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Internet Technologies (internet + technology)
Selected AbstractsThe CREDIT project: Towards a generic framework for assessment and accreditation,a prototype for childcareBRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 4 2000Jacobijn Sandberg Many individuals throughout Europe acquire knowledge and skills in an informal manner for which they find no official recognition. Procedures for assessment and accreditation are meant to help individuals in finding recognition of previously gained competencies. The CREDIT (Capabilities, Registration, Evaluation, Diagnosis and advice through Internet Technology) project develops a computer system that supports the assessment and accreditation process and provides advice on further training possibilities tailored to the level of knowledge and skills of individuals. [source] Prescription drug misuse: Is technology friend or foe?DRUG AND ALCOHOL REVIEW, Issue 1 2009SUZANNE NIELSEN Abstract Introduction and Aims. Prescription drug misuse and related harms have been increasing considerably over the past decade. At the same time, there has also been rapid growth in the use of online and Internet technologies. Thus, it is important that we understand the role online and Internet technologies play in prescription drug misuse. Design and Methods. Published work addressing the role of technology in prescription drug misuse is explored. Topics include: Internet supply, online monitoring of prescription drug use trends and electronic prescription monitoring. Results. Little is known about the prevalence of acquiring prescription drugs from online pharmacies. Prescription drugs are easily accessible through vendor websites, and ,rogue' no-prescription websites have proven difficult to control. There has so far been limited application of real-time monitoring to prevent overuse of prescription medications. Online monitoring of drug use trends may also prove to be a useful and timely source of information about new methods of ,off-label' prescription drug use. Discussion and Conclusions. Technology has the potential to play a more prominent role in facilitating drug acquisition, while also enhancing the monitoring and prevention of prescription drug misuse. As technology becomes more ubiquitous in everyday life, the continued investigation of its relationship with prescription drug misuse becomes even more important.[Nielsen S, Barratt MJ. Prescription drug misuse: Is technology friend or foe? Drug Alcohol Rev 2009;28:81,86] [source] DERRIDA'S RIGHT TO PHILOSOPHY, THEN AND NOWEDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 3 2009John Willinsky In this essay, a tribute to Jacques Derrida's educational efforts at expanding access to current work in philosophy, John Willinsky examines his efforts as both a public right and an element of academic freedom that bear on the open access movement today. Willinsky covers Derrida's extension and outreach work with the Groupe de Recherches pour l'Enseignement de la Philosophie in the 1970s and a decade later with Collège International de Philosophie that provided public access to ongoing and leading-edge philosophical work, as well as supporting the teaching of philosophy in the schools. Willinsky also relates Derrida's dedicated, practical educational work, his historical analysis of Descartes's decision to write in French, and more recent initiatives that are using Internet technologies to increase public and educational access to published scholarly work in the humanities in a very similar spirit. [source] Internet use by end-stage renal disease patientsHEMODIALYSIS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 3 2007Emily SETO Abstract Information on the prevalence and predictors of use of the Internet by patients can be applied to the design and promotion of healthcare Internet technologies. To our knowledge, few studies on Internet use by end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients have been reported. The objectives of this study are to ascertain the prevalence and predictors of Internet use by ESRD patients among different dialysis modalities. A questionnaire surveying Internet use was delivered in person to 199 conventional hemodialysis patients (57 returned), and mailed to 170 peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients (42 returned), and 65 nocturnal home hemodialysis (NHD) patients (43 returned). Of the respondents, most (58%) have used the Internet to find information on their health condition. The strong majority (76%) of these patients have easy access to the Internet. A higher proportion of NHD patients (86%) used the Internet compared with the PD patients (60%) (p=0.02). Internet use was found to be more prevalent with younger (p<0.001), more educated (p=0.001), and Canadian-born patients (p=0.005). The high prevalence of Internet use and easy access to the Internet by ESRD patients suggest that future Internet information and communication systems for healthcare management in ESRD will likely be well adopted by this patient population. [source] Fusion of digital television, broadband Internet and mobile communications,Part I: Enabling technologiesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, Issue 4 2007F. L. C. Ong Abstract The introduction of digital video broadcasting (DVB) satellite systems has become an important tool for future mobile communication and is currently a focus in several research areas such