Online Requests Research Articles

E-Privacy: Evaluating a New Search Cost in Online Environments

Electronic Commerce environments increasingly witness a conflict on the subject of e-privacy: While marketers want to maximize their customer knowledge and grasp the identity of their online users, consumers often want to stay anonymous and not reveal private information. The conflict suggests that 'private consumer information' should be respected as a new search cost for consumers in EC environments. The current paper aims to 'grasp' the phenomenon of this new search cost entitled as 'private consumer information cost' (PCIC). The paper aims to evaluate PCIC by identifying its main drivers and their interrelation. An empirical study is presented which shows that three factors, perceived importance, legitimacy and difficulty of online requests made by marketers in a purchase context explain much of the variance of PCIC. Empirical data also reveals how different types of information requests drive PCIC. The types of information distinguished are product information, information on product usage as well as personal information. Results hint at the fact that consumers accept personal information requests to a greater extend than one would expect, but only as long as they improve product- or service choice. It is concluded that marketers incur considerable opportunity cost of information if they do not respect the nuances evident in PCIC creation and do not rely on them for the strategic design of their online communication.

Exploring the Use of Online Corporate Reporting Information

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the use and users of corporate reporting information published online by large companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. Although prior research details the increasing supply of online corporate reporting disclosures, there is a lack of empirical research investigating the use and users of this information. Therefore, this study observes approximately 4.7 million online requests to explore who uses online corporate reporting and what information is used by different types of users. In doing so, it attempts to provide a context in which to inform the tailoring of the content, format and granularity of information to meet different user needs within the next generation of corporate reporting websites that can more readily incorporate user interactivity and information customization (as envisaged by the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] and the Interactive Data Electronic Applications [IDEA] project).

A network aware privacy model for online requests in trajectory data

In this work, we propose a privacy model for online user requests on trajectory data in location based services by utilizing an underlying network of user movement. The privacy model has been implemented as a framework that (i) reconstructs the user movement from a series of independent location updates, (ii) identifies routes where user privacy is at risk, and (iii) transforms user requests into anonymous equivalents. The framework is implemented on top of a spatial database engine that offers a significant portion of the necessary functionality, while provides for its effective deployment.

Defining useful surrogates for user participation in online medical learning

"School for Surgeons" is a web-based distance learning program which provides online clinical-based tutorials to surgical trainees. Our aim was to determine surrogates of active participation and to assess the efficacy of methods to improve usage. Server logs of the 82 participants in the "School for Surgeons" were assessed for the two terms of the first year of the program. Data collected included total time online, mean session time, page requests, numbers of sessions online and the total number of assignments. An intervention regarding comparative peer usage patterns was delivered to the cohort between terms one and two. Of the 82 trainees enrolled, 83% (85% second term) logged into the program. Of all participants 88% (97% second term) submitted at least one assignment. Median submissions were four (eight second term) per trainee. Assignment submission closely correlated with number of sessions, total time online, downloads and page requests. Peer-based comparative feedback resulted in a significant increase in the number of assignments submitted (p < 0.01). Despite its recent introduction, "School for Surgeons" has a good participation rate. Assignment submission is a valid surrogate for usage. Students can be encouraged to move from passive observation to active participation in a virtual learning environment by providing structured comparative feedback ranking their performance.

A particle swarm optimization based algorithm to the Internet subscription problem

It is a business practice that Internet service providers (ISPs) employ the differential service concept to satisfy various requirements of different Internet customers. Under this concept, the bandwidth resources are usually divided into several Internet commodity classes for sales. For each commodity class, there is a different sales price and a unique bandwidth restriction. Theoretically, subscribers can enjoy their services up to the bandwidth limits. However, in reality, many subscribers may encounter a situation in which their on-line requests are denied or their connection speeds are far below their contracted speed limits. One of the reasons is that ISPs do not set sales limits for their Internet commodities and accept too many subscribers as their Internet subscribers. To overcome this problem, this paper deals with an ISP’s sales limit problem over a finite time planning period. The purpose of this paper is to maximize the total expected revenues by determining the sales limits for each subscription type and bandwidth allocation for each commodity class over any subscription interval under service level guarantee. In this paper, a constrained nonlinear integer model is developed and an algorithm based on a particle swarm optimization (PSO) is proposed to acquire admissible solutions. Several examples are provided for showing the efficiency of the proposed method.

