CRiBAC: Community-centric role interaction based access control model

As one of the most efficient solutions to complex and large-scale problems, multi-agent cooperation has been in the limelight for the past few decades. Recently, many research projects have focused on context-aware cooperation to dynamically provide complex services. As cooperation in the multi-agent systems (MASs) becomes more common, guaranteeing the security of such cooperation takes on even greater importance. However, existing security models do not reflect the agents' unique features, including cooperation and context-awareness. In this paper, we propose a Community-based Role interaction-based Access Control model (CRiBAC) to allow secure cooperation in MASs. To do this, we refine and extend our preliminary RiBAC model, which was proposed earlier to support secure interactions among agents, by introducing a new concept of interaction permission, and then extend it to CRiBAC to support community-based cooperation among agents. We analyze potential problems related to interaction permissions and propose two approaches to address them. We also propose an administration model to facilitate administration of CRiBAC policies. Finally, we present the implementation of a prototype system based on a sample scenario to assess the proposed work and show its feasibility. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Teaching with infographics: practising new digital competencies and visual literacies

This position paper examines the use of infographics as a teaching assignment in the online college classroom. It argues for the benefits of adopting this type of creative assignment for teaching and learning, and considers the pedagogic and technical challenges that may arise in doing so. Data and insights are drawn from two case studies, both from the communications field, one online class and a blended one, taught at two different institutions. The paper demonstrates how incorporating a research-based graphic design assignment into coursework challenges and encourages students' visual digital literacies. The paper includes practical insights and identifies best practices emerging from the authors' classroom experience with the infographic assignment, and from student feedback. The paper suggests that this kind of creative assignment requires students to practice exactly those digital competencies required to participate in an increasingly visual digital culture

Authoring Support for Mobile Interaction with the Real World.

Mobile phones have been established as devices for the interaction with objects from the everyday world, such as posters, advertisements or points of interest. However, the usage of physical mobile applications is often still restricted by fixed content and behavior, whose authoring usually requires a considerable coding effort. This paper presents an approach to an authoring tool that separates the creative process of authoring content and behavior for mobile applications from its technical deployment. The tool supports non-technical users in the creation of content and behavior for the mobile guiding application MOPS that associates its content with points of interest in the real world through Physical Mobile Interaction

Tech for Understanding: An Introduction to Assistive and Instructional Technology in the Classroom

This paper examines the different types of assistive and instructional technology available to students who are classified with one or more of the thirteen disabilities outlined in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (referred to as, IDEA). While the roles of assistive and instructional technology are different, there are many instances where their uses may overlap. Thus, while these two categories will be discussed separately, it should be noted that some information may be applied to each category and more than one piece of technology. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the world of assistive and instructional technology for those who may be new to its concepts, particularly parents who have recently learned that their child may benefit from extra assistance and future educators who are interested in learning more about the devices they will be using to reach their students. Each of the thirteen disabilities will be discussed briefly, and then each disability will be assigned several types of assistive and instructional technology that serve it well. This will by no means be an exhaustive list of all types of technology available to teachers, parents, and students. However, it will attempt to provide a varied glimpse at some of the options that are available and how they may help children who are struggling to access the curriculum

IUPC: Identification and Unification of Process Constraints

Business Process Compliance (BPC) has gained significant momentum in research and practice during the last years. Although many approaches address BPC, they mostly assume the existence of some kind of unified base of process constraints and focus on their verification over the business processes. However, it remains unclear how such an inte- grated process constraint base can be built up, even though this con- stitutes the essential prerequisite for all further compliance checks. In addition, the heterogeneity of process constraints has been neglected so far. Without identification and separation of process constraints from domain rules as well as unification of process constraints, the success- ful IT support of BPC will not be possible. In this technical report we introduce a unified representation framework that enables the identifica- tion of process constraints from domain rules and their later unification within a process constraint base. Separating process constraints from domain rules can lead to significant reduction of compliance checking effort. Unification enables consistency checks and optimizations as well as maintenance and evolution of the constraint base on the other side.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, technical repor

A student-led comparison of techniques for augmenting the field experience

We report a study in which 30 university geography students compared five techniques to enhance the experience of visiting outdoor locations. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay of the visual scene; a custom-designed visitor guide running on a PDA; the mScape location-based software running on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted virtual reality display. The students were given the assignment as part of their assessed coursework for a field trip to the UK Lake District, where they had to evaluate the techniques and propose improvements or future designs to enable tourists or students on field trips to gain an enhanced understanding of their surroundings. The paper describes these techniques, reports the process and results of the student assignment, and concludes with a discussion of some broader issues emerging from the project

Open source environment to define constraints in route planning for GIS-T

Route planning for transportation systems is strongly related to shortest path algorithms, an optimization problem extensively studied in the literature. To find the shortest path in a network one usually assigns weights to each branch to represent the difficulty of taking such branch. The weights construct a linear preference function ordering the variety of alternatives from the most to the least attractive.Postprint (published version