as the integration of DVB satellite systems with different wireless technologies. This tutorial consists of two parts, Enabling technologies and Future service scenarios, which aims to provide an introduction to the current state-of-the-art of DVB standards over satellite and its fusion with mobile and Internet technologies. This paper, Enabling technologies, focuses on providing an overview of the different technologies and issues that facilitates better understanding of the current and future operational scenarios, whereas the second paper, Future service scenarios will emphasize future research directions in this research area. In the first part, the paper will initially be focused on the introduction of different DVB satellite systems, i.e. DVB- via satellite (DVB-S), DVB return channel by satellite (DVB-RCS) and second-generation DVB system for broadband satellite services (DVB-S2). This is then followed by a description of the different Internet Protocol (IP) technologies used to support macro- and micro-mobility and the migration strategies from IP version 4 (IPv4) to IP version 6 (IPv6). Finally, the different security mechanisms for the DVB system and end-to-end satellite network are addressed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Space Internet architectures and technologies for NASA enterprisesINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING, Issue 5 2002Kul Bhasin NASA's future space communication needs and requirements will be addressed through a space communications network that mirrors the terrestrial Internet in its capabilities and flexibility. NASA's needs and requirements for future data gathering and distribution by this Space Internet have been obtained from NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE), the Human Exploration and Development in Space (HEDS), and the Space Science Enterprise (SSE). To address NASA's future needs, we propose and describe an integrated communications infrastructure based on Internet technologies, the architectures within the infrastructure, and the elements that make up the architectures. The architectures meet the requirements of the enterprises beyond 2010 with Internet compatible technologies and functionality. The elements of an architecture include the backbone, access, inter-spacecraft, and proximity communication parts. From the architectures, technologies have been identified which have the most impact and are critical for the implementation of the architectures. Published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Describing online learning content to facilitate resource discovery and sharing:the development of the RU LOM CoreJOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 3 2006G. E. Krull Abstract The development of Internet technologies has the ability to provide a new era of easily accessible and personalised learning, facilitated through the flexible deployment of small, reusable pieces of digital learning content over networks. Higher education institutions can share and reuse digital learning resources in order to improve their educational offerings. Descriptive language (known as metadata) is required to facilitate the search and retrieval of learning content. Various research offerings have been proposed to promote interoperable educational metadata. However, current metadata standards cannot accommodate the requirements of every community of users. This paper describes the development of an educational metadata application profile for describing learning resources within a South African higher education context. [source] Telerobotic systems design based on real-time CORBAJOURNAL OF FIELD ROBOTICS (FORMERLY JOURNAL OF ROBOTIC SYSTEMS), Issue 4 2005Michele Amoretti A new class of telerobotic applications is making its way into research laboratories, fine arts or science museums, and industrial installations. Virtual laboratories and remote equipment maintenance are examples of these applications, which are built exploiting distributed computing systems and Internet technologies. Distributed computing technologies provide several advantages to telerobotic applications, such as dynamic and multiuser access to remote resources and arbitrary user locations. Nonetheless, building these applications remains a substantial endeavor, especially when performance requirements must be met. The aim of this paper is to investigate how mainstream and advanced features of the CORBA object-oriented middleware can be put to work to meet the requirements of novel telerobotic applications. We show that Real-Time CORBA extensions and asynchronous method invocation of CORBA services can be relied upon to meet performance and functional requirements, thereby enabling teleoperation on local area networks. Furthermore, CORBA services for concurrency control and large-scale data distribution enable geographic-scale access for robot teleprogramming. Limitations in the currently available implementations of the CORBA standard are also discussed, along with their implications. The effectiveness and suitability for telerobotic applications of several CORBA mechanisms are tested first individually and then by means of a software framework exploiting CORBA services and ensuring component-based development, software reuse, low development cost, fully portable real-time and communication support. A comprehensive telerobotic application built based on the framework is described in the paper and evaluated on both local and wide area networks. The application includes a robot manipulator and several sensory subsystems under concurrent access by multiple competing or collaborating operators, one of which is equipped with a multimodal user interface acting as the master device. