Local Knowledge Base Research Articles

IDA

This article presents an intelligent corporate governance analysis and rating system, called IDA System, capable of retrieving SEC required documents of public companies and performing analysis and rating in terms of recommended corporate governance practices. With the techniques of analogical learning, local knowledge bases, databases, and question-dependent semantic networks, the IDA system is able to automatically evaluate the strengths, deficiencies, and risks of a company's corporate governance practices based on the documents stored in the “SEC EDGAR database by (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 2013)”. A produced score reduces a complex corporate governance process and related policies into a single number which enables concerned government agencies, investors and legislators to assess the governance characteristics of individual companies.

A participatory systems approach to understanding climate adaptation needs

Abstract Emerging literature on climate adaptation suggests the need for effective ways of engaging or activating communities and supporting community roles, coupled with whole-of-system approaches to understanding climate change and adaptation needs. We have developed and evaluated a participatory approach to elicit community and stakeholder understanding of climate change adaptation needs, and connect diverse community members and local office bearers towards potential action. The approach was trialed in a series of connected social-ecological systems along a transect from a rural area to the coast and islands of ecologically sensitive Moreton Bay in Queensland, Australia. We conducted ‘climate roundtables’ in each of three areas along the transect, then a fourth roundtable reviewed and extended the results to the region as a whole. Influence diagrams produced through the process show how each climate variable forecast to affect this region (heat, storm, flood, sea-level rise, fire, drought) affects the natural environment, infrastructure, economic and social behaviour patterns, and psychosocial responses, and how sets of people, species and ecosystems are affected, and act, differentially. The participatory process proved effective as a way of building local empathy, a local knowledge base and empowering participants to join towards future climate adaptation action. Key principles are highlighted to assist in adapting the process for use elsewhere.

Routing Approaches for Cognitive Radio Ad-hoc Networks and Challenges

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) are composed of cognitive devices capable of changing their configurations on Real time, based on the spectrum environment. This capability provides chance to opportunistically reuse the portion of the spectrum as required resigned by the licensed users (PU’s). From another point of view, the tractability in the spectrum access level attaches to an increased complexity for designing of communication protocols at each layer. This brings focuses on the problem of designing efficient routing results for multihop CRNs that become a central issue in cognitive networking paradigm. We furnish a broad overview of the research in the area of routing for CRNs, distinguishing two main categories: full spectrum knowledge base, and local spectrum knowledge base procedures and protocols. For each category we depict on proposed design methodologies and routing metrics. Finally, potential future research directions are also suggested. General Terms Algorithms, Methods, Techniques, Approaches

The Role of External Linkages and Gatekeepers for the Renewal and Expansion of US Cities' Knowledge Base, 1990–2004

Breschi S. and Lenzi C. The role of external linkages and gatekeepers for the renewal and expansion of US cities’ knowledge base, 1990–2004, Regional Studies. This paper examines the role of external linkages and gatekeepers for the renewal and expansion of cities' knowledge base in US metropolitan co-invention networks. It is argued that the relative importance of direct external linkages and external relations mediated by gatekeepers varies according to specific local conditions. It is found that direct external relations, on average, contribute to broadening and rejuvenating the local knowledge base and outperform external links mediated by gatekeepers; the latter, however, are especially important in cities with a localized and specialized knowledge base, as they enable the trans-coding and absorption at the local level of externally sourced knowledge.

Access to Universities' Public Knowledge: Who is More Regionalist?

Acosta M., Azagra-Caro J. M. and Coronado D. Access to universities' public knowledge: who is more regionalist?, Regional Studies. This paper tracks university-to-firm patent citations rather than the more usual patent-to-patent or paper-to-patent citations. It explains regional and non-regional citations as a function of firms’ absorptive capacity and universities’ production capacity in the region rather than explaining citations as a function of distance between citing and cited regions. Using a dataset of European Union regions for the years 1997–2007, it is found that fostering university research and development (R&D) capacity increases the attractiveness of the local university's knowledge base to firms in the region, but also reduces wider searches for university knowledge. Increasing the absorptive capacity of local business encourages firms to access university knowledge from outside the region.