Semantic web service composition testbed

A huge amount of web services are deployed on the Web, nowadays. These services can be used to fulfill online requests. Requests are getting more and more complicated over time. So, there exists a lot of frequent request that cannot be fulfilled using just one web service. For using web services, composing individual services to create the added-value composite web service to fulfill the user request is necessary in most cases. Web services can be composed manually but it is a too tedious and time consuming task. The ability of automatic web service composition to create a new composite web service is one of the key enabling features for the future for the semantic web. There are some successful methods for automatic web service composition, but the lack of standard, open, and lightweight test environment makes the comparison and evaluation of these composition methods impossible. In this paper we propose an architecture for a light weight and scalable testbed to execute, test and evaluate automatic web service composition algorithms. The architecture provides mandatory components for implementing and evaluation of automatic web service composition algorithms. Also, this architecture provides some extension mechanisms to extend its default functionalities. We have also given reference implementations for web service matchmaking and composition. Also, some scenarios for testing and evaluating the testbed are given. We have found that the performance of the composition method will dramatically decrease as the number of web services increases.

Short Term Strategies for a Dynamic Multi-Period Routing Problem

We consider a Dynamic Multi-Period Routing Problem (DMPRP) faced by a company which deals with on-line pick-up requests and has to serve them by a fleet of uncapacitated vehicles over a finite time horizon. When a request is issued, a deadline of a given number of days d ⩽ 2 is associated to it: if d = 1 the request has to be satisfied on the same day (unpostponable request) while if d = 2 the request may be served either on the same day or on the day after (postponable request). At the beginning of each day some requests are already known, while others may arrive as time goes on. Every day the company faces on-line requests by possibly making new plans for the service and decides whether or not to serve postponable requests without knowing the set of new requests that will be issued the day after. The company objective is to satisfy all the received requests while minimizing the average operational costs per day. The daily cost includes a very high cost paid for each request forwarded to a back-up service. We propose different short term routing strategies and analyze their impact on the long term objective. Extensive computational results are provided on randomly generated instances simulating different real case scenarios and conclusions are drawn on the effectiveness of the strategies.

Revisiting the issue of safety in numbers: The likelihood of receiving help from a group

This article re‐examines Latané and Nida's (1981) meta‐analysis on the inhibiting effect of groups on helping behavior and highlights the distinction between social inhibition and a victim's likelihood of receiving help. Correcting a minor miscalculation in one of Latané and Nida's analyses indicated that, under restricted communication among bystanders, victims were significantly more likely to receive help from a group than from an individual. New correlational analyses indicated that as group size increased, the likelihood of receiving help increased under restricted communication and did not change under full communication. I address several implications of these new findings, including those regarding the case of Kitty Genovese and the role of communication type in bystander intervention. I also briefly report on recent studies on online requests for help.

Persistence in University Continuing Education Online Classes

This study presents persistence and attrition data from two years of data collection. Over the eight quarters studied, the persistence rate in online courses was 79 percent. The persistence rate for similar onground courses was 84 percent. The drops for both course modalities were disaggregated by the time of the request for withdrawal: before course start, during the initial week, and during instruction. There was a significant difference between online and onground requests for withdrawals during the initial week. There was no significant difference between online and onground drop rates after the start of instruction, leading to the conclusion that differences in instruction online and onground was unlikely to be a major influencing factor in the student’s decision to drop.

