Media-independent knowledge representation via UMART : unified mental annotation and retrieval tool

Multimedia information is now routinely available in the forms of text, pictures, animation and sound. Although text objects are relatively easy to deal with (in terms of information search and retrieval), other information bearing objects (such as sound, images, animation) are more difficult to index. Our research is aimed at developing better ways of representing multimedia objects by using a conceptual representation based on Schank's conceptual dependencies. Moreover, the representation allows for users' individual interpretations to be embedded in the system. This will alleviate the problems associated with traditional semantic networks by allowing for coexistence of multiple views of the same information. The viability of the approach is tested, and the preliminary results reported.

Computer-aided design decision support: interfacing knowledge and information

Computer-aided design decision support has proved to be an elusive and intangible project for many researchers as they seek to encapsulate information and knowledge-based systems as useful multifunctional data structures. Definitions of ‘knowledge', ‘information', ‘facts', and ‘data' become semantic footballs in the struggle to identify what designers actually do, and what level of support would suit them best, and how that support might be offered. The Construction Primer is a database-drivable interactive multimedia environment that provides readily updated access to many levels of information aimed to suit students and practitioners alike. This is hardly a novelty in itself. The innovative interface and metadata structures, however, combine with the willingness of national building control legislators, standards authorities, materials producers, building research organisations, and specification services to make the Construction Primer a versatile design decision support vehicle. It is both compatible with most working methodologies while remaining reasonably future-proof. This paper describes the structure of the project and highlights the importance of sound planning and strict adhesion to library-standard metadata protocols as a means to avoid the support becoming too specific or too paradigmatic.

Information theory based detection against network behavior mimicking DDoS attacks

DDoS is a spy-on-spy game between attackers and detectors. Attackers are mimicking network traffic patterns to disable the detection algorithms which are based on these features. It is an open problem of discriminating the mimicking DDoS attacks from massive legitimate network accessing. We observed that the zombies use controlled function(s) to pump attack packages to the victim, therefore, the attack flows to the victim are always share some properties, e.g. packages distribution behaviors, which are not possessed by legitimate flows in a short time period. Based on this observation, once there appear suspicious flows to a server, we start to calculate the distance of the package distribution behavior among the suspicious flows. If the distance is less than a given threshold, then it is a DDoS attack, otherwise, it is a legitimate accessing. Our analysis and the preliminary experiments indicate that the proposed method- can discriminate mimicking flooding attacks from legitimate accessing efficiently and effectively.

African culturally and linguistically diverse communities’ blood donation intentions in Australia: integrating knowledge into the theory of planned behavior

Background 

Hierarchical representation for spatial knowledge

One of the fundamental issues in building autonomous agents is to be able to sense, represent and react to the world. Some of the earlier work [Mor83, Elf90, AyF89] has aimed towards a reconstructionist approach, where a number of sensors are used to obtain input that is used to construct a model of the world that mirrors the real world. Sensing and sensor fusion was thus an important aspect of such work. Such approaches have had limited success, and some of the main problems were the issues of uncertainty arising from sensor error and errors that accumulated in metric, quantitative models. Recent research has therefore looked at different ways of examining the problems. Instead of attempting to get the most accurate and correct model of the world, these approaches look at qualitative models to represent the world, which maintain relative and significant aspects of the environment rather than all aspects of the world. The relevant aspects of the world that are retained are determined by the task at hand which in turn determines how to sense. That is, task directed or purposive sensing is used to build a qualitative model of the world, which though inaccurate and incomplete is sufficient to solve the problem at hand. This paper examines the issues of building up a hierarchical knowledge representation of the environment with limited sensor input that can be actively acquired by an agent capable of interacting with the environment. Different tasks require different aspects of the environment to be abstracted out. For example, low level tasks such as navigation require aspects of the environment that are related to layout and obstacle placement. For the agent to be able to reposition itself in an environment, significant features of spatial situations and their relative placement need to be kept. For the agent to reason about objects in space, for example to determine the position of one object relative to another, the representation needs to retain information on relative locations of start and finish of the objects, that is endpoints of objects on a grid. For the agent to be able to do high level planning, the agent may need only the relative position of the starting point and destination, and not the low level details of endpoints, visual clues and so on. This indicates that a hierarchical approach would be suitable, such that each level in the hierarchy is at a different level of abstraction, and thus suitable for a different task. At the lowest level, the representation contains low level details of agent's motion and visual clues to allow the agent to navigate and reposition itself. At the next level of abstraction the aspects of the representation allow the agent to perform spatial reasoning, and finally the highest level of abstraction in the representation can be used by the agent for high level planning.