A dispersed decision-making system – The use of negotiations during the dynamic generation of a system’s structure

The issues that are related to the process of global decision-making on the basis of knowledge which is stored in a dispersed form (several local knowledge bases or classifiers) are discussed in this paper. In a decision-making system, which is described in the paper, the classification process of the test object starts with an investigation of how particular classifiers classify a test object. We describe the views of classifiers by using probability vectors over decision classes. In the system, the process of combining classifiers in coalitions is very important. Negotiation is used in the clustering process. We define three types of relations between classifiers: friendship, conflict and neutrality. The clustering process consists of two stages. In the first step, the initial groups are created. These groups contain classifiers that are in a friendship relation. In the second stage, classifiers which are in neutrality relation are attached to the existing groups. In this paper, a formal description of the clustering process is presented and mathematical properties of functions, which are used, are described. For every cluster, we find a kind of combined information. Finally, we classify the given test object by voting among clusters, using the combined information from each of the clusters.In the paper a new way of creating clusters (with a negotiation stage) is compared to the approach presented in the paper (Przybyła-Kasperek and Wakulicz-Deja, 2014) [23] (without negotiations). There are significant differences between the clusters that are generated using these two approaches, which are shown in the paper. In the new approach, the clusters are more complex and better reconstruct and illustrate the views of the classifiers on the classification.

The emergence of new technology-based sectors in European regions: A proximity-based analysis of nanotechnology

This paper analyzes the emergence of new technology-based sectors at the regional level focusing on nanotechnology, an infant technology whose evolution can be traced on the basis of patent application filings. We employ a methodological framework based on the ‘product-space’ approach, to investigate whether the development of new technologies is linked to the structure of the existing local knowledge base. We conduct a 15 EU country analysis at NUTS 2 level using patent data for 1986–2006. The results of the descriptive and econometric analysis support the idea that history matters in the spatial development of a sector, and that the technological competences accumulated at the local level are likely to shape the future patterns of technological diversification.

Influencing Success: Configuring the WorldCat Knowledge Base With User Needs in Mind

The University Libraries (UL) of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) recently migrated to OCLC's WorldShare Management Services (WMS) and the full version of WorldCat Local (WCL). This resulted in significant changes to our display of periodicals (both print and electronic) in the public catalog and the Journal A–Z List. Serials are problematic in any migration, and ease of use by patrons was our primary concern. This article briefly reviews the migration process to WMS and WCL and describes how UNCG configured and populated the WorldCat Local knowledge base for user access to electronic (and print) journals.

Cloud Service Management System for Innovative Clusters. Application for North-West Region of Romania

In order to stimulate and optimize the organization and management of innovative clusters from value chain perspective and guide their planning activities towards a differentiation strategy in which cluster members cooperate, we propose a Cloud Service Management System (CSMS) that provides IT services for these innovative clusters companies that can be customized for both enterprises with the associated clusters. Within such a system, actors begin to depend one on another and to take advantage of the local knowledge base. Each cluster is designed to have a different profile which will integrate all the companies mapped with it, with the objective of keeping the profile and data for each company. For the existing companies the idea is to migrate their services into the related cluster for integration within CSMS. Thus, our proposed CSMS will consider and meet different quality of services (QoS) parameters of each individual enterprise and service which will be included in specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs), after the negotiation between the cloud service provider and the CSMS. Realizing that technological progress is at the heart of regional development and decision-makers could support the development of technology clusters towards transforming them into regional innovative clusters, the application of our proposal aims to overcome existing bottlenecks in terms of business strategies and regional development policies in the North-West region of Romania.

