Global Information Exchange Research Articles

A Novel Hybrid Optimization Method of Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization

Shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) is a meta-heuristic algorithm, which combines the social behavior technique and the global information exchange of memetic algorithms. But the SFLA has the shortcoming of low convergence speed while solving complex optimization problems. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a fast searching algorithms, but easily falls into the local optimum for the diversity scarcity of particles. In the paper, a new hybrid optimization called SFLA-PSO is proposed, which introduced PSO to SFLA by combining the fast search strategy of PSO and global search strategy of SFLA. Six benchmark functions are selected to compare the performance of SFLA-PSO, basic PSO, wPSO and SFLA. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm SFLA-PSO possesses outstanding performance in the convergence speed and the precision of the global optimum solution.

Assessment of English Reading Age through Reading Evaluation and Decoding System (READS) : A Measure of Effectiveness and Inequality in Malaysian ESL Education

Recent international comparative research on English proficiency found a strong positive correlation between a country's level of English language skills and its gross national income per capita. Considering the role of English as a lingua franca in the global exchange of goods, culture, information and innovations, a sufficient command of English is a basic requirement for almost the entire labour force in knowledge-based economies. A key foreign language competence is reading, which functions as a gateway to the world, enabling individuals to effectively participate and compete in a knowledge-based environment. Therefore, effectiveness of English as a Second Language (ESL) reading skills is essential to the success of both socio-cultural and economic development. A principal criterion of effectiveness is equal opportunity to the whole society to access formal education and to achieve academic success. In most education systems, however, the social background of students tends to have a major impact on academic achievement, to the extent that it may affect their whole educational and professional careers. The current study is based on empirical data about the reading age of 3,567 Malaysian secondary school students from various social backgrounds, obtained by the use of a standardised evaluation tool named READS. We found that less than half the students had attained the curriculum standard for ESL reading skills, as defined for their biological age. Moreover, significant disparities were found between the reading age of students by gender, income status and ethnicity, highlighting a substantial level of inequality which challenges the establishment of a knowledge-based economy.

Special issue on Semantic Information Management guest editorial

Barely more than 10 years after the birth of the World Wide Web, the Global Information Infrastructure is daily reality. In spite of the many applications in all domains of our societies: e-business, e-commerce, e-learning, e-science, and e-government, for instance, and in spite of the tremendous advances by engineers and scientists, the seamless integration of information and services remains a major challenge. The current shared vision for the future is one of semantically rich information and service oriented architecture for global information systems. This vision is at the convergence of progress in technologies such as XML, Web services, RDF, OWL, of multimedia, multimodal, and multilingual information retrieval, and of distributed, mobile and ubiquitous computing. Semantic Information Management (SIM) can be identified as the discipline that studies the integration and management of multi-modal information from distributed, heterogeneous, and autonomous sources based on their meaning. SIM is deemed necessary since there is an increasing tendency of inter-business and inter-applications sharing of data. The data can be written and stored using different standard and format. Hence, we need a platform to manage the data so that it can be universally understood. SIM as a research has variety research challenges. The first challenge is the identification of suitable meta-model that can ensure the quality of the integrated data. The next challenge is the adoption of ever-increasing number of standards used by enterprises. To comply with standards, enterprises have to represent their data uniquely and thus, the challenge to integrate them with data from other enterprises increases. XML has become a standard data format widely used in many organizations, thus leading to a growing need for exchanging and integrating multiple XML data sources across different application systems. XML has been regarded as a de-facto standard for data exchanges in enterprises. Integrating these sources requires an integration of their schemas. The main challenge is schema integration where the semantic is maintained. Aligning with the previous challenge, many enterprises these days have to comply with various government and professional regulations in managing their data. It makes the integration of data from multi-discipline enterprises and cross-regulated regions even more difficult. Another challenge is the ability to trace back the integrated information to its original source and format. The issue of forward and backward compatibility is far more complex than in traditional data integration research domain. The issue becomes more complex in a social network setting. Social networks consist mainly of groups of inter-connected people. This has played an important role in changing the way people interact with each other. Social networks analysis focuses on studying patterns of communication and exchange of information between people, which may influence not only on the individuals who adopt them, but also on the societies and organizations that enclose them. Since social network is not only heterogeneous, SIM in social networks imposes even a greater challenge, since each social group may have their own information semantic, and therefore, semantic in a global information exchange is a complex problem. The availability of cloud computing makes SIM even more challenging. Cloud computing has been increasingly regarded as a revolution in the computing practices through the concept of utility computing, whereby computing services are provided as utilities. There are various number of services provided by the cloud, from computing power, storage, to various software applications. SIM in the cloud will provide Information as a Service, a totally novel concept. The main challenge will be to manage such information so that the G. Kotsis (*) : I. Khalil Department of Telecooperation, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Altenberger Strasse 69, 4040, Linz, Austria e-mail: gabriele.kotsis@jku.at

Theoretical outline of supplier relationship management in conditions of economic uncertainty

Internet facilities have created new ways to identify, negotiate and engage suppliers and partners worldwide. Adding value to organizations, supply chain management aims at streamlining all processes and communication channels between them and their main suppliers, to facilitate effective interactions and flawless. Critical conditions generated by the current crisis grew and deepened the importance of supply chain management concept and the leading organizations realized that business partners might be a key element for their success. Meanwhile, global exchange of information can improve business processes for better access to resources.

