the legal process and the world continue to increase, necessitate the introduction of new organizational culture and practices, hence, the introduction of ICTs in the legal profession. ICT is the vogue that is now pervading the study, teaching and research into law.

Mass Media’s Perspective on the Challenges of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Indonesia

This study investigated the challenges of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Indonesia based on mass media’s perspective. The challenges of ICT on mass media’s perspective are very complex. Some of these challenges include the consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of ICT, threats to the unity of the country, cultural problems, regulation, business competition among operators, Pokemon Go booming, the existence of social media which triggers hostility between people and the increasing rate of the interconnection cost. Among the main reasons to this phenomenon is a need of massive investment to build the infrastructures. This study used Robert N. Entman framing model to analyze the headlines of Majalah ICT (an ICT magazine).

Bridging clinical researcher perceptions and health IT realities: A case study of stakeholder creep

PurposeWe present a case report detailing a challenge in health information technology (HIT) project implementations we term “stakeholder creep”: not thoroughly identifying which stakeholders need to be involved and why before starting a project, consequently not understanding the true effort, skill sets, social capital, and time required to complete the project. MethodsA root cause analysis was performed post-implementation to understand what led to stakeholder creep. HIT project stakeholders were given a questionnaire to comment on these misconceptions and a proposed implementation tool to help mitigate stakeholder creep. FindingsStakeholder creep contributed to an unexpected increase in time (3-month delayed go-live) and effort (68% over expected HIT work hours). Four main clinician/researcher misconceptions were identified that contributed to the development of stakeholder creep: 1) that EHR IT is a single group; 2) that all EHR IT members know the entire EHR functionality; 3) that changes to an EHR need the input of just a single EHR IT member; and 4) that the technological complexity of a project mirrors the clinical complexity. HIT project stakeholders similarly perceived clinicians/researchers to hold these misconceptions. The proposed stakeholder planning tool was perceived to be feasible and helpful. ConclusionsStakeholder creep can negatively affect HIT project implementations. Projects may be susceptible to stakeholder creep when clinicians/researchers hold misconceptions related to HIT organization and processes. Implementation tools, such as the proposed stakeholder checklist, could be helpful in preempting and mitigating the effect of stakeholder creep.

Studying Acute Coronary Syndrome Through the World Wide Web: Experiences and Lessons.

This study details my viewpoint on the experiences, lessons, and assessments of conducting a national study on care-seeking behavior for heart attack in the United States utilizing the World Wide Web. The Yale Heart Study (YHS) was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Grounded on two prior studies, the YHS combined a Web-based interview survey instrument; ads placed on the Internet; flyers and posters in public libraries, senior centers, and rehabilitation centers; information on chat rooms; a viral marketing strategy; and print ads to attract potential participants to share their heart attack experiences. Along the way, the grant was transferred from Ohio State University (OSU) to Yale University, and significant administrative, information technology, and personnel challenges ensued that materially delayed the study’s execution. Overall, the use of the Internet to collect data on care-seeking behavior is very time consuming and emergent. The cost of using the Web was approximately 31% less expensive than that of face-to-face interviews. However, the quality of the data may have suffered because of the absence of some data compared with interviewing participants. Yet the representativeness of the 1154 usable surveys appears good, with the exception of a dearth of African American participants.

The Theory of the Core Competencies and Its Development and Countermeasures in Junior and Primary Schools in China

Since the new century, the concept of core competencies has come into being and formed three main schools, namely, OECD core competencies, the EU key competencies and the United States’ Framework for the 21st Century Learning, etc. because of the challenge of information technology to the traditional education. During the procedures, on the one hand, China’s junior and primary schools have some conflicts with the core competencies because of historical and practical reasons, etc.; but on the other hand, affected by external environment and some other factors, core competencies have being constructed and implemented after continuous self-renewal by the efforts of the junior and primary schools, families and the whole society. The paper is to discover the procedure how China’s junior and primary schools accept the core competencies and analyze the reason why they practice slowly as well as to put forward solutions to the question by social surveys.

The Opportunities and Challenges of Information and Communication Technology and Digital Media Research in Canadian Francophone Studies

This article reviews and brings together literature from francophone studies on identity across several disciplines (sociology, geography, history, political economy) with that on information and communication technologies (ICTs). The article revisits established scholarship on minority francophones to address the collective shift in understanding membership in these fragmented communities since the rise of the Internet. The analysis brings to light the need to address topics such as geographic mobility and ethnic diversity among francophones. The literature is deconstructed to identify gaps in existing theories and consider minority francophones from an information society perspective. The article makes clear the challenges and opportunities of looking at new concepts such as ICTs, virtual identity, and geographic mobility.