GAGASAN ACEH BARU: PEMBENTUKAN IDENTITAS ACEH DARI DALAM REAKTUALISASI RUANG PUBLIK BAGI AKSI PENGELOLAAN KEARIFAN LOKAL PASCA-KONFLIK DAN TSUNAMI

This paper quests the new Acehness identity that inspiring lokal revival in Aceh. Two important thingsthat would support the thesis how the ideas of new Aceh or Aceh revival are formulated from within?At least, the strengthening of public space as a local knowledge base management becomes an importantdiscourse in the course of the indicator measuring the local revival in Aceh. In addition, the process offormation of Acehnese identity is also one of the research questions of this paper, in which this practicehas marked the end of a local revival is being formulated in Aceh. Therefore, the questions about theprocess of dialogue and negotiation as what is growth in Aceh recently, will be discussed in this research.This research shows that the reactualization of public spaces that has been sunk by the conflict or thetsunami, now it is resurrected to turn the social bases that have been lost and even blurred. Whail,local wisdom and its discourse had reached the implementation of the policy through a qonun as aform of maintenance an intellectual heritage of Aceh to be kept alive and implemented. Communalconsciousness constructed by the fact that many of these actors have been integrated through variousforms of dialogue and long negotiation. So don’t be surprised if the recent in-meunasah, gampong orvillage activities turn on the mosque as a center of Islamic studies, and even coffee shops also determinethe direction of Acehnese identity is being created, especially as the idea of Aceh revival.

Global decision-making system with dynamically generated clusters

This paper discusses the issues related to the process of global decision-making on the basis of knowledge which is stored in a dispersed form (several local knowledge bases or classifiers). In the paper a decision-making system is described. In this system, the classification process of the test object can be divided into several steps. In the first step, we investigate how particular classifiers classify a test object. We describe this using probability vectors over decision classes. We cluster classifiers with respect to similarities of the probability vectors. For every cluster, we find a kind of combined information. Finally, we classify the given test object by voting among clusters, using the combined information from each of clusters.The paper proposes a new approach to the organization of the structure of a decision-making system, which operates on the basis of dispersed knowledge. In the presented system, the classifiers are combined into groups called clusters in a dynamic way. We seek to designate groups of classifiers that classify the test object in a similar manner. The groups of classifiers are not disjoint sets. We use overlapping clusters because this is a more suitable representation of classification compatibility. It is assumed that, if the classifier classifies the test object in an ambiguous way, it should belong to several clusters. Then, a process of the elimination of inconsistencies in the knowledge is implemented in the created groups. Global decisions are made by using one of the methods for the analysis of conflicts.

Customized Ontology model for Web Information Gathering using Clustering

The explosion of data leads to the problem on how information should be retrieved accurately and effectively. To address this issue, ontology's are widely used to represent user profiles in personalized web information gathering. As a model for knowledge description and formalization, ontology's are widely used to represent user profiles in personalized web information gathering. When representing user profiles, many models have utilized only knowledge from either a global knowledge base or local knowledge base. Ontology model learns user profiles from both a world knowledge base and local knowledge base. A non-content based customized ontology model is proposed for knowledge representation and reasoning over user profiles. This model generates user Local Instance Repository which includes non-content based descriptors referring to the subjects. This model has improvement over former models in hit/miss ratio, precision and recall parameters.

Optimizing Quality of a System Based on Intelligent Agents for E-learning

Distributed Artificial Intelligence is a subfield of artificial intelligence systems, that aims to build intelligent agents, that can make decisions in order to achieve their goals and are set in a world populated by other intelligent agents (artificial or human) who in turn have their own purposes. In this paper we have presented intelligent agents for e-learning. From quality perspective, the system presented indicates a way to search for concepts in a distributed e-learning environment. Based on the requirements of ISO 27000, we reviewed the stages for creating the system. Initially, higher ranking agents interrogate the server's local knowledge base agents without modelling them. Then, the agents shape the knowledge bases from the servers to avoid asking the same question twice if the local agent does not know the answer. Further, it introduced the possibility for agents to cooperate, so that they can ask questions of each other if they are on the same server. Finally, priority queues were implemented on the servers, so that only a fixed maximum number of agents could be served at a time, in a descending order of priorities.