Optimal Placement and Sizing of DG in Radial Distribution Networks Using SFLA

Optimal placement and sizing of DG in distribution network is an optimization problem with continuous and discrete variables. Many researchers have used evolutionary methods for finding the optimal DG placement. This paper proposes a shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) for optimal placement and sizing of distributed generation (DG) in radial distribution system to minimize the total real power loss and to improve the voltage profile. The SFLA is a meta-heuristic search method inspired from the memetic evolution of a group of frogs when seeking for food. It consists of a frog leaping rule for local search and a memetic shuffling rule for global information exchange. The proposed SFL algorithm is used to determine optimal sizes and locations of multi-DGs. Test results indicate that SFLA method can obtain better results than the simple heuristic search method on the 33-bus radial distribution systems. Moreover, voltage profile improvement and branch current reduction are obtained.

Local and Global Information Exchange for Enhancing Object Detection and Tracking

Object detection and tracking using visual sensors is a critical component of surveillance systems, which presents many challenges. This paper addresses the enhancement of object detection and tracking via the combination of multiple visual sensors. The enhancement method we introduce compensates for missed object detection based on the partial detection of objects by multiple visual sensors. When one detects an object or more visual sensors, the detected object’s local positions transformed into a global object position. Local and global information exchange allows a missed local object’s position to recover. However, the exchange of the information may degrade the detection and tracking performance by incorrectly recovering the local object position, which propagated by false object detection. Furthermore, local object positions corresponding to an identical object can transformed into nonequivalent global object positions because of detection uncertainty such as shadows or other artifacts. We improved the performance by preventing the propagation of false object detection. In addition, we present an evaluation method for the final global object position. The proposed method analyzed and evaluated using case studies.

Intractable and rare diseases research in Asia

Intractable and rare diseases are an important public health issue and a challenge to medical care. In recent years, much progress has been made in the United States (US), the European Union (EU), and some parts of Asia including Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, involving specific legislation to encourage discovery and development of orphan drugs, patients' advocacy organizations to provide vast information on intractable and rare diseases and improve patients' access to healthcare, special research programs to strengthen basic and applied research on intractable and rare diseases, and so on. While China is also actively promoting regulation of intractable and rare diseases, but still lags far behind the US, EU, Japan, and other countries and regions with orphan drug legislation. Based on systematic analysis of the current status and future perspectives for intractable and rare diseases in Asia, we recommend that three important aspects of support from government, patients' advocacy organizations and rare disease registry networks, special research programs and global information exchange platform, should be given great attention in promoting the development of intractable and rare diseases research in Asian countries.

A Global Coordinating Platform for Noncommunicable Diseases

There is a long history of advocacy to place noncommunicable diseases higher on the global public health agenda. Although attempts have been made and action is well under way, there is still a lack of a coordinating mechanism that helps identify action, tracks progress, and stimulates multistakeholder collaboration while preventing duplication of efforts. The fast-approaching United Nations High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases and the call by all parties for more efficient responses to the growing problems of noncommunicable diseases presents a unique opportunity to create an institutional mechanism that incentivizes coordination. An apex coordinating arrangement would allow efficient global information exchange, mapping existing gaps in action, and identifying and catalyzing collaboration across sectors and regions of the world.

A conceptual framework for the revision of the ICD‐10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders

A conceptual framework for the revision of the ICD‐10 classification of mental and behavioural disorders

Optimization-based automatic flatness control in cold tandem rolling

For the problem of automatic flatness control (AFC) in cold tandem mills this paper proposes control techniques based on quadratic optimization and delay compensation. Three different strategies are presented and compared: a centralized solution based on a global quadratic programming (QP) problem that decides the commands to all the actuators, and two decentralized solutions where each actuator command is optimized locally. All schemes are based on a global exchange of information about the commands generated at the previous time step at each stand to compensate for the numerous delays present in the mill. Control algorithms are tested in simulation considering a tandem mill with five stands as a benchmark, and results are shown to demonstrate the performance of the proposed schemes.