Are We There Yet? Human Factors Knowledge and Health Information Technology – the Challenges of Implementation and Impact

Summary Objective: To review the developments in human factors (HF) research on the challenges of health information technology (HIT) implementation and impact given the continuing incidence of usability problems and unintended consequences from HIT development and use. Methods: A search of PubMed/Medline and Web of Science® identified HF research published in 2015 and 2016. Electronic health records (EHRs) and patient-centred HIT emerged as significant foci of recent HF research. The authors selected prominent papers highlighting ongoing HF and usability challenges in these areas. This selective rather than systematic review of recent HF research highlights these key challenges and reflects on their implications on the future impact of HF research on HIT. Results: Research provides evidence of continued poor design, implementation, and usability of HIT, as well as technology-induced errors and unintended consequences. The paper highlights support for: (i) strengthening the evidence base on the benefits of HF approaches; (ii) improving knowledge translation in the implementation of HF approaches during HIT design, implementation, and evaluation; (iii) increasing transparency, governance, and enforcement of HF best practices at all stages of the HIT system development life cycle. Discussion and Conclusion: HF and usability approaches are yet to become embedded as integral components of HIT development, implementation, and impact assessment. As HIT becomes ever-more pervasive including with patients as end-users, there is a need to expand our conceptualisation of the problems to be addressed and the suite of tactics and strategies to be used to calibrate our pro-active involvement in its improvement.

An IT Project as a Plaything of its Organizational Environment: Long-term Challenges in Financial Services

At the end of 2015, and after 10 years, the German financial service provider FinAdvizard finally achieved the first results from the development project of its next-generation advisory application. Although this achievement can be considered as project success, the new application includes only the core of the initially intended scope because of environmental changes. First, the project team had to continuously deal with resource scarcity, stakeholder influences, regulatory requirements, and the involvement of its sales force. The team also had to adapt different management approaches and software development methods. Furthermore, the organization's focus and management attention repeatedly changed over time. Subsequently, this case retrospectively highlights information technology (IT) project management issues and challenges faced by large software development projects. Given the longitudinal analysis of the period of a decade, both positive and negative effects that are not visible in shorter IT projects become apparent. Additionally, the case sheds light and stimulates a discussion on, among others, collaboration between the business and IT departments, the importance of top IT management support, the challenge of bimodal or two-speed IT, and the influence of a strong sales force.

Primary Care Collaboration to Improve Diagnosis and Screening for Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer death, reducible by screening and early diagnosis, yet many patients fail to receive recommended screening. As part of an academic improvement collaborative, 25 primary care practices worked to improve CRC screening and diagnosis. The project featured triannual learning sessions, monthly conference calls, practice coach support, and monthly reporting. The project phases included literature review and interviews with national leaders/organizations, development of driver diagrams to identify key factors and change ideas, project launch and practice team planning, and a practice improvement phase. The project activities included (1) inventory of barriers and best practices, (2) driver diagram to drive improvements, (3) list of changes to try, (4) compilation of lessons learned, and (5) five key changes to optimize screening and follow-up. Practices leveraged prior transformation efforts to track patients for screening and follow-up during and between office visits. By mapping processes, testing changes, and collecting data, sites targeted opportunities to improve quality, safety, efficiency, and patient and care team experience. Successful change interventions centered around partnering with gastroenterology, engaging leadership, leveraging registries and health information technology, promoting alternative screening options, and partnering with and supporting patients. Several practices achieved improvement in screening rates, while others demonstrated no change from baseline during the 10-month testing and implementation phase (July 2014-April 2015). The collaborative effectively engaged teams in a broad set of process improvements with key lessons learned related to barriers, information technology challenges, outreach challenges/strategies, and importance of stakeholder and patient engagement.

Ballistic One-Dimensional InAs Nanowire Cross-Junction Interconnects.

Coherent interconnection of quantum bits remains an ongoing challenge in quantum information technology. Envisioned hardware to achieve this goal is based on semiconductor nanowire (NW) circuits, comprising individual NW devices that are linked through ballistic interconnects. However, maintaining the sensitive ballistic conduction and confinement conditions across NW intersections is a nontrivial problem. Here, we go beyond the characterization of a single NW device and demonstrate ballistic one-dimensional (1D) quantum transport in InAs NW cross-junctions, monolithically integrated on Si. Characteristic 1D conductance plateaus are resolved in field-effect measurements across up to four NW-junctions in series. The 1D ballistic transport and sub-band splitting is preserved for both crossing-directions. We show that the 1D modes of a single injection terminal can be distributed into multiple NW branches. We believe that NW cross-junctions are well-suited as cross-directional communication links for the reliable transfer of quantum information as required for quantum computational systems.

