Designing an E-Mail Prototype to Enhance Effective Communication and Task Management: A Case Study

This paper deals with communicational breakdowns and misunderstandings in computer mediated communication (CMC) and ways to recover from them or to prevent them. The paper describes a case study of CMC conducted in a company named Artigiani. We observed communication and conducted content analysis of e-mail messages, focusing on message exchanges between customer service representatives (CSRs) and their contacts. In addition to task management difficulties, we identified communication breakdowns that result from differences between perspectives, and from the lack of contextual information, mainly technical background and professional jargon at the customers’ side. We examined possible ways to enhance CMC and accordingly designed a prototype for an e-mail user interface that emphasizes a communicational strategy called contextualization as a central component for obtaining effective communication and for supporting effective management and control of organizational activities, especially handling orders, price quoting, and monitoring the supply and installation of products.

Specifics in Applying Agile Software Methodologies in Portal Solutions

Agile methodologies are becoming more popular in the software development process nowadays. The iterative development lifecycle, openness to frequent changes, tight cooperation with the client and among the software engineers are turning into more and more effective practices and respond to a higher extend to the current business needs. It is natural to raise the question which methodology is the most suitable for use when starting and managing a project. This depends on many factors—product characteristics, technologies used, client’s and developer’s experience, project type. A systematic analysis of the most common problems appearing when developing a particular type of projects—public portal solutions, is proposed. In the case at hand a very close interaction with various types of end users is observed. This is a prerequisite for permanent changes during the development and support cycles, which makes them ideal candidates for using an agile methodology. We will compare the ways in which each methodology addresses the specific problems arising and will finish with ranking them according to their relevance. This might help the project manager in choosing one or a combination of the methodologies.

Modernizing Legacy Physics Applications for Reuse in Web and SOA

This paper concerns the application of recent information technologies for creating a software system for numerical simulations in the domain of plasma physics and in particular metal vapor lasers. The presented work is connected with performing modernization of legacy physics software for reuse on the web and inside a Service-Oriented Architecture environment. Applied and described is the creation of Java front-ends of legacy C++ and FORTRAN codes. Then the transformation of some of the scientific components into web services, as well as the creation of a web interface to the legacy application, is presented. The use of the BPEL language for managing scientific workflows is also considered.

The Eccentric Connectivity Polynomial of some Graph Operations

The eccentric connectivity index of a graph G, ξ^C, was proposed by Sharma, Goswami and Madan. It is defined as ξ^C(G) = ∑ u ∈ V(G) degG(u)εG(u), where degG(u) denotes the degree of the vertex x in G and εG(u) = Max{d(u, x) | x ∈ V (G)}. The eccentric connectivity polynomial is a polynomial version of this topological index. In this paper, exact formulas for the eccentric connectivity polynomial of Cartesian product, symmetric difference, disjunction and join of graphs are presented.

The Nonexistence of [132, 6, 86]3 Codes and [135, 6, 88]3 Codes

We prove the nonexistence of [g3(6, d), 6, d]3 codes for d = 86, 87, 88, where g3(k, d) = ∑⌈d/3i⌉ and i=0 ... k−1. This determines n3(6, d) for d = 86, 87, 88, where nq(k, d) is the minimum length n for which an [n, k, d]q code exists.

Two-Language, Two-Paradigm Introductory Computing Curriculum Model and its Implementation

This paper analyzes difficulties with the introduction of object-oriented concepts in introductory computing education and then proposes a two-language, two-paradigm curriculum model that alleviates such difficulties. Our two-language, two-paradigm curriculum model begins with teaching imperative programming using Python programming language, continues with teaching object-oriented computing using Java, and concludes with teaching object-oriented data structures with Java.

On the Mathematical Modelling of Microbial Growth: Some Computational Aspects

We propose a new approach to the mathematical modelling of microbial growth. Our approach differs from familiar Monod type models by considering two phases in the physiological states of the microorganisms and makes use of basic relations from enzyme kinetics. Such an approach may be useful in the modelling and control of biotechnological processes, where microorganisms are used for various biodegradation purposes and are often put under extreme inhibitory conditions. Some computational experiments are performed in support of our modelling approach.

Processing of Byzantine Neume Notation in Ancient Historical Manuscripts

This article presents the principal results of the doctoral thesis “Recognition of neume notation in historical documents” by Lasko Laskov (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), successfully defended before the Specialized Academic Council for Informatics and Mathematical Modelling on 07 June 2010.

Note on an Improvement of the Griesmer Bound for q-ary Linear Codes

Let nq(k, d) denote the smallest value of n for which an [n, k, d]q code exists for given integers k and d with k ≥ 3, 1 ≤ d ≤ q^(k−1) and a prime or a prime power q. The purpose of this note is to show that there exists a series of the functions h3,q, h4,q, ..., hk,q such that nq(k, d) can be expressed.

Fast Information Retrieval in the Open Grid Service Architecture

This is an extended version of an article presented at the Second International Conference on Software, Services and Semantic Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria, 11–12 September 2010.

Share.TEC Portal: How the Metadata Repositories of Educational Resources Meet the Users’ Expectations

This is an extended version of an article presented at the Second International Conference on Software, Services and Semantic Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria, 11–12 September 2010.

An Electromagnetism Metaheuristic for the Uncapacitated Multiple Allocation Hub Location Problem

In this article, the results achieved by applying an electromagnetism (EM) inspired metaheuristic to the uncapacitated multiple allocation hub location problem (UMAHLP) are discussed. An appropriate objective function which natively conform with the problem, 1-swap local search and scaling technique conduce to good overall performance.Computational tests demonstrate the reliability of this method, since the EM-inspired metaheuristic reaches all optimal/best known solutions for UMAHLP, except one, in a reasonable time.

A Method for Classification of Doubly Resolvable Designs and Its Application

This article presents the principal results of the Ph.D. thesis Investigation and classification of doubly resolvable designs by Stela Zhelezova (Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, BAS), successfully defended at the Specialized Academic Council for Informatics and Mathematical Modeling on 22 February 2010.

A Super-Dimension Approach in ROLAP Environments

Often the designer of ROLAP applications follows up with the question “can I create a little joiner table with just the two dimension keys and then connect that table to the fact table?” In a classic dimensional model there are two options - (a) both dimensions are modeled independently or (b) two dimensions are combined into a super-dimension with a single key. The second approach is not widely used in ROLAP environments but it is an important sparsity handling method in MOLAP systems. In ROLAP this design technique can also bring storage and performance benefits, although the model becomes more complicated. The dependency between dimensions is a key factor that the designers have to consider when choosing between the two options. In this paper we present the results of our storage and performance experiments over a real life data cubes in reference to these design approaches. Some conclusions are drawn.

Interactive 3D Visualization of Bézier Curves using Java Open Graphics Library (JOGL)

We present a new program tool for interactive 3D visualization of some fundamental algorithms for representation and manipulation of Bézier curves. The program tool has an option for demonstration of one of their most important applications - in graphic design for creating letters by means of cubic Bézier curves. We use Java applet and JOGL as our main visualization techniques. This choice ensures the platform independency of the created applet and contributes to the realistic 3D visualization. The applet provides basic knowledge on the Bézier curves and is appropriate for illustrative and educational purposes. Experimental results are included.