An Investigation of W3C Standardization Processes using Rational Discourse

Standards, in particular Web standards, have become critical and complex information technologies as they influence our everyday activities. Standards making is a social practice where in experts engage in discussions to develop standards by weighing various alternative design solutions. Processes followed to develop these standards and how decisions for core features are made are not well understood. In this paper, we have drawn on concepts of rational discourse described by Habermas to examine whether processes followed at W3C meets requirements of rational discourse. Our investigation shows that processes followed at W3C do exhibit an approximation of rational discourse, while some concerns exist

From Service Conversation Models to WS-CDL

Changing business environments are forcing organizations to develop flexible and adaptable enterprise systems. To accomplish this and to solve associated systems integration issues, many are moving towards web service technology. Two key ingredients of web services based solution are service composition and service choreography. While there has been lot of advancement in respect to service composition, service choreography rather largely remains an open problem. WS-CDL specification is considered to be a candidate standard for service choreography; however, consensus on support mechanisms to develop conversation models depicting peer-to-peer interactions are yet to be reached. In this paper, we develop an approach as well required heuristics for identifying service interaction patterns from business process models and using them to develop conversation models. We provide detailed discussion on heuristics, illustrate our approach through an example, as well as indicate how these conversation models can be used for generating WS-CDL specifications

An Exploratory Study on the Influences of Website Quality on Actual Purchase and Moderation Effects

In the context of e-tailing, website quality serves as a portal that affords informational cues of the product and services offered. Many scholars proved that more than a satisfactory website quality is one of the critical aspects for the success of the e-tailer as well as achieving customer\u27s purchase intention. However, moderating effects of perceived risk and price tolerance on the relationship between website quality and purchase intention has not been examined. Furthermore, relationships between actual purchase and purchase intention have been relatively uncovered. Drawing from literature, we propose a research model to investigate interrelationships among website quality, purchase intention, actual purchase, perceived risk, and price tolerance. Conducting this research would contribute to our understanding of the moderator influence on the relation between website quality and purchase intention in the e-tailing environment and how this relationship leads to actual purchase behaviors

SECURITY AND USER EXPERIENCE: A HOLISTIC MODEL FOR CAPTCHA USABILITY ISSUES

CAPTCHA is a widely adopted security measure in the Web, and is designed to effectively distinguish humans and bots by exploiting human’s ability to recognize patterns that an automated bot is incapable of. To counter this, bots are being designed to recognize patterns in CAPTCHAs. As a result, CAPTCHAs are now being designed to maximize the difficulty for bots to pass human interaction proof tests, while making it quite an arduous task even for humans as well. The approachability of CAPTCHA is increasingly being questioned because of the inconvenience it causes to legitimate users. Irrespective of the popularity, CAPTCHA is indispensable if one wants to avoid potential security threats. We investigated the usability issues associated with CAPTCHA. We built a holistic model by identifying the important concepts associated with CAPTCHAs and its usability. This model can be used as a guide for the design and evaluation of CAPTCHAs

Information Extraction From Different Data Representation Forms: Charts and Tables

Presenting data in the form of graphs and tables has long been considered as an important tool for decision making. Extracting information from these presentation forms are considered to be cognitively intensive tasks. Prior research works on aspects of presentation forms have produced inconsistent and conflicting results. In this study, we examine effects of tabular and graphical (bar, line, and pie) forms on information extraction. Graphs were examined with solid and textured patterns as well. We conducted a laboratory experiment where in subjects answered set of questions which would require them to extract information from the presentation display. Our study reveals that tables, even though they have higher response rate, produced more accurate results than graphs. Comparison within graphs showed that bar charts had a lower response rate than pie and line charts, while pie charts produced the least accurate results. Comparison of solid and textured patterns in graphs revealed that they are not an influencing factor in regards to information extraction. We also provide detailed comparison of current research findings against to prior research results

Data Mining Pipeline for Performing Decision Tree Analysis On Mortality Dataset With ICD-10 Codes

Modernization of the healthcare sector has led to the introduction of wider and newer varieties of medical devices in hospitals. Consequently, there are increasing numbers of infectious complications related to medical devices. However, managing and monitoring the risk of medical devices are difficult and costly. The hospitals and the healthcare device service providers require effective means to manage the healthcare device maintenance to provide better patient care. To address this issue, we propose a data mining pipeline to classify medical devices based on mortality rates and ICD-10 codes. We utilize the decision tree grouping method to build a connection between the mortality dataset and ICD-10 codes. We anticipate that the results of this study will assist with healthcare providers identify risks associated with medical devices based on how many deaths are caused due to the improper use or use of faulty medical instruments during the treatment

An Empirical Analysis of Development Processes for Anticipatory Standards

There is an evolution in the process used by standards-development organizations (SDOs) and this is changing the prevailing standards development activity (SDA) for information and communications technology (ICT). The process is progressing from traditional SDA modes, typically involving the selection from many candidate, existing alternative components, into the crafting of standards that include a substantial design component (SSDC), or 'anticipatory' standards. SSDC require increasingly important roles from organizational players as well as SDOs. Few theoretical frameworks exist to understand these emerging processes. This project conducted archival analysis of SDO documents for a selected subset of web-services (WS) standards taken from publicly available sources including minutes of meetings, proposals, drafts and recommendations. This working paper provides a deeper understanding of SDAs, the roles played by different organizational participants and the compliance with SDO due process requirements emerging from public policy constraints, recent legislation and standards accreditation requirements. This research is influenced by a recent theoretical framework that suggests viewing the new standards-setting processes as a complex interplay among three forces: sense-making, design, and negotiation (DSN). The DSN model provides the framework for measuring SDO progress and therefore understanding future generations of standards development processes. The empirically grounded results are useful foundation for other SDO modeling efforts

Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc