Contexts-management strategy in considering the security in urban computing based on urban design

Urban Computing (UrC) provides users with the situation-proper information by considering context of users, devices, and social and physical environment in urban life. With social network services, UrC makes it possible for people with common interests to organize a virtual-society through exchange of context information among them. In these cases, people and personal devices are vulnerable to fake and misleading context information which is transferred from unauthorized and unauthenticated servers by attackers. So called smart devices which run automatically on some context events are more vulnerable if they are not prepared for attacks. In this paper, we illustrate some UrC service scenarios, and show important context information, possible threats, protection method, and secure context management for people.

Planning and implementing a new assessment strategy using an e-learning platform

One of the most difficult issues of e-Learning is the students’ assessment. Being this an outstanding task regarding theoretical topics, it becomes even more challenging when the topics under evaluation are practical. ISCAP’s Information Systems Department is composed of about twenty teachers who have been for several years using an e-learning environment (at the moment Moodle 2.3) combined with traditional assessment. They are now planning and implementing a new e-learning assessment strategy. This effort was undertaken in order to evaluate a practical topic (the use of spreadsheets to solve management problems) common to shared courses of several undergraduate degree programs. The same team group is already experienced in the assessment of theoretical information systems topics using the b-learning platform. Therefore, this project works as an extension to previous experiences being the team aware of the additional difficulties due to the practical nature of the topics. This paper describes this project and presents two cycles of the action research methodology, used to conduct the research. The first cycle goal was to produce a database of questions. When it was implemented in order to be used with a pilot group of students, several problems were identified. Subsequently, the second cycle consisted in solving the identified problems preparing the database and all the players to a broader scope implementation. For each cycle, all the phases, its drawbacks and achievements are described. This paper suits all those who are or are planning to be in the process of shifting their assessment strategy from a traditional to one supported by an e-learning platform.

Is mental practice an effective adjunct therapeutic strategy for upper limb motor restoration after stroke? A systematic review and meta- analysis

Stroke is one of the most common conditions requiring rehabilitation, and its motor impairments are a major cause of permanent disability. Hemiparesis is observed by 80% of the patients after acute stroke. Neuroimaging studies showed that real and imagined movements have similarities regarding brain activation, supplying evidence that those similarities are based on the same process. Within this context, the combination of mental practice (MP) with physical and occupational therapy appears to be a natural complement based on neurorehabilitation concepts. Our study seeks to investigate if MP for stroke rehabilitation of upper limbs is an effective adjunct therapy. PubMed (Medline), ISI knowledge (Institute for Scientific Information) and SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library) were terminated on 20 February 2015. Data were collected on variables as follows: sample size, type of supervision, configuration of mental practice, setting the physical practice (intensity, number of sets and repetitions, duration of contractions, rest interval between sets, weekly and total duration), measures of sensorimotor deficits used in the main studies and significant results. Random effects models were used that take into account the variance within and between studies. Seven articles were selected. As there was no statistically significant difference between the two groups (MP vs control), showed a - 0.6 (95% CI: -1.27 to 0.04), for upper limb motor restoration after stroke. The present meta-analysis concluded that MP is not effective as adjunct therapeutic strategy for upper limb motor restoration after stroke.

Comparing the performance of geostatistical models with additional information from covariates for sewage plume characterization

In this work, kriging with covariates is used to model and map the spatial distribution of salinity measurements gathered by an autonomous underwater vehicle in a sea outfall monitoring campaign aiming to distinguish the effluent plume from the receiving waters and characterize its spatial variability in the vicinity of the discharge. Four different geostatistical linear models for salinity were assumed, where the distance to diffuser, the west-east positioning, and the south-north positioning were used as covariates. Sample variograms were fitted by the Mat`ern models using weighted least squares and maximum likelihood estimation methods as a way to detect eventual discrepancies. Typically, the maximum likelihood method estimated very low ranges which have limited the kriging process. So, at least for these data sets, weighted least squares showed to be the most appropriate estimation method for variogram fitting. The kriged maps show clearly the spatial variation of salinity, and it is possible to identify the effluent plume in the area studied. The results obtained show some guidelines for sewage monitoring if a geostatistical analysis of the data is in mind. It is important to treat properly the existence of anomalous values and to adopt a sampling strategy that includes transects parallel and perpendicular to the effluent dispersion.

Crowdsourcing innovation: a strategy to leverage enterprise innovation

Innovation is recognized by academics and practitioners as an essential competitive enabler for any company to survive, to remain competitive and to grow. Investments in tasks of R&D have not always brought the expected results. But that doesn't mean that the outcomes would not be useful to other companies of the same business area or even from another area. Thus, there is much knowledge already available in the market that can be helpful to some and profitable to others. So, the ideas and expertise can be found outside a company's boundaries and also exported from within. Information, knowledge, experience, wisdom is already available in the millions of the human beings of this planet, the challenge is to use them through a network to produce new ideas and tips that can be useful to a company with less costs. This was the reason for the emergence of the area of crowdsourcing innovation. Crowdsourcing innovation is a way of using the Web 2.0 tools to generate new ideas through the heterogeneous knowledge available in the global network of individuals highly qualified and with easy access to information and technology. So, a crowdsourcing innovation broker is an organization that mediates the communication and relationship between the seekers - companies that aspire to solve some problem or to take advantage of any business opportunity - with a crowd that is prone to give ideas based on their knowledge, experience and wisdom. This paper makes a literature review on models of open innovation, crowdsourcing innovation, and technology and knowledge intermediaries, and discusses this new phenomenon as a way to leverage the innovation capacity of enterprises. Finally, the paper outlines a research design agendafor explaining crowdsourcing innovation brokering phenomenon, exploiting its players, main functions, value creation process, and knowledge creation in order to define a knowledge metamodel of such intermediaries.