From Keyword Search to Exploration: How Result Visualization Aids Discovery on the Web

A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney). We also consider the both traditional and novel ways in which these strategies have been evaluated. From our review of cognitive processes, browser design, and evaluations, we reflect on the future opportunities and new paradigms for exploring and interacting with Web search results

Early Detection of Online Auction Opportunistic Sellers Through the Use of Negative-Positive Feedback

Apparently fraud is a growth industry. The monetary losses from Internet fraud have increased every year since first officially reported by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2000. Prior research studies and third-party reports of fraud show rates substantially higher than eBay’s reported negative feedback rate of less than 1%. The conclusion is most buyers are withholding reports of negative feedback. Researchers Nikitov and Stone in a forensic case study of a single opportunistic eBay seller found buyers sometimes embedded negative comments in positive feedback as a means of avoiding retaliation from sellers and damage to their reputation. This category of positive feedback was described as “negative-positive” feedback. An example of negative-positive type feedback is “Good product, but slow shipping.” This research study investigated the concept of using negative-positive type feedback as a signature to identify potential opportunistic sellers in an online auction population. As experienced by prior researchers using data extracted from the eBay web site, the magnitude of data to be analyzed in the proposed study was massive. The nature of the analysis required - judgment of seller behavior and contextual analysis of buyer feedback comments – could not be automated. The traditional method of using multiple dedicated human raters would have taken months of labor with a correspondingly high labor cost. Instead, crowdsourcing in the form of Amazon Mechanical Turk was used to reduce the analysis time to a few days and at a fraction of the traditional labor cost. The research’s results found that the presence of subtle buyer behavior in the form of negative-positive type feedback comments are an inter-buyer signal indicating that a seller was behaving fraudulently. Sellers with negative-positive type feedback were 1.82 times more likely to be fraudulent. A correlation exists between an increasing number of negative-positive type feedback comments and an increasing probability that a seller was acting fraudulently. For every one unit increase in the number of negative-positive type feedback comments a seller was 4% more likely to be fraudulent

Feasibility of using citations as document summaries

The purpose of this research is to establish whether it is feasible to use citations as document summaries. People are good at creating and selecting summaries and are generally the standard for evaluating computer generated summaries. Citations can be characterized as concept symbols or short summaries of the document they are citing. Similarity metrics have been used in retrieval and text summarization to determine how alike two documents are. Similarity metrics have never been compared to what human subjects think are similar between two documents. If similarity metrics reflect human judgment, then we can mechanize the selection of citations that act as short summaries of the document they are citing. The research approach was to gather rater data comparing document abstracts to citations about the same document and then to statistically compare those results to several document metrics; frequency count, similarity metric, citation location and type of citation. There were two groups of raters, subject experts and non-experts. Both groups of raters were asked to evaluate seven parameters between abstract and citations: purpose, subject matter, methods, conclusions, findings, implications, readability, andunderstandability. The rater was to identify how strongly the citation represented the content of the abstract, on a five point likert scale. Document metrics were collected for frequency count, cosine, and similarity metric between abstracts and associated citations. In addition, data was collected on the location of the citations and the type of citation. Location was identified and dummy coded for introduction, method, discussion, review of the literature and conclusion. Citations were categorized and dummy coded for whether they refuted, noted, supported, reviewed, or applied information about the cited document. The results show there is a relationship between some similarity metrics and human judgment of similarity.Ph.D., Information Studies -- Drexel University, 200

Business Investigation Study For The Nordic Telemedicine Center Using Business Model Canvas and Monte Carlo Simulation

The eHealth industry has caught huge attention during the last decade especially in Nordic countries. The concept of telemedicine is becoming an essential factor in the healthcare sector owing to its advantageous edges that made remote diagnosis and monitoring become more viable. Such role that brought numerous patients’ cases within the reach of healthcare professionals, facilitated the continuous monitoring of their vital signs and kept records of their previous health history for better treatments. However, telemedicine projects –as any other type of projects– should possess a preliminary feasibility plan described in business terms to speculate the likelihood of failure or success based on the resources and the value proposition. Various worldwide approaches have been conducted in many countries to provide the suitable business frames for the telemedicine business model. One of the main objectives of the Nordic telemedicine Center (NTC) project is to establish a running center that operates and sustains itself even after the project period is concluded thus, a feasible business model is required. In this thesis, an approach is designed upon the business model Canvas structure. The proposed canvas is based on the Nordic telemedicine Center project’s resources and objectives. Nevertheless, the output canvas is assigned with a conducted Monte Carlo simulation to obtain some business insights relying on both real and assumed input data.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Three Essays on Trust Mining in Online Social Networks