Online Requests for Sexual Pictures from Youth: Risk Factors and Incident Characteristics

Purpose The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence and characteristics of youth who receive requests to make and send sexual pictures of themselves over the Internet. Methods Data were collected as part of the Second Youth Internet Safety Survey, a nationally representative telephone survey of 1,500 youth Internet users, ages 10–17 years, in the United States. Results Among Internet-using youth 4% reported an online request to send a sexual picture of themselves during the previous year. Only one youth of 65 sample case subjects actually complied. Being female, being of Black ethnicity, having a close online relationship, engaging in sexual behavior online, and experiencing physical or sexual abuse offline were risk factors for receiving a request for a sexual picture. Incidents that involved requests for sexual pictures were more likely to occur when youth were in the presence of friends, communicating with an adult, someone they met online, who had sent a sexual picture to the youth, and who attempted or made some form of offline contact with the youth. Conclusions The findings from this study provide support for including requests for sexual pictures in the spectrum of online experiences about which pediatric and adolescent health professionals need to be knowledgeable. These findings also provide information about populations that need targeted prevention education about online dangers, namely vulnerable (e.g., abused boys and girls) and female Black youth.

Work Function Algorithm with a Moving Window for Solving the On-line k-server Problem

We consider a modification of the well known work function algorithm (WFA) for solving the on-line kserver problem. Our modified WFA is based on a moving window, i. e. on the approximate work function that takes into account only a fixed number of most recent on-line requests. The main motivation for using a moving window is to gain control over the prohibitive computational complexity imposed by the original algorithm. Experimental results are presented, where the performance of the modified WFA has been compared vs. the original WFA.

Development of an automatic customer service system on the internet

Most existing network-based customer services heavily rely on manpower in replying e-mails or on-line requests from customers, which not only increases the service cost, but also delay the time for responding the service requests. To cope with these problems, this paper proposes a customer service system, which can automatically handle customer requests by analyzing the contents of the requests and finding the most feasible answers from the frequently asked question (FAQ) database. In the situation that a customer is not satisfied with the reply, the system will forward the request to the appropriate service personnel for further processing. An assistance mechanism has been developed to help the service personnel in finding potential answers from existing FAQ data or creating more appropriate answers. Experimental results on practical applications showed that over 87.3% of users were satisfied with the replies given by the system; therefore, we conclude that the system can significantly reduce the service cost and provide more efficient and effective customer service.

Improved bounds for the unsplittable flow problem

In this paper we consider the unsplittable flow problem (UFP): given a directed or undirected network G = ( V , E ) with edge capacities and a set of terminal pairs (or requests) with associated demands, find a subset of the pairs of maximum total demand for which a single flow path can be chosen for each pair so that for every edge, the sum of the demands of the paths crossing the edge does not exceed its capacity. We present a collection of new results for the UFP both in the offline (all requests are given from the beginning) and the online (requests arrive at the system one after the other) setting. A fundamental ingredient of our analysis is the introduction of a new graph parameter, the flow number, that aims to capture global communication properties of the network. With the help of the flow number we develop a general method for transforming arbitrary multicommodity flow solutions into solutions that use short paths only. This generalizes a well-known theorem of Leighton and Rao [J. ACM 46 (6) (1999) 787–832] that applies to uniform flows only. Both the parameter and the method may therefore be of independent interest.

A quantitative analysis of the content and structure of public requests for private interaction posted in online public chatrooms.

Evidence is presented suggesting that the majority (88%) of online requests for private computer-mediated communication posted in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) chatrooms are derivations of the following prototypical structure: (a) a target specifier, e.g., "any girls"; (b) the communication request itself, e.g., "wanna chat"; (c) a self-identifier, e.g., "to a guy"; and (d) a communication directive, e.g., "msg me!" A methodology capable of identifying individual differences in the frequency of language usage on IRC was developed and used to generate a taxonomy of the phrases commonly used in each of these four components. This taxonomy of 82 phrases accounted for 14.5% of the total language used across a variety of IRC chatrooms and 77% of the words used in requests for private interaction. It also identified at least one component in 83% of all requests for private interaction posted on IRC, while having only a 10% rate of false (non-request) identification. The reduced complexity and increased explicitness of requests for private interaction on IRC is interpreted using politeness theory. The application of the current methodology for research assessing the formation of online romantic and interpersonal relationships is considered, as are the utility of quantitative analyses of discourse structures in computer-mediated communication for profiling people who use IRC for various purposes.

