Editorial : Learning, teaching and disseminating knowledge in business process management

Process-oriented thinking has become the major paradigm for managing companies and other organizations. The push for better processes has been even more intense due to rapidly evolving client needs, borderless global markets and innovations swiftly penetrating the market. Thus, education is decisive for successfully introducing and implementing Business Process Management (BPM) initiatives. However, BPM education has been an area of challenge. This special issue aims to provide current research on various aspects of BPM education. It is an initial effort for consolidating better practices, experiences and pedagogical outcomes founded with empirical evidence to contribute towards the three pillars of education: learning, teaching, and disseminating knowledge in BPM.

V1-inspired features induce a weighted margin in SVMs

Image representations derived from simplified models of the primary visual cortex (V1), such as HOG and SIFT, elicit good performance in a myriad of visual classification tasks including object recognition/detection, pedestrian detection and facial expression classification. A central question in the vision, learning and neuroscience communities regards why these architectures perform so well. In this paper, we offer a unique perspective to this question by subsuming the role of V1-inspired features directly within a linear support vector machine (SVM). We demonstrate that a specific class of such features in conjunction with a linear SVM can be reinterpreted as inducing a weighted margin on the Kronecker basis expansion of an image. This new viewpoint on the role of V1-inspired features allows us to answer fundamental questions on the uniqueness and redundancies of these features, and offer substantial improvements in terms of computational and storage efficiency.

Fourier Lucas-Kanade Algorithm

In this paper we propose a framework for both gradient descent image and object alignment in the Fourier domain. Our method centers upon the classical Lucas & Kanade (LK) algorithm where we represent the source and template/model in the complex 2D Fourier domain rather than in the spatial 2D domain. We refer to our approach as the Fourier LK (FLK) algorithm. The FLK formulation is advantageous when one pre-processes the source image and template/model with a bank of filters (e.g. oriented edges, Gabor, etc.) as: (i) it can handle substantial illumination variations, (ii) the inefficient pre-processing filter bank step can be subsumed within the FLK algorithm as a sparse diagonal weighting matrix, (iii) unlike traditional LK the computational cost is invariant to the number of filters and as a result far more efficient, and (iv) this approach can be extended to the inverse compositional form of the LK algorithm where nearly all steps (including Fourier transform and filter bank pre-processing) can be pre-computed leading to an extremely efficient and robust approach to gradient descent image matching. Further, these computational savings translate to non-rigid object alignment tasks that are considered extensions of the LK algorithm such as those found in Active Appearance Models (AAMs).

Sustainable, safe, smart—three key elements of Singapore’s evolving transport policies

Sustainability, safety and smartness are three key elements of a modern transportation system. This study illustrates various policy directions and initiatives of Singapore to address how its transportation system is progressing in light of these three components. Sustainability targets economical efficiency, environmental justice and social equity by including policies for integrating land use and transport planning, ensuring adequate transport supply measures, managing travel demand efficiently, and incorporating environment-friendly strategies. Safety initiatives of its transportation system aim to minimize injuries and incidents of all users including motorists, public transport commuters, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Smartness incorporates qualities like real time sensing, fast processing and decision making, and automated action-taking into its control, monitoring, information management and revenue collection systems. Various policy implications and technology applications along these three directions reveal that smart technologies facilitate implementation of policies promoting sustainability and safety. The Singapore experience could serve as a good reference for other cities in promoting a transportation system that is sustainable, safe and smart.

Performance configurations over time: implications for growth-and profit-oriented strategies

Entrepreneurship research and practice places emphasis on company growth as a measure of entrepreneurial success. In many cases, there has been a tendency to give growth a very central role, with some researchers even seeing growth as the very essence of entrepreneurship (Cole, 1949; Sexton, 1997; Stevenson & Gumpert, 1991). A large number of empirical studies of the performance of young and/or small firms use growth as the dependent variable (see reviews by Ardishvili, Cardozo, Harmon, & Vadakath, 1998; Delmar, 1997; Wiklund, 1998). By contrast, the two most prominent views of strategic management – strategic positioning (Porter, 1980) and the resource-based view (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984) – are both concerned with achieving competitive advantage and regard achieving economic rents and profitability relative to other competitors as the central measures of firm performance. Strategic entrepreneurship integrates these two perspectives and is simultaneously concerned with opportunity seeking and advantage seeking (Hitt, Ireland, Camp, & Sexton, 2002; Ireland, Hitt, & Sirmon, 2003). Consequently, both company growth and relative profitability are together relevant measures of firm performance in the domain of strategic entrepreneurship.

Oriented graphitic carbon films for hydrogen gas sensors

An oriented graphitic nanostructured carbon film has been employed as a conductometric hydrogen gas sensor. The carbon film was energetically deposited using a filtered cathodic vacuum arc with a -75 V bias applied to a stainless steel grid placed 1cm from the surface of the Si substrate. The substrate was heated to 400°C prior to deposition. Electron microscopy showed evidence that the film consisted largely of vertically oriented graphitic sheets and had a density of 2.06 g/cm3. 76% of the atoms were bonded in sp2 or graphitic configurations. A change in the device resistance of >; 1.5% was exhibited upon exposure to 1 % hydrogen gas (in synthetic, zero humidity air) at 100°C. The time for the sensor resistance to increase by 1.5 % under these conditions was approximately 60 s and the baseline (zero hydrogen exposure) resistance remained constant to within 0.01% during and after the hydrogen exposures.