SPATIAL HETEROGENEITY IN KNOWLEDGE, INNOVATION, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS: CONCEPTUAL REFLECTIONS AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

ABSTRACTBy drawing on the Schumpeterian distinction between invention (i.e., new ideas and knowledge creation) and commercialization of new ideas (i.e., innovation), this paper shows that knowledge and innovation are both important drivers of economic growth, but have heterogeneous spatial impacts. In particular, the growth benefits accruing from knowledge seem rather selective and concentrated across space whereas the growth benefits generated by innovation seem more diffusive, and regions innovating in the absence of a strong local knowledge base can be as successful as more knowledge‐intensive regions in turning innovation into a higher growth rate, possibly by exploiting local informal knowledge and/or knowledge spillovers. These results are of great importance for the design of research and innovation policies within the frame of the Europe 2020 strategy.

Territorial Patterns of Innovation and Economic Growth in European Regions

AbstractThis paper proposes the notion of territorial patterns of innovation as a new conceptualization to understand the relationship among knowledge, innovation, and economic growth at the regional level. The territorial patterns of innovation approach reject the simplistic view of an invention‐innovation equivalence and advance alternative patterns, alternative ways in which knowledge and innovation can take place and mix in space. Each of them represents a different way of innovating, one not necessarily more efficient than the other. On the empirical ground, the paper demonstrates this statement for all NUTS2 regions of the 27 European Union states by showing that the efficiency in taking advantage of innovation does not only link to the strength of the local knowledge base; rather, territorial patterns of innovation characterized by relatively low knowledge intensity can be relatively more efficient in grasping and exploiting innovation returns for growing. Interesting policy implications can be drawn from the empirical analysis presented. If the results do not deny the importance of research and development (R&D) activities for regional growth, and therefore the right focus put forward by the Europe 2020 on a “smart growth” based on knowledge and innovation, they call for particular attention when the Europe 2020 goal is translated into a regional setting.

A distributed clinical decision support system architecture

This paper proposes an open and distributed clinical decision support system architecture. This technical architecture takes advantage of Electronic Health Record (EHR), data mining techniques, clinical databases, domain expert knowledge bases, available technologies and standards to provide decision-making support for healthcare professionals. The architecture will work extremely well in distributed EHR environments in which each hospital has its own local EHR, and it satisfies the compatibility, interoperability and scalability objectives of an EHR. The system will also have a set of distributed knowledge bases. Each knowledge base will be specialized in a specific domain (i.e., heart disease), and the model achieves cooperation, integration and interoperability between these knowledge bases. Moreover, the model ensures that all knowledge bases are up-to-date by connecting data mining engines to each local knowledge base. These data mining engines continuously mine EHR databases to extract the most recent knowledge, to standardize it and to add it to the knowledge bases. This framework is expected to improve the quality of healthcare, reducing medical errors and guaranteeing the safety of patients by helping clinicians to make correct, accurate, knowledgeable and timely decisions.

Complex Decision Systems and Conflicts Analysis Problem

This paper discusses the issues related to the conflict analysis method and the rough set theory, process of global decision-making on the basis of knowledge which is stored in several local knowledge bases. The value of the rough set theory and conflict analysis applied in practical decision support systems with complex domain knowledge are expressed. The furthermore examples of decision support systems with complex domain knowledge are presented in this article. The paper proposes a new approach to the organizational structure of a multi-agent decision-making system, which operates on the basis of dispersed knowledge. In the presented system, the local knowledge bases will be combined into groups in a dynamic way. We will seek to designate groups of local bases on which the test object is classified to the decision classes in a similar manner. Then, a process of knowledge inconsistencies elimination will be implemented for created groups. Global decisions will be made using one of the methods for analysis of conflicts.