This dissertation research consists of three essays on studying trust in online social networks. Trust plays a critical role in online social relationships, because of the high levels of risk and uncertainty involved. Guided by relevant social science and computational graph theories, I develop conceptual and predictive models to gain insights into trusting behaviors in online social relationships. In the first essay, I propose a conceptual model of trust formation in online social networks. This is the first study that integrates the existing graph-based view of trust formation in social networks with socio-psychological theories of trust to provide a richer understanding of trusting behaviors in online social networks. I introduce new behavioral antecedents of trusting behaviors and redefine and integrate existing graph-based concepts to develop the proposed conceptual model. The empirical findings indicate that both socio-psychological and graph-based trust-related factors should be considered in studying trust formation in online social networks. In the second essay, I propose a theory-based predictive model to predict trust and distrust links in online social networks. Previous trust prediction models used limited network structural data to predict future trust/distrust relationships, ignoring the underlying behavioral trust-inducing factors. I identify a comprehensive set of behavioral and structural predictors of trust/distrust links based on related theories, and then build multiple supervised classification models to predict trust/distrust links in online social networks. The empirical results confirm the superior fit and predictive performance of the proposed model over the baselines. In the third essay, I propose a lexicon-based text mining model to mine trust related user-generated content (UGC). This is the first theory-based text mining model to examine important factors in online trusting decisions from UGC. I build domain-specific trustworthiness lexicons for online social networks based on related behavioral foundations and text mining techniques. Next, I propose a lexicon-based text mining model that automatically extracts and classifies trustworthiness characteristics from trust reviews. The empirical evaluations show the superior performance of the proposed text mining system over the baselines

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

رؤية تحليلية لنظام الحكم في فكر تنظيم الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام "داعش"

The main objective of the study was to analyze the emergence and the development of the Islamic State organization, demonstrating the position of the Caliph in the organizational structure of Da'esh's organization, in addition to presenting an analytical vision for the Islamic state organization attitude towards the shape of the government, caliphate and the country. To prove the validity of the thesis and to answer the studies' questions, the study adopted the analytical descriptive approach and the organizational analytical approach. It is shown through the study that 'The Islamic State Organization' belongs to the 'Salafist Jihadist' movement, which often pursues the intellectual vision of Al-Qaeda, which is established on the necessity of ' the Jihadist negotiation'The main objective of the study was to analyze the emergence and the development of the Islamic State organization, demonstrating the position of the Caliph in the organizational structure of Da'esh's organization, in addition to presenting an analytical vision for the Islamic state organization attitude towards the shape of the government, caliphate and the country. To prove the validity of the thesis and to answer the studies' questions, the study adopted the analytical descriptive approach and the organizational analytical approach. It is shown through the study that 'The Islamic State Organization' belongs to the 'Salafist Jihadist' movement, which often pursues the intellectual vision of Al-Qaeda, which is established on the necessity of ' the Jihadist negotiation' with the ruling regimes in the Islamic worlds and their 'Western allies', a prelude to the establishment of the 'Islamic Caliphate State' to apply the provisions of Islam. Even though the Islamic State Organization doesn’t not include in its ranks many known scientists or theorists, it was able to back its opinions and works to a stock of other Jihadists Salafists Scientists' ideas and jurisprudences. The organization was always accused that its theory was an assembly of the ideas belonging to a number of extremist theorists some of which were sometimes against the organization itself. Some of those are, Abu Mohammad Al-Maqdisi, who despite this does not represent the first reference for the organizations, and especially in justifying his bloody agenda, indeed he depends on three other Salafist jihadists works, especially to justify what he does, the most famous work of those is, The Management of Savagery by "Abu Baker Al-Naji" a road map for how to establish an Islamic Caliphate. The second book is the Jurisprudence of Jihad, by "Abi Abdallah Al-Muhajer", which calls the Jihadist Salafists to do everything necessary in order to establish a pure unified Islamic country. The final book is The Basics of Preparing for Jihad for Sayeed Imam Al-Shareef, Abd Al-Qader Bin Abd AL-Aziz or "Dr. Fadel"

The Problems of Translation of Collocations From English to Arabic and Vice Versa of English Students at QOU