The evolving emotional experience with portable interactive devices

Emotions play a significant role in people’s lives, including interactions with portable devices. The research aimed to understand the evolving emotional experience between people and portable interactive devices (PIDs). Activity Theory was the theoretical framework used to contextualise the research approach and findings. Two longitudinal experiments were conducted investigating emotional experiences with PIDs over six months. Experiment 1 focused on media / entertainment PIDs while Experiment 2 focused on medical / health PIDs. Mixed research methods consisting of diaries, interviews and codiscovery sessions were used to collect data. Results identified that more social interactions were experienced with media PIDs than medical PIDs. Different Task Categories, and their emotional responses, were also revealed including Features, Functional, Mediation and Auxiliary Categories. Functional and Mediation categories were characterised as overall positive while Features and Auxiliary Categories were characterised as overall negative. Further, the consequences of Negative Personal and Social interactions on the overall emotional experience were determined. For media PIDs, Negative Social experiences adversely impacted the evolving emotional experience. For medical PIDs, both Negative Social and Negative Personal experiences adversely impacted the evolving emotional experience. As a result of the findings the Designing for Evolving Emotional Experience framework was developed, outlining principles to promote positive, and avoid negative, emotional experiences with PIDs. Contributions to knowledge from the research include methodological contributions, advancing understanding of emotional experiences with PIDs, expanding the taxonomy of emotional interactions with PIDs and broadening emotion design theory and principles. The thesis concludes with an outline of implications to design research, design and related fields, future research potentials, as well as the positive contributions to designing for meaningful and enjoyable experiences in everyday life.

Automatic object segmentation of unstructured scenes using colour and depth maps

This study presents a segmentation pipeline that fuses colour and depth information to automatically separate objects of interest in video sequences captured from a quadcopter. Many approaches assume that cameras are static with known position, a condition which cannot be preserved in most outdoor robotic applications. In this study, the authors compute depth information and camera positions from a monocular video sequence using structure from motion and use this information as an additional cue to colour for accurate segmentation. The authors model the problem similarly to standard segmentation routines as a Markov random field and perform the segmentation using graph cuts optimisation. Manual intervention is minimised and is only required to determine pixel seeds in the first frame which are then automatically reprojected into the remaining frames of the sequence. The authors also describe an automated method to adjust the relative weights for colour and depth according to their discriminative properties in each frame. Experimental results are presented for two video sequences captured using a quadcopter. The quality of the segmentation is compared to a ground truth and other state-of-the-art methods with consistently accurate results.

GrabCutSFM : how 3D information improves unsupervised object segmentation

In this paper, we present an unsupervised graph cut based object segmentation method using 3D information provided by Structure from Motion (SFM), called Grab- CutSFM. Rather than focusing on the segmentation problem using a trained model or human intervention, our approach aims to achieve meaningful segmentation autonomously with direct application to vision based robotics. Generally, object (foreground) and background have certain discriminative geometric information in 3D space. By exploring the 3D information from multiple views, our proposed method can segment potential objects correctly and automatically compared to conventional unsupervised segmentation using only 2D visual cues. Experiments with real video data collected from indoor and outdoor environments verify the proposed approach.

The ability of YSR DSM-oriented depression scales to predict DSM-IV depression in young adults : a longitudinal study

Background The Achenbach child behaviour checklist (CBCL/YSR) is a widely used screening tool for affective problems. Several studies report good association between the checklists and psychiatric diagnoses; although with varying degrees of agreement. Most are cross-sectional studies involving adolescents referred to mental health services. This paper aims to evaluate the performance of the youth self report (YSR) empirical and DSM-oriented internalising scales in predicting later depressive disorders in young adults. Methods Sample was 2431 young adults from an Australian birth cohort study. The strength of association between the empirical and DSM-oriented scales assessed at 14 and 21 years and structured-interview derived depression in young adulthood (18 to 22 years) were tested using odds ratios, ROC analyses and related diagnostic efficiency tests (sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values). Results Adolescents with internalising symptoms were twice (OR 2.3, 95%CI 1.7 to 3.1) as likely to be diagnosed with DSM-IV depression by age 21. Use of DSM-oriented depressive scales did not improve the concordance between the internalising behaviour and DSM-IV diagnosed depression at age 14 (ORs ranged from 1.9 to 2.5). Limitations Some loss to follow-up over the 7-year gap between the two waves of follow-up. Conclusion DSM-oriented scales perform no better than the standard internalising or anxious/depressed scales in identifying young adults with later DSM-IV depressive disorder.

