Towards a life-event oriented G2C e-service provision: the NoBLE Framework

One of the primary features of modern government-to-citizen (G2C) service provision is the ability to offer a citizen-centric view of the e-government portal. Life-event approach is one of the most widely adopted paradigms supporting the idea of solving a complex event in a citizen’s life through a single service provision. Several studies have used this approach to design e-government portals. However, they were limited in terms of use and scalability. There were no mechanisms that show how to specify a life-event for structuring public e-services, or how to systematically match life-events with these services taking into consideration the citizen needs. We introduce the NOrm-Based Life-Event (NoBLE) framework for G2C e-service provision with a set of mechanisms as a guide for designing active life-event oriented e-government portals.

Towards a semiotic approach to practice-oriented knowledge transfer

With the rapid growth of information and technology, knowledge is a valuable asset in organisation which has become significant as a strategic resource. Many studies have focused on managing knowledge in organisations. In particular, knowledge transfer has become a significant issue concerned with the movement of knowledge across organisational boundaries. It enables the exploitation and application of existing knowledge for other organisations, reducing the time of creating knowledge, and minimising the cost of organisational learning. One way to capture knowledge in a transferrable form is through practice. In this paper, we discuss how organisations can transfer knowledge through practice effectively and propose a model for a semiotic approach to practice-oriented knowledge transfer. In this model, practice is treated as a sign that represents knowledge, and its localisation is analysed as a semiotic process.

Emotion and anticipation in an enactive framework for cognition (response to Andy Clark)

Undeniably, anticipation plays a crucial role in cognition. By what means, to what extent, and what it achieves remain open questions. In a recent BBS target article, Clark (in press) depicts an integrative model of the brain that builds on hierarchical Bayesian models of neural processing (Rao and Ballard, 1999; Friston, 2005; Brown et al., 2011), and their most recent formulation using the free-energy principle borrowed from thermodynamics (Feldman and Friston, 2010; Friston, 2010; Friston et al., 2010). Hierarchical generative models of cognition, such as those described by Clark, presuppose the manipulation of representations and internal models of the world, in as much detail as is perceptually available. Perhaps surprisingly, Clark acknowledges the existence of a “virtual version of the sensory data” (p. 4), but with no reference to some of the historical debates that shaped cognitive science, related to the storage, manipulation, and retrieval of representations in a cognitive system (Shanahan, 1997), or accounting for the emergence of intentionality within such a system (Searle, 1980; Preston and Bishop, 2002). Instead of demonstrating how this Bayesian framework responds to these foundational questions, Clark describes the structure and the functional properties of an action-oriented, multi-level system that is meant to combine perception, learning, and experience (Niedenthal, 2007).

The "Fair trade nation": market-oriented development in devolved European regions

Scholars have largely ignored the roles played by government and public sector institutions in the fair trade movement. This article addresses the knowledge gap through examining government involvement in fair trade networks in the context of European devolution and the localization of international development action. Proposing a relational view of fair trade networks, and considering the Fair Trade Nation as a social category for development, it highlights how power sources outside the centralized nation-state permit a political community to associate itself with fair trade. Research from Wales demonstrates that government acts in a leadership role rather than as regulator, conferring political voice and finance while enhancing its international credentials and contributing to the politics of nation-building. Our conclusion is cautious; campaigners celebrate political commitment to fair trade embodied within the category of the Fair Trade Nation, but evidence suggests that government reliance on the market as a vehicle for decentralized development action is limited by how the Fair Trade Nation is currently executed.

Excise taxes and commodity promotion bayesian retrieval of the optimum

This article shows how the solution to the promotion problem—the problem of locating the optimal level of advertising in a downstream market—can be derived simply, empirically, and robustly through the application of some simple calculus and Bayesian econometrics. We derive the complete distribution of the level of promotion that maximizes producer surplus and generate recommendations about patterns as well as levels of expenditure that increase net returns. The theory and methods are applied to quarterly series (1978:2S1988:4) on red meats promotion by the Australian Meat and Live-Stock Corporation. A slightly different pattern of expenditure would have profited lamb producers

Auditory distraction eliminates retrieval induced forgetting: implications for the processing of unattended sound

The Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) paradigm includes three phases: (a) study/encoding of category exemplars, (b) practicing retrieval of a sub-set of those category exemplars, and (c) recall of all exemplars. At the final recall phase, recall of items that belong to the same categories as those items that undergo retrieval-practice, but that do not undergo retrieval-practice, is impaired. The received view is that this is because retrieval of target category-exemplars (e.g., ‘Tiger’ in the category Four-legged animal) requires inhibition of non-target category-exemplars (e.g., ‘Dog’ and ‘Lion’) that compete for retrieval. Here, we used the RIF paradigm to investigate whether ignoring auditory items during the retrieval-practice phase modulates the inhibitory process. In two experiments, RIF was present when retrieval-practice was conducted in quiet and when conducted in the presence of spoken words that belonged to a category other than that of the items that were targets for retrieval-practice. In contrast, RIF was abolished when words that either were identical to the retrieval-practice words or were only semantically related to the retrieval-practice words were presented as background speech. The results suggest that the act of ignoring speech can reduce inhibition of the non-practiced category-exemplars, thereby eliminating RIF, but only when the spoken words are competitors for retrieval (i.e., belong to the same semantic category as the to-be-retrieved items).

The design of a semantics-oriented organisational performance measurement system

Current methods and techniques used in designing organisational performance measurement systems do not consider the multiple aspects of business processes or the semantics of data generated during the lifecycle of a product. In this paper, we propose an organisational performance measurement systems design model that is based on the semantics of an organisation, business process and products lifecycle. Organisational performance measurement is examined from academic and practice disciplines. The multi-discipline approach is used as a research tool to explore the weaknesses of current models that are used to design organisational performance measurement systems. This helped in identifying the gaps in research and practice concerning the issues and challenges in designing information systems for measuring the performance of an organisation. The knowledge sources investigated include on-going and completed research project reports; scientific and management literature; and practitioners’ magazines.

Semiotic approach to a practice-oriented knowledge transfer

Knowledge is a valuable asset in organisations that has become significant as a strategic resource in the information age. Many studies have focused on managing knowledge in organisations. In particular, knowledge transfer has become a significant issue concerned with the movement of knowledge across organisational boundaries. One way to capture knowledge in a transferrable form is through practice. In this paper, we discuss how organisations can transfer knowledge through practice effectively and propose a model for a semiotic approach to practice-oriented knowledge transfer. In this model, practice is treated as a sign that represents knowledge, and its localisation is analysed as a semiotic process.

A strategy for process-oriented validation of coupled chemistry–climate models

Evaluating CCMs with the presented framework will increase our confidence in predictions of stratospheric ozone change.

Entity-based semantic search on conversational transcripts semantic

This paper describes the implementation of a semantic web search engine on conversation styled transcripts. Our choice of data is Hansard, a publicly available conversation style transcript of parliamentary debates. The current search engine implementation on Hansard is limited to running search queries based on keywords or phrases hence lacks the ability to make semantic inferences from user queries. By making use of knowledge such as the relationship between members of parliament, constituencies, terms of office, as well as topics of debates the search results can be improved in terms of both relevance and coverage. Our contribution is not algorithmic instead we describe how we exploit a collection of external data sources, ontologies, semantic web vocabularies and named entity extraction in the analysis of underlying semantics of user queries as well as the semantic enrichment of the search index thereby improving the quality of results.

Artefact-oriented business process modelling: an ontological dependency approach

Business process modelling can help an organisation better understand and improve its business processes. Most business process modelling methods adopt a task- or activity-based approach to identifying business processes. Within our work, we use activity theory to categorise elements within organisations as being either human beings, activities or artefacts. Due to the direct relationship between these three elements, an artefact-oriented approach to organisation analysis emerges. Organisational semiotics highlights the ontological dependency between affordances within an organisation. We analyse the ontological dependency between organisational elements, and therefore produce the ontology chart for artefact-oriented business process modelling in order to clarify the relationship between the elements of an organisation. Furthermore, we adopt the techniques from semantic analysis and norm analysis, of organisational semiotics, to develop the artefact-oriented method for business process modelling. The proposed method provides a novel perspective for identifying and analysing business processes, as well as agents and artefacts, as the artefact-oriented perspective demonstrates the fundamental flow of an organisation. The modelling results enable an organisation to understand and model its processes from an artefact perspective, viewing an organisation as a network of artefacts. The information and practice captured and stored in artefact can also be shared and reused between organisations that produce similar artefacts.