Challenges confronting libraries in documentation and communication of indigenous knowledge in Nigeria

Indigenous knowledge (IK) and practices are usually unwritten, relying on oral transmission and on memory. This reliance often led to distortions. IK is relevant for development especially in arts, music, language, agriculture, medicine, crafts, theatre and natural resources management. It then becomes imperative that indigenous knowledge be documented and communicated as necessary to obtain its benefit where applicable. Nigeria needs to participate fully in the global exchange and dissemination of information to develop socially and economically. The paper reviews the documentation of IK for communication in print, audiovisual and electronic forms and highlights the challenges confronting libraries in documentation and communication of IK in Nigeria. It is suggested that libraries should coordinate their activities in this area and co-operate with other stakeholders, government and other funding agencies in tackling these challenges.

Challenges confronting libraries in documentation and communication of indigenous knowledge in Nigeria

Indigenous knowledge (IK) and practices are usually unwritten, relying on oral transmission and on memory. This reliance often led to distortions. IK is relevant for development especially in arts, music, language, agriculture, medicine, crafts, theatre and natural resources management. It then becomes imperative that indigenous knowledge be documented and communicated as necessary to obtain its benefit where applicable. Nigeria needs to participate fully in the global exchange and dissemination of information to develop socially and economically. The paper reviews the documentation of IK for communication in print, audiovisual and electronic forms and highlights the challenges confronting libraries in documentation and communication of IK in Nigeria. It is suggested that libraries should coordinate their activities in this area and co-operate with other stakeholders, government and other funding agencies in tackling these challenges.

The possibility and probability of a global neuroscience information framework

The possibility and probability of a global neuroscience information framework

Low earth orbit satellite (LEOsat) for information exchange and retrieval in remote locations in Ghana

A low earth orbit satellite (LEOsat) for global electronic information exchanges between Accra (National Capital) and remote locations in Wa (Upper West Region) and Manga (Upper East Region) was setup for integrated rural development in Ghana. The functions of the communication networks were to facilitate disaster management, humanitarian relief, distance education and training, health care delivery, governance; and to over-come geographic isolation and reliance on obsolete communication systems. The POSAT satellite was equipp-ed with facility for store-and-forward communication by radio between participating ground stations in Africa and Europe. A high-gain directional antenna scanned the earth's surface at frequency, power and dwell time controlled to correct Doppler effect. The satellite positioned at 100 minute polar orbit was visible at least 4 times per day for an average of 13 minutes for information exchange of up to 50 kb to be up-loaded or 100 kb to be down-loaded per pass. On board were computers for digital communication systems based on packet radio protocols employing 9.6 kbps uplink and 38.4 kbps downlink data rates; and trans-receivers with two uplink frequency channels of 148.515 and 148.260 MHz and downlink frequency of 429.985 MHz. The Internet access of the radio-based trans-receiver system provided unlimited source of information of worldwide coverage as an orbiting mailbox. The only drawback with the LEOsat was that real time data was not offered as provided in batch mode communication. Journal of Applied Science and Technology Vol. 13 (1 & 2) 2008: pp. 92-98

The collaboration between Int J Life Cycle Assess and J LCA Jpn

The Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan (ILCAJ) was established in October 2004. The goal of ILCAJ is to promote academic activities related to life cycle thinking and to share expert knowledge with colleagues from widerranging backgrounds. Professor Ryoichi Yamamoto, University of Tokyo, has taken responsibility as Chairman of ILCAJ. In April 2005, ILCAJ has successfully established its publication organ (in Japanese), The Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan (J LCA Jpn). The issues appear every 3 months. J LCA Jpn publishes peer-reviewed research articles, commentaries and discussions, (technical) reports, lecture notes, and presentations of research groups in Japan, along with others. In Int J Life Cycle Assess 12(6):348– 350, we were happy to announce the collaboration with J LCA Jpn for the purpose of exchanging knowledge, new insights, experiences, and information across the different languages. The Corner JLCA Jpn aims to be a bridge between the LCA community of Japan and that of the whole world. All abstracts of research articles published in J LCA Jpn, as well as commentaries and discussions, will simultaneously appear in Int J Life Cycle Assess, Corner: JLCA Jpn, in order to introduce Japanese activities to our readers. In addition, some selected research papers from J LCA Jpn will be submitted to Int J Life Cycle Assess for publication following peer review. We hope that this collaboration will stimulate the global exchange of information through professional pathways. The following abstracts were published in J LCA Jpn Vol. 4, No. 4.