Media-independent information representation and retrieval

In this paper we propose a media-independent knowledge indexing and retrieval system as a basis for an information retrieval system. The representation allows for sharing of low level information bearing objects and at the same time allows for maintaining of user-dependent views. The tools for maintenance and manipulation of concepts focus on the user and user's intentions. The aim of the system is to provide a set of flexible tools and let the user structure the knowledge in his or her own way, instead of attempting to build an all-encompassing common sense, or general knowledge representation.

Recognizing appropriate representation of Indigenous knowledge in professional design practice

This paper focuses on the need for designers to follow clear, concise, workable practises to engage appropriately and ethically with indigenous knowledge on projects involving the graphical depiction of indigenous culture. Incorporating indigenous symbols into visual communication design strategies impacts a wide range of stakeholders and therefore requires a sensitive approach with broad consultation in regard to permissions and intellectual property rights; issues can be worked through if respectful practice methods are applied. This paper acknowledges cultural appropriation is not new and that creative, cross cultural interpretation and expressions of hybridity should be encouraged. However respectful communication, consultation, and collaboration are required whenever commercial application of indigenous culture is attempted. To demonstrate the need for clarity, three case study examples will be presented, each with design solutions involving the use of graphical depictions of indigenous culture and each selected due to the varying degrees of stakeholder engagement undertaken in the design process. The introduction of the ladder of stakeholder engagement theory is a new concept introduced in this paper that can be employed to better consider the appropriate and ethical engagement of designers with indigenous knowledge.

Knowledge transfer in enterprise information technology support using web-based self-service systems

This paper explores Critical Success Factors (CSFs) in the transfer
of after-sales support-oriented knowledge from Information Technology (IT)
support organisations to enterprise customers, using Web-based self-service Systems (WSS). As it appears that best-in-class companies are ahead of the academic work in this area, we approached the topic through an exploratory CSF study of a best-in-class multinational IT services firm and identified 26 CSFs. Key findings from the study indicate that best-in-class IT service organisations may be cognisant of a range of factors relating to supporting customers, but are less aware of what is needed to support their own frontline support agents. Such organisations also lack an understanding of what is needed to provide enterprise support in the later stages of knowledge transfer, where enterprise customers can experience problems attempting to integrate resolutions. The study further showed that many aspects that might be characterised as encompassing socio-technical issues relating to the provision of web-based self-service are still poorly understood.

Information communication technologies (ICTs) an knowledge sharing : the case of professional accountants in Malaysia

Based on the knowledge sharing model by Nonaka (1994), this study examines the relative efficacy of various Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) applications in facilitating sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge among professional accountants in Malaysia. The results of this study indicate that ICTs, generally, facilitate all modes of knowledge sharing. Best-Practice Repositories are effective for sharing of both explicit and tacit knowledge, while internet/e-mail facilities are effective for tacit knowledge sharing. Data warehousing /mining, on the other hand, is effective in facilitating self learning through tacit-to-tacit mode and explicit-to-explicit mode. ICT facilities used mainly for office administration are ineffective for knowledge sharing purpose. The implications of the findings are
discussed.

Video indexing by spatial representation

Recent approaches to video indexing and retrieval are either pixel-oriented or object-oriented. While the former approaches focus on motion and changes thereto, the latter focus on spatial relations among objects in the scene. In this paper, a spatial knowledge representation technique combining both approaches is proposed. This representation supplements the spatial knowledge of visual objects with information about their pixel positions in the video frame. It provides a practical way to construct video indices, enabling searching for and retrieval of video sequences that contain motion as well as sparsely disjoint objects