Semantic Standards Quality Measured in Practice: The Case of the SETU Standard for Flexible Staffing

Semantic standards should play an important role in achieving inter-organizational interoperability. Millions are spent on development and adoption of these standards, but does it lead to interoperability? This important question is not often addressed. In this study interoperability in the Dutch temporary staffing industry is studied by focusing on the quality of the SETU standard and its implementations in practice. Our results show that although the SETU standard is equipped for achieving interoperability, this in practice has not been achieved due to low quality implementations. We raise the question why these studies are not being performed on every standard. Another result is that localizations (profiles) may be needed for high quality standards; without localizations interoperability is limited in the SETU case

Quality of XBRL US GAAP Taxonomy: Empirical Evaluation using SEC Filings

The primary purpose of a data standard is to improve the comparability of data created by multiple standard users. Given the high cost of developing and implementing data standards, it is desirable to be able to assess the quality of data standards. We develop metrics for measuring completeness and relevancy of a data standard. These metrics are evaluated empirically using the US GAAP taxonomy in XBRL and SEC filings produced using the taxonomy by approximately 500 companies. The results show that the metrics are useful and effective. Our analysis also reveals quality issues of the GAAP taxonomy and provides useful feedback to the taxonomy users. The SEC has mandated that all publicly listed companies must submit their filings using XBRL beginning mid 2009 to late 2014 according to a phased-in schedule. Thus our findings are timely and have practical implications that will ultimately help improve the quality of financial data

Sloppy Tags and Metacrap? Quality of User Contributed Tags in Collaborative Social Tagging Systems

There have been an increasing number of social tagging systems on the web that allow users to contribute tags collaboratively to describe various resources. As the number of tags continue to grow, it is important that we can describe and measure their quality. There have been conflicting opinions about the quality of user-contributed tags but the issue has not been systematically studied. In this work-in-progress paper, we propose a preliminary methodology for assessing tag quality. The methodology identifies three aspects of tag quality in a social tagging system: individual tags, collections of tags, and the association of the tags with the corresponding resources. The proposed methodology is being empirically evaluated using the tags of several social tagging systems. In addition to validating and refining the tag quality assessment methodology, the empirical analysis is expected to provide new findings about various properties of the tags. These findings will be used to improve the design of tagging systems by incorporating mechanisms that induce the contribution of high quality tags

Manipulating Synchronous Optical Signals with a Double Λ\Lambda Atomic Ensemble

We analyze a double $\Lambda$ atomic configuration interacting with two signal beams and two control beams. Because of the quantum interference between the two $\Lambda$ channels, the four fields are phase-matched in electromagnetically induced transparency. Our numerical simulation shows that this system is able to manipulate synchronous optical signals, such as generation of optical twin signals, data correction, signal transfer and amplification in the atomic storage.Comment: 5 pages, 7 figure

CO(1-0) in z>2 Quasar Host Galaxies: No Evidence for Extended Molecular Gas Reservoirs

We report the detection of CO(1-0) emission in the strongly lensed high-redshift quasars IRAS F10214+4724 (z=2.286), the Cloverleaf (z=2.558), RX J0911+0551 (z=2.796), SMM J04135+10277 (z=2.846), and MG 0751+2716 (z=3.200), using the Expanded Very Large Array and the Green Bank Telescope. We report lensing-corrected CO(1-0) line luminosities of L'(CO) = 0.34-18.4 x 10^10 K km/s pc^2 and total molecular gas masses of M(H2) = 0.27-14.7 x 10^10 Msun for the sources in our sample. Based on CO line ratios relative to previously reported observations in J>=3 rotational transitions and line excitation modeling, we find that the CO(1-0) line strengths in our targets are consistent with single, highly-excited gas components with constant brightness temperature up to mid-J levels. We thus do not find any evidence for luminous extended, low excitation, low surface brightness molecular gas components. These properties are comparable to those found in z>4 quasars with existing CO(1-0) observations. These findings stand in contrast to recent CO(1-0) observations of z~2-4 submillimeter galaxies (SMGs), which have lower CO excitation and show evidence for multiple excitation components, including some low-excitation gas. These findings are consistent with the picture that gas-rich quasars and SMGs represent different stages in the early evolution of massive galaxies.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, to appear in ApJL (EVLA Special Issue; accepted June 10, 2011

Dynamic Tagging for Enterprise Knowledge Sharing and Representation

The development of Web 2.0 technology provides an easy way for people to transfer and share knowledge. As a collaborative tagging tool, folksonomy is an efficient indexing method in Web 2.0 environments. After analyzing the pros and cons of current knowledge management systems, this research proposes a dynamic Tagging system that combines folksonomy technologies with other approaches including automatic schema enrichment and training. The proposed system improves access to a large, growing collection by supporting users collaboratively contribute to the building of tags. In addition, the proposed system provides an efficient way for firms to represent knowledge and share knowledge with customers and other firms

Scaffolding to Improve Writing Skills in a Computer Science Literacy Course

Writing has been recognized as an important skill in the technology field. This paper reports a study that uses a scaffolding approach to improve student writing skills in a computer science literacy course. While the quantitative results do not show a significant impact of scaffolding in individual paper assignment on the subsequent group wiki assignment, the student feedback in end-of-semester evaluations strongly indicated that scaffolding indeed helped improve their writing