An analysis of the optimal number of servers in distributed client/server environments

In the client/server model for distributed on-line requests processing, the concept of a server class that consists of multiple identical servers is often provided for the fast response time, high fault-tolerance, or continuous availability. As far as we are aware of, there is no concrete formulation that provides the optimal number of servers of a server class in distributed client/server systems. The number of servers has been usually chosen only by heuristic methods or statistics after monitoring system behavior for some periods of time. In this paper, we propose a method based on queuing theory that determines the optimal number of servers in a server class for a general distributed client/server model that encompasses the state-of-the-art on-line transaction processing environment described in the literature.

An Online Algorithm for the Dynamic Maximal Dense Tree Problem

The Online Maximal Dense Tree problem is as follows: given a weighted directed graph and a source node, users issue online requests for connection to the source node. A request can either be accepted or rejected (the admission control decision). If the connection request is accepted, it must be connected to the source or to a node previously connected to the source (the routing decision). The objective is to maximize the total number of connections while keeping the connection density , i.e. the ratio of accepted requests to the weight of the spanning tree, sufficiently high.

Lower Bounds for Dynamic Algebraic Problems

We consider dynamic evaluation of algebraic functions (matrix multiplication, determinant, convolution, Fourier transform, etc.) in the model of Reif and Tate; i.e., if f(x1,…, xn)=(y1, …, ym) is an algebraic problem, we consider serving online requests of the form “change input xi to value v” or “what is the value of output yi?” We present techniques for showing lower bounds on the worst case time complexity per operation for such problems. The first gives lower bounds in a wide range of rather powerful models (for instance, history dependent algebraic computation trees over any infinite subset of a field, the integer RAM, and the generalized real RAM model of Ben-Amram and Galil). Using this technique, we show optimal Ω(n) bounds for dynamic matrix–vector product, dynamic matrix multiplication, and dynamic discriminant and an Ω(n) lower bound for dynamic polynomial multiplication (convolution), providing a good match with Reif and Tate's O(n log n) upper bound. We also show linear lower bounds for dynamic determinant, matrix adjoint, and matrix inverse and an Ω(n) lower bound for the elementary symmetric functions. The second technique is the communication complexity technique of Miltersen, Nisan, Safra, and Wigderson which we apply to the setting of dynamic algebraic problems, obtaining similar lower bounds in the word RAM model. The third technique gives lower bounds in the weaker straight line program model. Using this technique, we show an Ω((log n)2/log log n) lower bound for dynamic discrete Fourier transform. Technical ingredients of our techniques are the incompressibility technique of Ben-Amram and Galil and the lower bound for depth-two superconcentrators of Radhakrishnan and Ta-Shma. The incompressibility technique is extended to arithmetic computation in arbitrary fields.

Interventions for the treatment and management of chronic fatigue syndrome: a systematic review.

