Distinguishing Knowledge from Information. A Prerequisite for Elaborating KM Initiative Strategy.

Although the technological approach of Knowledge Management (KM) is greatly shared, without awareness, when elaborating KM initiative’s strategy, we can confuse the notions of information and knowledge, and disregard the importance of individual’s tacit knowledge used in action. Therefore, to avoid misunderstanding during the strategic orientation phase of a general KM initiative development, it is fundamental to clearly distinguish the notion of information from the notion of knowledge. Further, we insist on the importance to integrate the individual as a component of the Enterprise’s Information and Knowledge System (EIKS). In this paper, we argue that Knowledge cannot be considered as an object such as data are in digital information systems. Consequently, we propose an empirical model enabling to distinguish the notions of information and knowledge. This model shows the role of individual’s interpretative frameworks and tacit knowledge, establishing a discontinuity between information and knowledge. This pragmatic vision needs thinking about the architecture of an Enterprise’s Information and Knowledge System (EIKS), which must be a basis of discussion during the strategic orientation phase of a KM initiative.Information; Enterprise’s Information and Knowledge System (EIKS); KM initiative strategy; Commensurability of Individual’s Interpretative Frameworks; Individual’s tacit knowledge; Knowledge; Knowledge Management (KM);

Management of object-oriented action-based distributed programs

Phd ThesisThis thesis addresses the problem of managing the runtime behaviour of distributed programs. The thesis of this work is that management is fundamentally an information processing activity and that the object model, as applied to actionbased distributed systems and database systems, is an appropriate representation of the management information. In this approach, the basic concepts of classes, objects, relationships, and atomic transition systems are used to form object models of distributed programs. Distributed programs are collections of objects whose methods are structured using atomic actions, i.e., atomic transactions. Object models are formed of two submodels, each representing a fundamental aspect of a distributed program. The structural submodel represents a static perspective of the distributed program, and the control submodel represents a dynamic perspective of it. Structural models represent the program's objects, classes and their relationships. Control models represent the program's object states, events, guards and actions-a transition system. Resolution of queries on the distributed program's object model enable the management system to control certain activities of distributed programs. At a different level of abstraction, the distributed program can be seen as a reactive system where two subprograms interact: an application program and a management program; they interact only through sensors and actuators. Sensors are methods used to probe an object's state and actuators are methods used to change an object's state. The management program is capable to prod the application program into action by activating sensors and actuators available at the interface of the application program. Actions are determined by management policies that are encoded in the management program. This way of structuring the management system encourages a clear modularization of application and management distributed programs, allowing better separation of concerns. Managemental concerns can be dealt with by the management program, functional concerns can be assigned to the application program. The object-oriented action-based computational model adopted by the management system provides a natural framework for the implementation of faulttolerant distributed programs. Object orientation provides modularity and extensibility through object encapsulation. Atomic actions guarantee the consistency of the objects of the distributed program despite concurrency and failures. Replication of the distributed program provides increased fault-tolerance by guaranteeing the consistent progress of the computation, even though some of the replicated objects can fail. A prototype management system based on the management theory proposed above has been implemented atop Arjuna; an object-oriented programming system which provides a set of tools for constructing fault-tolerant distributed programs. The management system is composed of two subsystems: Stabilis, a management system for structural information, and Vigil, a management system for control information. Example applications have been implemented to illustrate the use of the management system and gather experimental evidence to give support to the thesis.CNPq (Consellho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnol6gico, Brazil): BROADCAST (Basic Research On Advanced Distributed Computing: from Algorithms to SysTems)

Recognition of elementary arm movements using orientation of a tri-axial accelerometer located near the wrist

In this paper we present a method for recognising three fundamental movements of the human arm (reach and retrieve, lift cup to mouth, rotation of the arm) by determining the orientation of a tri-axial accelerometer located near the wrist. Our objective is to detect the occurrence of such movements performed with the impaired arm of a stroke patient during normal daily activities as a means to assess their rehabilitation. The method relies on accurately mapping transitions of predefined, standard orientations of the accelerometer to corresponding elementary arm movements. To evaluate the technique, kinematic data was collected from four healthy subjects and four stroke patients as they performed a number of activities involved in a representative activity of daily living, 'making-a-cup-of-tea'. Our experimental results show that the proposed method can independently recognise all three of the elementary upper limb movements investigated with accuracies in the range 91–99% for healthy subjects and 70–85% for stroke patients

Collaboration in Augmented Reality: How to establish coordination and joint attention?

Schnier C, Pitsch K, Dierker A, Hermann T. Collaboration in Augmented Reality: How to establish coordination and joint attention? In: Boedker S, Bouvin NO, Lutters W, Wulf V, Ciolfi L, eds. Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW 2011). Springer-Verlag London; 2011: 405-416.We present an initial investigation from a semi-experimental setting, in which an HMD-based AR-system has been used for real-time collaboration in a task-oriented scenario (design of a museum exhibition). Analysis points out the specific conditions of interacting in an AR environment and focuses on one particular practical problem for the participants in coordinating their interaction: how to establish joint attention towards the same object or referent. Analysis allows insights into how the pair of users begins to familarize with the environment, the limitations and opportunities of the setting and how they establish new routines for e.g. solving the ʻjoint attentionʼ-problem

The Whole World in Your Hand: Active and Interactive Segmentation

Object segmentation is a fundamental problem in computer vision and a powerful resource for development. This paper presents three embodied approaches to the visual segmentation of objects. Each approach to segmentation is aided by the presence of a hand or arm in the proximity of the object to be segmented. The first approach is suitable for a robotic system, where the robot can use its arm to evoke object motion. The second method operates on a wearable system, viewing the world from a human's perspective, with instrumentation to help detect and segment objects that are held in the wearer's hand. The third method operates when observing a human teacher, locating periodic motion (finger/arm/object waving or tapping) and using it as a seed for segmentation. We show that object segmentation can serve as a key resource for development by demonstrating methods that exploit high-quality object segmentations to develop both low-level vision capabilities (specialized feature detectors) and high-level vision capabilities (object recognition and localization)

Towards Practical Graph-Based Verification for an Object-Oriented Concurrency Model

To harness the power of multi-core and distributed platforms, and to make the development of concurrent software more accessible to software engineers, different object-oriented concurrency models such as SCOOP have been proposed. Despite the practical importance of analysing SCOOP programs, there are currently no general verification approaches that operate directly on program code without additional annotations. One reason for this is the multitude of partially conflicting semantic formalisations for SCOOP (either in theory or by-implementation). Here, we propose a simple graph transformation system (GTS) based run-time semantics for SCOOP that grasps the most common features of all known semantics of the language. This run-time model is implemented in the state-of-the-art GTS tool GROOVE, which allows us to simulate, analyse, and verify a subset of SCOOP programs with respect to deadlocks and other behavioural properties. Besides proposing the first approach to verify SCOOP programs by automatic translation to GTS, we also highlight our experiences of applying GTS (and especially GROOVE) for specifying semantics in the form of a run-time model, which should be transferable to GTS models for other concurrent languages and libraries.Comment: In Proceedings GaM 2015, arXiv:1504.0244