Methodology of Uniform Contract Law - The UNIDROIT Principles as a Source of Law

The remarkable pace at which the global exchange of goods, services and information develops, leads to new challenges for those who deal with contract law, both on a national and international level. More specifically, the law relating to commercial contracts is an area of growing interest. Both the formal, and the so-called ‘soft law’, legislation relating to cross-border trade have attracted great interest in the past ten years in legal scholarship and practice. This area of law has thereby become more accessible through the first publication the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (by the UNIDROIT Institute in Rome, 1994) and through other publications on the ‘New Lex Mercatoria’, which collectively provide lists and overviews of current laws and model laws and similar.2 The term which describes the thereby highlighted type of law is often ‘transnational’, or ‘a-national’, uniform contract law. The subject has also been successfully integrated into legal education, following recommendations by scholars at numerous international conferences throughout the last ten years. Despite this, the prevailing views of jurisprudence, judiciary and legislative organs in most European states do not agree with the underlying theories. Instead, national legislators tend to remain focused on internal markets and participants within the home territory. As a result, transnational uniform contract law is not used as widely as it could be, and this therefore, leads to a shortfall in the potential of international trade law as a whole.

Shuffled frog-leaping algorithm: a memetic meta-heuristic for discrete optimization

A memetic meta-heuristic called the shuffled frog-leaping algorithm (SFLA) has been developed for solving combinatorial optimization problems. The SFLA is a population-based cooperative search metaphor inspired by natural memetics. The algorithm contains elements of local search and global information exchange. The SFLA consists of a set of interacting virtual population of frogs partitioned into different memeplexes. The virtual frogs act as hosts or carriers of memes where a meme is a unit of cultural evolution. The algorithm performs simultaneously an independent local search in each memeplex. The local search is completed using a particle swarm optimization-like method adapted for discrete problems but emphasizing a local search. To ensure global exploration, the virtual frogs are periodically shuffled and reorganized into new memplexes in a technique similar to that used in the shuffled complex evolution algorithm. In addition, to provide the opportunity for random generation of improved information, random virtual frogs are generated and substituted in the population.The algorithm has been tested on several test functions that present difficulties common to many global optimization problems. The effectiveness and suitability of this algorithm have also been demonstrated by applying it to a groundwater model calibration problem and a water distribution system design problem. Compared with a genetic algorithm, the experimental results in terms of the likelihood of convergence to a global optimal solution and the solution speed suggest that the SFLA can be an effective tool for solving combinatorial optimization problems.

PsyDok: Electronic full-text archive for psychological documents

The Saarland University and State Library (Saarlaendische Universitaets- und Landesbibliothek SULB) runs the Special Subject Collection Psychology which is part of an information system for the supra-regional literature supply in Germany. With the increasing opportunities for electronic information the following question emerged for the Special Subject Collection: how can a contribution to the availability and preservation of electronic documents particularly with regards to grey literature be made? Giving an answer SULB established the repository PsyDok in autumn 2002. PsyDok is one of the few subject-specific digital repositories in Germany. It is a registered data provider of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and certified by the German Initiative for Networkinformation (DINI), which developed a variety of standards digital repositories have to comply with to achieve this mark of quality. PsyDok offers many interfaces to disciplinary and multidisciplinary retrieval and information systems. The allocation of Uniform Resource Names (URN) guarantees persistent availability and citeability of the documents. Several services and mechanisms guarantee not only a maximum of visibility and a rapid and global scientific exchange and flow of information stored on PsyDok but also its long term availability and its scientific utilization. PsyDok fits the principles of "Open Access": Many different document types may be published, but PsyDok focuses particularly on diploma theses, dissertations, professorial dissertations and grey literature. Regarding aspects of visibility, information exchange and scientific utilization producers of scientific literature benefit from PsyDok.

CONSTRUCT TEACHING MATERIALS FROM HL7/CDA ELECTRONIC PATIENT RECORDS ACCORDING TO SCORM STANDARD FOR MEDICAL EDUCATION

The rise of Web technology leads to the convenience of global information exchanges. Furthermore, E-Learning takes full advantage of cross area characteristic of the web, enabling online learning, at any time, at any place. Thus, SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) was result of such a trend. This study is based on CDA example teaching materials provided by international, HL7 organization, attempting to combine with SCORM standard, constructing a teaching material, which can be provided to hospital doctors, interns, or students while learning HL7/CDA. The teaching materials are based on SCORM standard. Besides in class use, the teaching materials can be shared and used on any SCORM-comptliant LMS (Learning Management Server) platform. In addition, the user can edit data of selected cases from HIS (Hospital Information System) directly on the teaching materials web pages, exporting into HL7/CDA compliant clinical documents, saving extra programming time to achieve inter-hospitals information sharing.

Balancing domain decomposition for mortar mixed finite element methods

AbstractThe balancing domain decomposition method for mixed finite elements by Cowsar, Mandel, and Wheeler is extended to the case of mortar mixed finite elements on non‐matching multiblock grids. The algorithm involves an iterative solution of a mortar interface problem with one local Dirichlet solve and one local Neumann solve per subdomain on each iteration. A coarse solve is used to guarantee that the Neumann problems are consistent and to provide global exchange of information across subdomains. Quasi‐optimal condition number bounds are derived, which are independent of the jump in coefficients between subdomains. Numerical experiments confirm the theoretical results. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.