Predicting depressive and anxiety disorders with the YASR internalising scales (empirical and DSM-oriented)

Background The Achenbach problem behaviour scales (CBCL/YSR) are widely used. The DSM-oriented anxiety and depression scales have been created to improve concordance between Achenbach’s internalising scales and DSM-IV depression and anxiety. To date no study has examined the concurrent utility of the young adult (YASR) internalising scales, either the empirical or newly developed DSM-oriented depressive or anxiety scales. Methods A sample of 2,551 young adults, aged 18–23 years, from an Australian cohort study. The association between the empirical and DSM-oriented anxiety and depression scales were individually assessed against DSMIV depression and anxiety diagnoses derived from structured interview. Odds ratios, ROC analyses and diagnostic efficiency tests (sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values) were used to report findings. Results YASR empirical internalising scale predicted DSM-IV mood disorders (depression OR = 6.9, 95% CI 5.0–9.5; anxiety OR = 5.1, 95% CI 3.8–6.7) in the previous 12 months. DSM-oriented depressive or anxiety scales did not appear to improve the concordance with DSM-IV diagnosed depression or anxiety. The internalising scales were much more effective at identifying those with comorbid depression and anxiety, with Ors between 10.1 and 21.7 depending on the internalising scale used. Conclusion DSM-oriented scales perform no better than the standard internalising in identifying young adults with DSM-IV mood or anxiety disorder.

Designing an innovative approach to engage students in learning science : the evolving case of hybridized writing

Innovations are usually attributed to ideas generated in the minds of individuals. As we reflect upon the evolving design of an online project to engage students in learning science through hybridized writing activities we propose a more distributed view of the process of innovative design. That is, our experience suggests ideas are generated in the activity of interacting with human and material resources that expand and constrain possibilities. This project is innovative in that it is a new educational response to the problem of disengagement of students in science, and has proven to be effective in changing classroom practice and improving students’ scientific literacy. In this chapter, we identify the antecedents and trace the evolution of the project. This account illuminates the innovative design process, presents a summary of the evidence for the effectiveness of the project, and identifies future directions for further development and research. Keywords: Science learning, hybridized writing, case study, innovative approach

Auditor obligations in an evolving legal landscape

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at auditor obligations to their clients and potentially to third parties such as investors, with a focus on the quality of financial disclosure in an evolving legal framework. Design/methodology/approach – The article outlines and compares established and emerging trends relative to information disclosure and contractual performance in parallel contexts where information asymmetry exists. In particular, this article considers the disclosure regime that has evolved in the insurance industry to address the substantial imbalance in the level of knowledge possessed by the insured in comparison to the prospective insurer. Abductive reasoning is used to identify causal constructs that explain the data pattern from which the theorised potential for judicial revision of the interpretation of “true and fair” in line with “good faith” in legal regulation is derived. Findings – The authors conclude that there is little doubt that a duty of good faith in relation to auditor-company contractual dealings and potentially a broader good faith duty to third parties such as investors in companies may be on the horizon. Originality/value – In the context of stated objectives by organisations such as the International Federation of Accountants to reconcile ethical and technical skills in the wake of the global financial crisis, there is an increased need to rebuild public and investor confidence in the underpinning integrity of financial reporting. This paper offers a perspective on one way to achieve this by recognising the similarities in the information asymmetry relationships in the insurance industry and how the notion of “good faith” in that relationship could be useful in the audit situation.

A concept-based retrieval method for entity-oriented search

Entity-oriented retrieval aims to return a list of relevant entities rather than documents to provide exact answers for user queries. The nature of entity-oriented retrieval requires identifying the semantic intent of user queries, i.e., understanding the semantic role of query terms and determining the semantic categories which indicate the class of target entities. Existing methods are not able to exploit the semantic intent by capturing the semantic relationship between terms in a query and in a document that contains entity related information. To improve the understanding of the semantic intent of user queries, we propose concept-based retrieval method that not only automatically identifies the semantic intent of user queries, i.e., Intent Type and Intent Modifier but introduces concepts represented by Wikipedia articles to user queries. We evaluate our proposed method on entity profile documents annotated by concepts from Wikipedia category and list structure. Empirical analysis reveals that the proposed method outperforms several state-of-the-art approaches.

Privacy oriented access control for electronic health records

Information privacy is a critical success/failure factor in information technology supported healthcare (eHealth). eHealth systems utilise electronic health records (EHR) as the main source of information, thus, implementing appropriate privacy preserving methods for EHRs is vital for the proliferation of eHealth. Whilst information privacy may be a fundamental requirement for eHealth consumers, healthcare professionals demand non-restricted access to patient information for improved healthcare delivery, thus, creating an environment where stakeholder requirements are contradictory. Therefore, there is a need to achieve an appropriate balance of requirements in order to build successful eHealth systems. Towards achieving this balance, a new genre of eHealth systems called Accountable-eHealth (AeH) systems has been proposed. In this paper, an access control model for EHRs is presented that can be utilised by AeH systems to create information usage policies that fulfil both stakeholders’ requirements. These policies are used to accomplish the aforementioned balance of requirements creating a satisfactory eHealth environment for all stakeholders. The access control model is validated using a Web based prototype as a proof of concept.