Retrieval of phytoplankton size from bio-optical measurements: theory and applications

The absorption coefficient of a substance distributed as discrete particles in suspension is less than that of the same material dissolved uniformly in a medium—a phenomenon commonly referred to as the flattening effect. The decrease in the absorption coefficient owing to flattening effect depends on the concentration of the absorbing pigment inside the particle, the specific absorption coefficient of the pigment within the particle, and on the diameter of the particle, if the particles are assumed to be spherical. For phytoplankton cells in the ocean, with diameters ranging from less than 1 µm to more than 100 µm, the flattening effect is variable, and sometimes pronounced, as has been well documented in the literature. Here, we demonstrate how the in vivo absorption coefficient of phytoplankton cells per unit concentration of its major pigment, chlorophyll a, can be used to determine the average cell size of the phytoplankton population. Sensitivity analyses are carried out to evaluate the errors in the estimated diameter owing to potential errors in the model assumptions. Cell sizes computed for field samples using the model are compared qualitatively with indirect estimates of size classes derived from high performance liquid chromatography data. Also, the results are compared quantitatively against measurements of cell size in laboratory cultures. The method developed is easy-to-apply as an operational tool for in situ observations, and has the potential for application to remote sensing of ocean colour data.

Retrieval characteristics of non-linear sea surface temperature from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer

Criteria are proposed for evaluating sea surface temperature (SST) retrieved from satellite infra-red imagery: bias should be small on regional scales; sensitivity to atmospheric humidity should be small; and sensitivity of retrieved SST to surface temperature should be close to 1 K K−1. Their application is illustrated for non-linear sea surface temperature (NLSST) estimates. 233929 observations from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) on Metop-A are matched with in situ data and numerical weather prediction (NWP) fields. NLSST coefficients derived from these matches have regional biases from −0.5 to +0.3 K. Using radiative transfer modelling we find that a 10% increase in humidity alone can change the retrieved NLSST by between −0.5 K and +0.1 K. A 1 K increase in SST changes NLSST by <0.5 K in extreme cases. The validity of estimates of sensitivity by radiative transfer modelling is confirmed empirically.

A reprocessing for climate of sea surface temperature from the Along-Track Scanning Radiometers: a new retrieval scheme

We present a new coefficient-based retrieval scheme for estimation of sea surface temperature (SST) from the Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR) instruments. The new coefficients are banded by total column water vapour (TCWV), obtained from numerical weather prediction analyses. TCWV banding reduces simulated regional retrieval biases to < 0.1 K compared to biases ~ 0.2 K for global coefficients. Further, detailed treatment of the instrumental viewing geometry reduces simulated view-angle related biases from ~ 0.1 K down to < 0.005 K for dual-view retrievals using channels at 11 and 12 μm. A novel analysis of trade-offs related to the assumed noise level when defining coefficients is undertaken, and we conclude that adding a small nominal level of noise (0.01 K) is optimal for our purposes. When applied to ATSR observations, some inter-algorithm biases appear as TCWV-related differences in SSTs estimated from different channel combinations. The final step in coefficient determination is to adjust the offset coefficient in each TCWV band to match results from a reference algorithm. This reference uses the dual-view observations of 3.7 and 11 μm. The adjustment is independent of in situ measurements, preserving independence of the retrievals. The choice of reference is partly motivated by uncertainty in the calibration of the 12 μm of Advanced ATSR. Lastly, we model the sensitivities of the new retrievals to changes to TCWV and changes in true SST, confirming that dual-view SSTs are most appropriate for climatological applications

Probabilistic physically-based cloud screening of satellite infra-red imagery for operational sea surface temperature retrieval

We propose and demonstrate a fully probabilistic (Bayesian) approach to the detection of cloudy pixels in thermal infrared (TIR) imagery observed from satellite over oceans. Using this approach, we show how to exploit the prior information and the fast forward modelling capability that are typically available in the operational context to obtain improved cloud detection. The probability of clear sky for each pixel is estimated by applying Bayes' theorem, and we describe how to apply Bayes' theorem to this problem in general terms. Joint probability density functions (PDFs) of the observations in the TIR channels are needed; the PDFs for clear conditions are calculable from forward modelling and those for cloudy conditions have been obtained empirically. Using analysis fields from numerical weather prediction as prior information, we apply the approach to imagery representative of imagers on polar-orbiting platforms. In comparison with the established cloud-screening scheme, the new technique decreases both the rate of failure to detect cloud contamination and the false-alarm rate by one quarter. The rate of occurrence of cloud-screening-related errors of >1 K in area-averaged SSTs is reduced by 83%. Copyright © 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.