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Online robotic experiments for tele-education at the university of pisaJOURNAL OF FIELD ROBOTICS (FORMERLY JOURNAL OF ROBOTIC SYSTEMS), Issue 4 2005A. Bicchi In this paper we describe work being done at our department to make the robotics laboratory accessible to students and colleagues to execute and watch real-time experiments at any time and from anywhere. We describe a few different installations and highlight the underlying philosophy, which is aimed at enlarging the lab in all the dimensions of space, time, and available resources, through the use of Internet technologies. In particular, four experimental setups with hardware and software architecture description are presented: the dc motor, the magnetic levitator, the nonholomonic motion planner (NHMP), and the graphic environment tool. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] On the business value and technical challenges of adopting Web servicesJOURNAL OF SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE AND EVOLUTION: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE, Issue 1-2 2004S. Tilley Abstract This paper provides a balanced perspective of the business value and technical challenges of adopting Web services. Technology adoption is a continual challenge for both tool developers and enterprise users. Web services are a prime example of an emerging technology that is fraught with adoption issues. Part of the problem is separating marketing hype from business reality. Web services are network-accessible interfaces to application functionality. They are built using Internet technologies such as XML and standard protocols such as SOAP. The adoption issues related to Web services are complex and multifaceted. For example, determining whether this technology is a fundamental advance, rather than something old under a new name, requires technical depth, business acumen, and considerable historical knowledge of past developments. A sample problem from the health care industry is used to illustrate some of the adoption issues. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Informational environments: Organizational contexts of online information useJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 2 2003Roberta Lamb Before the Web, the story of online information services was largely one of over-estimates and unmet expectations. This study examines sustained use and non-use of online services within organizations in a way that overcomes limitations of the traditional approaches that repeatedly led to exuberant usage projections. By adopting an open-systems view, we see that firms in highly technical and highly institutional environments have many more incentives to gather data and go online than do firms in low-tech, unregulated industries. But firms make important choices about partnering and outsourcing that can shift informational activities across organizational boundaries. Our analysis focuses on the informational environments of firms in three industries: law, real estate and biotech/pharmaceuticals. This environmental model provides richer conceptualizations about the use of information and communication technologies, including Internet technologies, and better projections about future use. In support of our analysis, we briefly discuss insights from an ongoing intranets study informed by an informational environments perspective. [source] A review of evaluation outcomes of web-based continuing medical educationMEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 6 2005Vernon R Curran Introduction, The Internet and worldwide web have expanded opportunities for the provision of a flexible, convenient and interactive form of continuing medical education (CME). Larger numbers of doctors are accessing and using the Internet to locate and seek medical information. It has been suggested that a significant proportion of this usage is directly related to questions that arise from patient care. A variety of Internet technologies are being used to provide both asynchronous and synchronous forms of web-based CME. Various models for designing and facilitating web-based CME learning have also been reported. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and characteristics of the web-based CME evaluative outcomes reported in the peer-reviewed literature. Methods, A search of Medline was undertaken and the level of evaluative outcomes reported was categorised using Kirkpatrick's model for levels of summative evaluation. Results, The results of this analysis revealed that the majority of evaluative research on web-based CME is based on participant satisfaction data. There was limited research demonstrating performance change in clinical practices and there were no studies reported in the literature that demonstrated that web-based CME was effective in influencing patient or health outcomes. Discussion, The findings suggest an important need to examine in greater detail the nature and characteristics of those web-based learning technologies, environments and systems which are most effective in enhancing practice change and ultimately impacting patient and health outcomes. This is particularly important as the Internet grows in popularity as a medium for knowledge transfer. [source] "I asked my parents why a wall was so important": Teaching about the GDR and Post-Reunification GermanyDIE UNTERRICHTSPRAXIS/TEACHING GERMAN, Issue 2 2008Bernhard Streitwieser Fifteen years after the ,peaceful revolutions' brought about the collapse of communism and the reunification of East and West Germany, a heated debate rages over the legacy of communism and the continuing impact of 1989. This paper describes a new course that explores the contentious issues in this debate through the innovative use of the course management system Blackboard. The paper describes how using Internet technology (video and audio links to archival and documentary footage, historic recordings, web linked academic articles, newspaper reports, internet sites, on-line quizzes and virtual discussions) has brought today's undergraduates into the current debate and engaged them technologically in ways that deviate from more traditional teaching models. Such a course is not as prevalent as one would expect, least of all in undergraduate curricula in Germany and the United States. [source] The Differential Impact of the Internet on Spurring Regional EntrepreneurshipENTREPRENEURSHIP THEORY AND PRACTICE, Issue 5 2010Douglas Cumming This paper studies the effect of the introduction of government-provided Internet technology to rural communities (Internet communities) on regional entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship increases among larger Internet communities, as the Internet spurs entrepreneurial activities by enabling agglomeration across areas that have a preexisting cluster of real entrepreneurial activities. There is, however, a decrease in entrepreneurship among smaller and more geographically remote Internet communities, as the Internet facilitates the consumption of items and services not produced within such smaller communities. Overall, the key finding is that virtual entrepreneurial clusters are not independent of real entrepreneurial clusters. [source] UNEP-GEMS/Water Programme,water quality data, GEMStat and open web services,and Japanese cooperationHYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES, Issue 9 2007Sabrina Barker Abstract The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it demonstrates how monitoring stations that collect water quality data can be situated globally via satellite data from Google Earth. Important technical issues such as interoperability and Open Web Services are discussed in this context. Second, it illustrates how researchers at local levels can benefit from this global technology. The discussion draws from the online water quality database, GEMStat, which contains water quality data and sediment load calculations from around the world. These types of data, collected locally, can be shown to bear global implications through Internet technology. GEMStat has been expanded to include Open Web Services to enable interoperability with other online databases. Third, it illustrate an international framework of cooperation through GEMS/Water Japan, introducing on-site monitoring activities as well as management of international river basin (Mekong/La Plata). Considerations for future application framework are presented in conclusion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The Internet for educating individuals with social impairmentsJOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 4 2003J. Bishop Abstract Social impairments materialise in a number of forms, from developmental disabilities such as autistic spectrum disorder, to psychiatric conditions such as social phobia. The individuals diagnosed with these problems find it difficult to deal with social situations through either the inability to perform in these situations or the fear of not being able to do so. The study investigated the social and practical implications of using Mobile Internet technology to deliver information relating to a social situation in real-time to participants with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (n = 10) and General Social Phobia (n = 3) diagnosed using DSM-IV. The participants used the agent on their mobile phone to convert phrases they found offensive or confusing into more concise and understandable definitions. Analysing their attitudes revealed that the technology enables socially impaired individuals to learn the meaning of emotions and understand more about how they communicate with their peers. However, the study concludes that governmental organisations, education providers and society as a whole need to adopt a cohesive approach to communication to ensure socially impaired individuals are fully included in society [source] Consumer Perceptions of Privacy and Security Risks for Online ShoppingJOURNAL OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2001ANTHONY D. MIYAZAKI Government and industry organizations have declared information privacy and security to be major obstacles in the development of consumer-related e-commerce. Risk perceptions regarding Internet privacy and security have been identified as issues for both new and experienced users of Internet technology. This paper explores risk perceptions among consumers of varying levels of Internet experience and how these perceptions relate to online shopping activity. Findings provide evidence of hypothesized relationships among consumers' levels of Internet experience, the use of alternate remote purchasing