The study aims at exploring the difficulties that face the students of Al Quds Open University in collocations translation process from English to Arabic and vice versa. The researcher attempted to find suitable solutions for such difficulties and problems. The researcher followed an experimental descriptive method in the study.The study aims at exploring the difficulties that face the students of Al Quds Open University in collocations translation process from English to Arabic and vice versa. The researcher attempted to find suitable solutions for such difficulties and problems. The researcher followed an experimental descriptive method in the study. The researcher designed a test in order to explore the difficulties and problems that face such students. The test is composed of five questions ,the first one is Common collocations - nouns which naturally follow verbs (multiple choice) , the second one is "Choose the most suitable Arabic word combination to correct collocation" , the third one is " Choose most suitable English word combination to correct collocation" the fourth one is " Translate the following collocations from Arabic to English" ,the fifth one is "Translate the following collocations from English to Arabic". Such study was applied on English students of Al Quds Open University in Gaza Branch during the second course of the academic year 2013/2014. The researcher chose and selected a random sample of Al Quds Open University students in Gaza Branch. The researcher will follow a suitable statistical methods for such study. At the end of the study ,the researcher adopted a group of recommendations and suggestions

Canadian consumers' functional food choices : labelling and reference-dependent effects

The growing interest among consumers in the link between diet and health makes functional food one of the fastest growing sectors in the global food industry, especially functional dairy products. Understanding consumer choices with respect to functional food is an important and relatively new research area. Given the credence nature of functional food attributes, labelling plays a key role in allowing consumers to make informed choices about foods with enhanced health attributes. In 2007, Canada launched a review of the regulatory system for health claims on functional foods, which included rules concerning the approval, labelling and verification of health claims. In 2010 two new health claims related to oat products and plant sterols were approved by Health Canada. An analysis of how consumers respond to health claim information is therefore timely. This thesis focuses on examining the effects of different types of labelling and verification of health claims on consumers stated preferences for a specific functional food product, Omega-3 milk. The analysis incorporates reference-dependent effects. This study improves the knowledge of Canadian consumer understanding of health claims and the impact of health claims on consumer choice. This research is one of the first studies to simultaneously examine the effects of different types of health claims (e.g. function claims, risk reduction claims and disease prevention claims) and other ways of signalling or implying health benefits (e.g. symbols) on Canadian consumers' functional food choices. This study contributes to the knowledge in this domain by providing a comparative analysis of different types of labelling strategies. The extant knowledge of labelling effects in the formats of risk reduction claims, disease prevention claims and symbols or imagery on functional foods is limited. One of the primary contributions of this study is addressing this gap in the literature. The theoretical framework of this thesis is based on random utility theory. A stated preference choice experiment is designed to examine consumers' response to Omega-3 milk under different labelling scenarios. Using data from an online survey of 740 Canadians conducted in summer 2009, discrete choice models, including Conditional Logit, Random Parameter Logit and Latent Class models, and Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) values are estimated. The results suggest that full labelling (function claims, risk reduction claims and disease prevention claims) is preferred over partial labelling (e.g. the use of a heart symbol to imply a health claim), but primarily for risk reduction claims. There is no significant difference between a function claim, such as "good for your heart" and partial labelling in the form of a red heart symbol. The results also suggest that consumers on average respond positively to verification of health claims by government and the third party agencies, however, the Latent Class models reveal considerable heterogeneity in consumer attitudes toward the source of verification. The influences of key-socio-demographic (e.g. income, education and health status) and attitudinal factors (e.g. attitude, trust and knowledge) provide further insights into consumer responses in the choice experiment to identify different consumer segments. Moreover, the results reveal reference-dependent effects where perceived losses of ingredient or price attributes have a greater influence on consumer choice than perceived gains. In terms of industry and public policy implications, this study suggests that food manufacturers in Canada would benefit from the ability to make more precise health claims. The implications derived from the Latent Class Models could help the Canadian functional food industry to identify target consumer segments with different characteristics for the purpose of developing marketing strategies. Furthermore, the results of this study suggest that Canadian consumers are receptive to both full labelling and partial labelling. It indicates that public policy makers need to pay attention to effectively regulating health claims for functional foods so as to balance the need for credible health claims to facilitate the development of the functional food sector with the imperative of protecting consumers from misleading health claims. Public policy makers should also be aware that the verification of health claims plays an important role in reducing consumers' uncertainty and making health claims more credible