Ferroelectric symmetry-protected multibit memory cell

The tunability of electrical polarization in ferroelectrics is instrumental to their applications in information-storage devices. The existing ferroelectric memory cells are based on the two-level storage capacity with the standard binary logics. However, the latter have reached its fundamental limitations. Here we propose ferroelectric multibit cells (FMBC) utilizing the ability of multiaxial ferroelectric materials to pin the polarization at a sequence of the multistable states. Employing the catastrophe theory principles we show that these states are symmetry-protected against the information loss and thus realize novel topologically-controlled access memory (TAM). Our findings enable developing a platform for the emergent many-valued non-Boolean information technology and target challenges posed by needs of quantum and neuromorphic computing.

Are We There Yet? Human Factors Knowledge and Health Information Technology - the Challenges of Implementation and Impact.

Objective: To review the developments in human factors (HF) research on the challenges of health information technology (HIT) implementation and impact given the continuing incidence of usability problems and unintended consequences from HIT development and use. Methods: A search of PubMed/Medline and Web of Science® identified HF research published in 2015 and 2016. Electronic health records (EHRs) and patient-centred HIT emerged as significant foci of recent HF research. The authors selected prominent papers highlighting ongoing HF and usability challenges in these areas. This selective rather than systematic review of recent HF research highlights these key challenges and reflects on their implications on the future impact of HF research on HIT. Results: Research provides evidence of continued poor design, implementation, and usability of HIT, as well as technology-induced errors and unintended consequences. The paper highlights support for: (i) strengthening the evidence base on the benefits of HF approaches; (ii) improving knowledge translation in the implementation of HF approaches during HIT design, implementation, and evaluation; (iii) increasing transparency, governance, and enforcement of HF best practices at all stages of the HIT system development life cycle. Discussion and Conclusion: HF and usability approaches are yet to become embedded as integral components of HIT development, implementation, and impact assessment. As HIT becomes ever-more pervasive including with patients as end-users, there is a need to expand our conceptualisation of the problems to be addressed and the suite of tactics and strategies to be used to calibrate our pro-active involvement in its improvement.

Penguatan Kemampuan Guru Dalam Mengembangkan Perangkat Pembelajaran Tematik Berbasis Student Centre Learning (SCL) di SDN Petemon IX Surabaya

Current elementary education, the first decade of the 21st century, is faced with a global challenge where the pattern of people's lives is changing very rapidly, fueled mainly by the development of information technology and global challenges. Devotion to the community is offered to solve the problems faced by a group of elementary school teachers Petemon, Sawahan, Surabaya. Seeing the problem of partner of implementation method offered in dedication to solve the problems faced by teacher group of SDN Patemon IX are (1) Training of applying of learning model of Student Center Learning on Mathematics, Biology and Bahasa Indonesia subjects to SDN Patemon IX, (2) Evaluation of training result of SCL instructional model implementation in Mathematics, Biology and Bahasa Indonesia subjects to teachers of SDN Patemon IX, (3) Review and Assistance in the preparation of fourth-, fourth and fourth-grade thematic RPP, (4) Assistance in Implementation of RPP in Thematic Class IV, V and VI learning, (5) Evaluation of compilation result and Assistance of implementation of RPP in thematic learning of class IV, V and VI. Proposal method to solve the problem that has been formulated is divided into three stages: preparation, implementation and reflection. Strengthening teacher's ability in developing thematic learning tool based on Student Center Learning (SCL) at SDN PATEMON IX Surabaya, get very positive response shown from Reflection result at end of mentoring. To design a mentoring program that suits the training needs some things are needed in designing the mentoring.

The International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories Presents Abstracts from Its Regional Meeting Quality Biobanking for Precision Research and Medicine: Overcoming Scientific, Information Technology, and Policy Challenges November 7–8, 2016 Bethesda, MD, USA

The International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories Presents Abstracts from Its Regional Meeting Quality Biobanking for Precision Research and Medicine: Overcoming Scientific, Information Technology, and Policy Challenges November 7–8, 2016 Bethesda, MD, USA