A variety of interventions have been used in the treatment and management of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Currently, debate exists among health care professionals and patients about appropriate strategies for management. To assess the effectiveness of all interventions that have been evaluated for use in the treatment or management of CFS in adults or children. Nineteen specialist databases were searched from inception to either January or July 2000 for published or unpublished studies in any language. The search was updated through October 2000 using PubMed. Other sources included scanning citations, Internet searching, contacting experts, and online requests for articles. Controlled trials (randomized or nonrandomized) that evaluated interventions in patients diagnosed as having CFS according to any criteria were included. Study inclusion was assessed independently by 2 reviewers. Of 350 studies initially identified, 44 met inclusion criteria, including 36 randomized controlled trials and 8 controlled trials. Data extraction was conducted by 1 reviewer and checked by a second. Validity assessment was carried out by 2 reviewers with disagreements resolved by consensus. A qualitative synthesis was carried out and studies were grouped according to type of intervention and outcomes assessed. The number of participants included in each trial ranged from 12 to 326, with a total of 2801 participants included in the 44 trials combined. Across the studies, 38 different outcomes were evaluated using about 130 different scales or types of measurement. Studies were grouped into 6 different categories. In the behavioral category, graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy showed positive results and also scored highly on the validity assessment. In the immunological category, both immunoglobulin and hydrocortisone showed some limited effects but, overall, the evidence was inconclusive. There was insufficient evidence about effectiveness in the other 4 categories (pharmacological, supplements, complementary/alternative, and other interventions). Overall, the interventions demonstrated mixed results in terms of effectiveness. All conclusions about effectiveness should be considered together with the methodological inadequacies of the studies. Interventions which have shown promising results include cognitive behavioral therapy and graded exercise therapy. Further research into these and other treatments is required using standardized outcome measures.

Association of Down's syndrome and water fluoride level: a systematic review of the evidence.

BackgroundA review of the safety and efficacy of drinking water fluoridation was commissioned by the UK Department of Health to investigate whether the evidence supported a beneficial effect of water fluoridation and whether there was any evidence of adverse effects. Down's syndrome was one of the adverse effects reported. The aim of this review is to examine the evidence for an association between water fluoride level and Down's syndrome.MethodsA systematic review of research. Studies were identified through a comprehensive literature search, scanning citations and online requests for papers. Studies in all languages which investigated the incidence of Down's syndrome in areas with different levels of fluoride in their water supplies were included. Study inclusion and quality was assessed independently by 2 reviewers. A qualitative analysis was conducted.ResultsSix studies were included. All were ecological in design and scored poorly on the validity assessment. The estimates of the crude relative risk ranged from 0.84 to 3.0. Four studies showed no significant associations between the incidence of Down's syndrome and water fluoride level and two studies by the same author found a significant (p < 0.05) positive association (increased Down's syndrome incidence with increased water fluoride level). Only two of the studies controlled for confounding factors and only one of these presented summary outcome measures.ConclusionsThe evidence of an association between water fluoride level and Down's syndrome incidence is inconclusive.

Lower Bounds for Dynamic Algebraic Problems

We consider dynamic evaluation of algebraic functions (matrix multiplication, determinant, convolution, Fourier transform, etc.) in the model of Reif and Tate; i.e., if f(x1, . . . , xn) = (y1, . . . , ym) is an algebraic problem, we consider serving on-line requests of the form "change input xi to value v" or "what is the value of output yi?". We present techniques for showing lower bounds on the worst case time complexity per operation for such problems. The first gives lower bounds in a wide range of rather powerful models (for instance history dependent&lt;br /&gt;algebraic computation trees over any infinite subset of a field, the integer RAM, and the generalized real RAM model of Ben-Amram and Galil). Using this technique, we show optimal Omega(n) bounds for dynamic matrix-vector product, dynamic matrix multiplication and dynamic discriminant and an &lt;br /&gt;Omega(sqrt(n)) lower bound for dynamic polynomial multiplication (convolution), providing a good match with Reif and&lt;br /&gt;Tate's O(sqrt(n log n)) upper bound. We also show linear lower bounds for dynamic determinant, matrix adjoint and matrix inverse and an Omega(sqrt(n)) lower bound for the elementary symmetric functions. The second technique is the communication complexity technique of Miltersen, Nisan, Safra, and Wigderson which we apply to the setting&lt;br /&gt;of dynamic algebraic problems, obtaining similar lower bounds in the word RAM model. The third technique gives lower bounds in the weaker straight line program model. Using this technique, we show an ((log n)2= log log n) lower bound for dynamic discrete Fourier transform. Technical ingredients of our techniques are the incompressibility technique of Ben-Amram and Galil and the lower bound for depth-two superconcentrators of Radhakrishnan and Ta-Shma. The incompressibility technique is extended to arithmetic computation in arbitrary fields.