Exploratory study to explore the role of ICT in the process of knowledge management in an Indian business environment

In the 21st century and the emergence of a digital economy, knowledge and the knowledge base economy are rapidly growing. To effectively be able to understand the processes involved in the creating, managing and sharing of knowledge management in the business environment is critical to the success of an organization. This study builds on the previous research of the authors on the enablers of knowledge management by identifying the relationship between the enablers of knowledge management and the role played by information communication technologies (ICT) and ICT infrastructure in a business setting. This paper provides the findings of a survey collected from the four major Indian cities (Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Villupuram) regarding their views and opinions about the enablers of knowledge management in business setting. A total of 80 organizations participated in the study with 100 participants in each city. The results show that ICT and ICT infrastructure can play a critical role in the creating, managing and sharing of knowledge in an Indian business environment

Ontology-based specific and exhaustive user profiles for constraint information fusion for multi-agents

Intelligent agents are an advanced technology utilized in Web Intelligence. When searching information from a distributed Web environment, information is retrieved by multi-agents on the client site and fused on the broker site. The current information fusion techniques rely on cooperation of agents to provide statistics. Such techniques are computationally expensive and unrealistic in the real world. In this paper, we introduce a model that uses a world ontology constructed from the Dewey Decimal Classification to acquire user profiles. By search using specific and exhaustive user profiles, information fusion techniques no longer rely on the statistics provided by agents. The model has been successfully evaluated using the large INEX data set simulating the distributed Web environment

Exploring the Effectiveness of Transit Security Awareness Campaigns in the San Francisco Bay Area, Research Report 09-19

Public involvement in alerting officials of suspicious and potentially harmful activity is critical to the overall security of a transit system. As part of an effort to get passengers and the public involved, many transit agencies have security awareness campaigns. The objective of this research is to learn how transit agencies seek to make security awareness campaigns effective and explore how they measure the effectiveness of such campaigns, if at all. This research project includes data from case studies of five major agencies that provide transit service in the San Francisco Bay Area region. The case study data are comprised of descriptions of the types of security awareness campaigns the agencies have implemented, the goals of the campaigns, and how they seek to make their campaigns effective, as well as whether and how these agencies measure and determine the effectiveness of their campaigns. A positive finding of this research is the consistency with which Bay Area transit organizations address the need for passenger awareness as part of their overall security program. However, none of the five agencies analyzed for this study measures the effectiveness of their campaigns. Whereas they all have a similar goal—to increase passenger awareness about security issues—little evidence exists confirming to what extent they are achieving this goal. The paper concludes with suggestions for using outcome measurements to provide a reasonable indication of a campaign’s effectiveness by capturing the public’s response to a campaign

METAPHOR MAPPING IN INDONESIAN POLITICAL INTERNET MEMES

In this global social media era, it is very easy for people to share their ideas through internet. One of them is by making internet meme. Internet meme becomes new culture of sharingopinions easily in the worldwide networking. When people find it hard to convey theirideas and meaning through lexical words, they will use metaphor to help them explain theirintention. Metaphor has set of mapping between the source domain and target domain inthe process of making. This article will reveal the common issue talked by Indonesiannetizens especially about their political matters from two Facebook accounts: Meme PolitikIndonesia and Humor Politik Indonesia. It has been found that in these two accounts,people make memes mostly about the most recent issue around them: in this case it is aboutJakarta Governor’s election and general politic issues. The use of metaphors mapping asvehicle to share ideas shows that netizens of these two Facebook accounts mostly see POLITIC AS MOVEMENT and POLITIC AS BUSINESS

TEACHING THEME AND THEMATIC PROGRESSION TO TOURISM STUDENTS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS ON THEIR WRITINGS

Teaching writing to tourism students is challenging. Many students of diploma programs in hotel and tourism tend to focus to building practical skills such as cooking techniques or cutting methods, setting up table for lunch or dinner, or how to handle check-in or checkout, etc. They ‘hate’ writing exercises because they believe they will start career at operational level in the tourism industry where academic writing is not needed. As the result of this belief they lack of ability to expand idea or topic and what they can only produce short and undeveloped paragraphs. This paper discusses one alternative to approach to teaching writing i.e. using thematic progression. Using Halliday (2004) model students are introduced to the concept of information structure then to theme and rheme, and finally to thematic progression of texts. Then, the teacher guides students to identify how text is developed through its theme and rheme and to identify the types thematic progressions. Two writing tests were given i.e. pre and post teaching to see if there is any different in terms of text development, paragraph coherence, paragraph structure, thematic progression, and focus of text. A set of questions to measure students’ perception toward the lessons was also administered. The results show that students can manage to produce longer better-developed and cohesive paragraphs. Students’ positive perception toward theme-rheme and thematic progression concepts enable them to expand idea into longer text

Bus Rapid Transit: A Handbook for Partners, MTI Report 06-02

In April 2005, the Caltrans Division of Research and Innovation (DRI) asked MTI to assist with the research for and publication of a guidebook for use by Caltrans employees who work with local transit agencies and jurisdictions in planning, designing, and operating Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems that involve state facilities. The guidebook was also to assist to transit operators, local governments, community residents, and other stakeholders dealing with the development of BRT systems. Several areas in the state have experienced such projects ( San Diego , Los Angeles , San Francisco , and Alameda County ) and DRI wished to use that experience to guide future efforts and identify needed changes in statutes, policies, and other state concerns. Caltrans convened a Task Team from the Divisions of Research and Innovation, Mass Transportation, and Operations, together with stakeholders representing many of those involved with the BRT activities around the state. Prior to MTI’s involvement, this group produced a white paper on the topic, a series of questions, and an outline of the guidebook that MTI was to write. The MTI team conducted case studies of the major efforts in California, along with less developed studies of some of the other BRT programs under development or in early implementation phases around the state. The purpose was to clarify those issues that need to be addressed in the guidebook, as well as to compile information that would identify items needing legislative or regulatory action and items that Caltrans will need to address through district directives or other internal measures. A literature scan was used to develop a bibliography for future reference. The MTI team also developed a draft Caltrans director’s policy document, which provides the basis for Caltrans’ actions. This ultimately developed to be a project within a project. MTI submitted a draft document to Caltrans as a final product from the Institute. Task team members and Caltrans staff and leadership provided extensive review of the draft Bus Rapid Transit: A Handbook for Partners. Caltrans adopted a new Director’s Policy and published the document, BRT Caltrans. The MTI “wraparound” report presented below discusses in more detail the process that was followed to produce the draft report. The process was in many ways as much a project as the report itself