Using Quantum Agent-Based Simulation to Model Social Networks

This research aims to apply models extracted from the many-body quantum mechanics to describe social dynamics. It is intended to draw macroscopic characteristics of organizational communities starting from the analysis of microscopic interactions with respect to the node model. In this chapter, the authors intend to give an answer to the following question: which models of the quantum physics are suitable to represent the behaviour and the evolution of business processes? The innovative aspects of the project are related to the application of models and methods of the quantum mechanics to social systems. In order to validate the proposed mathematical model, the authors intend to define an open-source platform able to model nodes and interactions within a network, to visualize the macroscopic results through a digital representation of the social networks.

Social Networking and Trust

Based on the literature review of the theory of trust, this chapter aims to provide an insight into trust formation on social networking sites (SNS). An overview of the current state of cybercrime and known ways of threat mitigation helps shed some light on the reasons why social networks became easy targets for Internet criminals. Increasingly, personalisation is seen as a method for counteracting attacks perpetrated via phishing messages. This chapter aims to look specifically at trust in online social networks and how it influences vulnerability of users towards cybercrime. The chapter poses a question whether personalisation is the silver bullet to combat cyber threats on social networks. Further research directions are discussed.

Student Models Review and Distance Education

The current chapter is a review of the variety of student models that have been reported in the literature. The chapter can virtually be divided in two parts: The first part outlines a number of typical examples of student models that have been developed in order to indicate why these models have been developed, what are their uses and the achievements of student models in education. The second part discusses how the student models can be useful in distance education, what are the criteria for testing the applicability of such models and finally reports student models that may apply in asynchronous distance education

Locating Doctors using Social and Semantic Web Technologies

The advent of the information age represents both a challenge and an opportunity for medicine. New forms of diagnosis, innovation-oriented supervision and expert location paths are deeply impacting medical sciences as we know it around the word. In this new scenario, semantic technologies can be seen as new and promising tool to support knowledge-based services, and particularly for the health domain, medical diagnosis. This chapter presents MedFinder, a system based on semantic technologies and social Web to improve patient care for medical diagnosis. The main breakthroughs of MedFinder are the follow-up once the diagnosis is performed, by using a medical ontology and formal reasoning together with rules, since it makes possible to locate the most appropriate doctor for a patient using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and taking into account user preferences given via social Web feedback.

Domain-Specific Ontologies Trading for Retrieval and Integration of Information in Web-Based Information Systems

This chapter introduces the use of domain-specific ontologies through Web trading services as a mechanism for retrieval and integration of information between different systems or subsystems. This mechanism is based on a three-level data architecture, which can be demonstrated by the use of trading service. This architecture includes data at its first level, meta-information on its second level in order to facilitate the processes of retrieval of information, and meta-meta-information at its third level to facilitate the integration of information-through-trading-services. This proposal is a new approach to the process of retrieval and integration of information for Web-based Information Systems (WIS). This chapter presents a case study for a WIS application of an Environmental Management Information System (EMIS), called SOLERES.

Refactoring and its Application to Ontologies

Over the last years, a great deal of ontologies of many different kinds and describing different domains has been created, and new methods and prototypes have been developed to search them easily. These ontologies may be reused for several tasks, such as for increasing semantic interoperability, improving searching, supporting Information Systems or the creation of their conceptual schemas. Searching an ontology that is relevant to the users’ purpose is a big challenge, and when the user is able to find it a new challenge arises: how to adapt the ontology in order to be applied effectively into the problem domain. It is nearly impossible to find an ontology that can be applied as is to a particular problem. Is in that context where ontology refactoring takes special interest. This chapter tries to clarify what ontology refactoring is and presents a possible catalog of ontology refactoring operations.

Technology Engineering for NPD Acceleration

In complex environments, firms adopt continuously new IT-based systems and tools for knowledge management, otherwise knowledge can be dispersed or lost. And as a part of the new product development process, the product design is one of the most crucial phases for the relevance of its data and information and for the importance of the new knowledge creation of its designers and engineers. This chapter argues, through a conceptual model, the strategic role of the integration of knowledge management systems and special communities for the acceleration of the new product development process and presents an ontology-based knowledge management system and its application in the context of a community of automotive designers. More precisely, the issue management, based on this engineered IT-system, will accelerate and optimize the product design phase and knowledge sharing among the designers and engineers.

An Approach to a Semantic Recommender System for Digital Libraries

One of the key aims of the so-called Information Society is to facilitate the interconnection and communication of sparse groups of people, which can collaborate with each other by exchanging on-line information from distributed sources (Angehrn et al., 2008). In specific contexts, such as in the research and scholarly domain, where many times work is developed relaying on team-based research (Borgman, 2007), finding colleagues and associates to build collaborative relationships has become a crucial matter. Actually, this is one of the pillars of the conduct of research and production of scholarship (Palmer et al., 2009). Nevertheless, this task can be specially difficult when the research activity implies opening new multidisciplinary lines of investigation, since it is hard to know what’s hot and who’s in in a certain domain out of that of this specialization (even if both areas are related or close to each other).

Forum Summarization to Support Tutor and Teacher in group interaction management

The process of summarizing information is becoming increasingly important in the light of recent advances in resource creation and distribution and the resulting influx of large numbers of information in everyday life. These advances are also challenging educational institutions to adopt the opportunities of distributed knowledge sharing and communication. The chapter presents a summarization system to support tutor in managing student communication and interaction within a learning framework. Results show the adequacy of the system in identifying a good content summarization and then in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the context in which summarization can be integrated.

Standardization of virtual objects

This chapter proposes architecture to unify the development and use of virtual objects. As technology advances more and more “objects” began to appear in digital format, examples include: books, event tickets, airline tickets, agendas, etc electronic purses. These digital objects do not follow a standard format or recommendations since there are no mechanism that allows for treating them in a general way, storing and sharing or being processed by other applications that do not know their format. Based on the problems identified in this document, a proposal is detailed in search for a single structure and for the construction of any virtual object.