methods (such as telephone and mail-order shopping), the perceived risks of online shopping, and online purchasing activity. Implications for online commerce and consumer welfare are discussed. [source] Understanding the Inputs into Innovation: Do Cities Substitute for Internal Firm Resources?JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS & MANAGEMENT STRATEGY, Issue 2 2008Chris Forman We examine whether there is a trade-off between employing internal (firm) resources and purchased external (local) resources in process innovation. We draw on a rich dataset of Internet investments by 86,879 US establishments to examine decisions to invest in advanced Internet technology. We show that the marginal contribution of internal resources is greater outside of a major urban area than inside one. Agglomeration is less important for firms with highly capable IT workers. When firms invest in innovative processes they act as if resources available in cities are partial substitutes for both establishment-level and firm-level internal resources. [source] Books and Bodies, Bound and UnboundORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 2 2009Thomas Pettitt A recent trend in literary history, cultural studies and folkloristics has been a ,corporeal turn', which focuses on how bodies are constructed and understood in texts and other cultural productions. A significant contribution from Guillemette Bolens identifies two distinct corporal constructions in medieval narrative: the contained body (an envelope vulnerable to penetration) and the articulated body (limbs and joints designed for motion). This perception is here extended to include narrative constructions of the environment (enclosures versus avenues and junctions). Furthermore Bolens's suggestion that articulated and contained bodies are mainly to be found, respectively, in oral tradition and textual culture, is elaborated to the thesis that the contained constructions will be particularly at home in the printed book, whose dominance is associated with cultural containment from a variety of perspectives. And a shift from predominantly articulated constructions to predominantly contained is indeed discernible in the wonder tale ,Red Riding Hood', as it modulates from oral tradition to printed fairy tale. Concluding speculations suggest that if the cultural dominance of the printed book has been a (,Gutenberg') parenthesis, the tale should now be reverting to articulated constructions as it escapes from books into the digital media and Internet technology. [source] Middleboxes: Controllable media firewallsBELL LABS TECHNICAL JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002Paul Sijben Internet technology is promised for the broadband multi-service future. However, it is unclear how this technology can bring service providers the needed revenue, since today this technology cannot provide basic quality guarantees for the services rendered. Generally, over-provisioning of the bandwidth is used to get the services to an acceptable level, but this is costly and cannot work in areas where high aggregation rates are necessary (such as the local loop). Today IP (router) technology lacks mechanisms for high-granularity access control, per-user accounting, and quality of service (QoS) policing. We believe that, for a service provider to deploy billable services, these issues need to be resolved. Only if access to the service is controlled and only when the network provides information about the usage of the network elements can next-generation services in the telecommunication industry, like voice over IP (VoIP) and multimedia conferencing, be rolled out profitably. In this paper, we present a technology that can address these needs. We employ controllable firewalls that have the ability to prevent unwanted IP traffic from entering a network. Creating pinholes that allow individual calls (voice or real-time multimedia streams) in controllable firewalls can be done very fast and efficiently. Traditional firewalls have no such provisioning. Multiple application servers should be able to request pinholes to one or more controllable firewalls. This approach, while familiar from the public switched telephone network (PSTN), is a new paradigm for IP networks. © 2002 Lucent Technologies Inc. [source] Ethical aspects of e-business: the use of codes of conductBUSINESS ETHICS: A EUROPEAN REVIEW, Issue 3 2001Mike Healy This paper examines the establishment and enforcement of codes of conduct governing the use of Internet technology as a means of providing a basis of trust in the e-business context. The discussion draws on the findings of a survey of 80 UK organisations, and considers the relationship between factors such as organisation size, type, use of IT, the length of time with an Internet connection and the use of a code of conduct, as well as the specific areas of Internet technology covered by codes of conduct. The paper also investigates the extent of disciplinary cases associated with the misuse of Internet technology, as well as the ownership and responsibility for implementing codes of conduct. The survey results suggest that the use of codes of conduct varies significantly from organisation to organisation, and that those who initiate such codes are not those seen as being responsible for implementing them. The results also indicate that a growing number of employees are disciplined for misuse of facilities offered by Internet technology. [source] |