Indigenising Knowledge Base for Consequential Education in Ethiopia – A Conceptual Model

The uniqueness of Ethiopian socio-cultural environment creates challenges for teachers and scholars due to the questionable accuracy and applicability of Euro-American theories and concepts that are being taught in various disciplines in Ethiopia. How far cross-cultural theories have soundness for universal application? How far Euro-American theories are unassailable in Ethiopian cultural context? These are some of the exigent questions often raised by scholarly teachers, educationists as well as critical students in search of consequential education. Consequential education is a process of learning where the teacher encourages critical examination of multiple sources of knowledge and theories in diverse learning styles with the intention that the acquired knowledge is centred, located, oriented, and grounded on the learner’s culture, which could be applied, translated appropriately by the learner and thus be well equipped to be productive locally and globally. In view of enhancing consequential education by indigenising the local knowledge base in Ethiopia, the objectives of this paper are twofold: i) Identify key constructs, components and obstacles for indigenising Ethiopian knowledge base; ii) Prepare a conceptual model of indigenization for consequential education in Ethiopia. This qualitative study used a mixture of ethnography and phenomenology methods to collect data. Specifically, Delphi debate, brainstorming, storytelling/informal conversation and document analysis were used. The study identified many local cultural constructs that need extensive research so that local knowledge base could be established and local theories formulated. In view of this, the need for qualitative Ethiocentric (Ethiopia based) research is highlighted. A few myths were spotted out that are the barriers to indigenising knowledge base in Ethiopia. Inspired by the findings, the authors propose a Pyramid Model of Indigenization for Consequential Education in Ethiopia.

A robust algorithm for estimating soil erodibility in different climates

The analysis of global soil erodibility data by Salvador Sanchis et al. (2008) showed that there is a significant climate effect on soil erodibility which allows for a split of the data into two subsets, one for prevailing cool conditions and another for prevailing warm conditions (defined using the Köppen climate classification). Despite the recognition of this new dichotomous variable, prediction of soil erodibility values remained very poor. This paper presents a new technique for dealing with such a variability by calculating probability density functions of soil erodibility K values when the user knows a set of textural parameters and the climatic classification of the site. Finally the user has the possibility to decide, on the basis of local knowledge, which K value to use. The procedure has been implemented in a freeware software named KUERY available for the scientific community. Finally, as an illustration, the methodology is applied to a catchment in south Italy.

A presença de agentes intermediadores na formação de redes interorganizacionais: uma análise sob a perspectiva temporal

Nos estudos sobre redes interorganizacionais, existem esforços focados em entender a formação de redes, assunto esse que gera interesse dos formuladores de políticas públicas já que se busca no associativismo promovido pelo Estado e pelas iniciativas privadas, substância para impulsionar o desenvolvimento local. Diante disso, o objetivo do estudo foi verificar, por meio da formalização do Arranjo Produtivo Local (APL) de calçados de Birigüi (SP), se a presença desses agentes é essencial para a formação da rede interorganizacional. Como sustentações teóricas foram abordadas: a evolução temporal das redes; a Teoria Institucional aplicada às redes interorganizacionais; o capital social presente nos laços de relacionamento; a presença de agentes intermediários como coordenadores na governança das redes. A estratégia de pesquisa adotada baseou-se em entrevistas com 32% dos gestores das empresas que participavam formalmente do APL e com uma gestora do agente intermediador, além de observação e análises de pesquisas prévias sobre a industrialização de Birigüi. Como resultados verificou-se haver um legado regional que sustenta uma base de know-how para a industrialização de calçados. No entanto, percebeu-se que os interesses dos participantes do APL eram predominantemente comerciais, sem haver um nível de capital social e de institucionalização desenvolvidos a ponto de se criarem, de forma legítima, associações provenientes de vontades das próprias organizações. Sem esse ambiente institucional fortemente construído na região, não se verificou um racional claro para o associativismo, havendo a percepção de que os ganhos oriundos da participação na rede são futuros. Concluiu-se que a coordenação realizada por um agente intermediador tem poder de articulação limitado na formação de redes interorganizacionais se não existir uma institucionalização prévia que envolva, principalmente, valores e normas de capital social. Sem esses pré-requisitos, o agente intermediador pode acabar por ter funções de governança para ações assessórias da rede.