Int. J. of Renewable Energy Technology to publish expanded papers from NURER2014

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Nuclear and Renewable Energy Resources (20-23 October 2014, Antalya, Turkey) will be published by the International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology.

Go ahead, donate, make your day

Pro-social spending boosts happiness, especially when spending allows for social connection. Social giving makes us happier, in other words, more so than anonymous charitable donation.

People usually feel good when they make a charitable donation, but they feel even better if they make the donation directly to someone they know or in a way that builds social connection. Research to be published in the International Journal of Happiness and Development investigates for the first time how social connection helps turn generous behavior into positive feelings on the part of the donor.

Lara Aknin of Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and Harvard Business School, Massachusetts, USA, wanted to examine when the emotional benefits of giving to charity become manifest. They carried out three studies of charitable donations, or more precisely pro-social spending, and found that spending money on others or giving money to charity leads to the greatest happiness boost when giving fosters social connection. The overarching conclusion is that donors feel happiest if they give to a charity via a friend, relative or social connection rather than simply making an anonymous donation to a worthy cause.

The research has implications for not-for-profit organizations hoping to maximize donations, suggesting that recruiting advocates and helping them build on their social connections could have benefits for the donors too. Extending these findings, it is possible that if donors have a greater sense of happiness when giving involves making a social connection one might imagine that the positive emotions might even lead to more frequent and perhaps bigger donations. Extrapolating further from the research happy donors might themselves be more likely to become advocates for a given cause or benefit it through their spontaneous word-of-mouth marketing.” The findings also complement earlier research that has demonstrated a positive effect on happiness of social interaction and taking part in voluntary work.

“While additional factors other than social connection likely influence the happiness gained from pro-social spending our findings suggest that putting the social in pro-social is one way to transform good deeds into good feelings,” the team concludes.

Aknin L.B., Dunn E.W., Sandstrom G.M. & Norton M.I. (2013). Does social connection turn good deeds into good feelings? On the value of putting the ‘social’ in prosocial spending, International Journal of Happiness and Development, 1 (2) 155. DOI: 10.1504/IJHD.2013.055643

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Call for papers: "Information Systems in Transport Logistics"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics.

Rapid developments in information technology have many implications for the organisation and management of transport and logistics. In this context, cooperation between actors in integrated supply chains becomes more and more important. To address this, the information and communication systems used for managing shipping and transport need to share information and the actors must be enabled to share that information according to their own business rules.

This special issue aims at addressing these interesting research issues in the field of information and communication systems in transport logistics.

The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Advanced Logistics and Transport (ICALT’2014), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• IT applications to transport
• Real time identification and tracking
• Decision support systems for shipping management
• Cooperation in maritime supply chains
• Integration of ports in intermodal hinterland systems
• Consolidation and distribution for shippers within the logistics business
• Modelling, testing, simulation, human-machine interaction
• Air, road and rail traffic management
• Multimodal transport systems
• Advanced traffic management/information systems
• Information technology and distribution strategy
• Modelling, control and simulation
• Transportation networks

Important Dates
Submission deadline: 30 July, 2014

Int. J. of Information and Computer Security to publish expanded papers from ICTLAW 2013

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 1st International Conference on ICT LAW (8-9 November 2013, Porto, Portugal) will be published by the International Journal of Information and Computer Security.

First issue: International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education (free sample issue available)

The International Journal of Quantitative Research in Education aims to enhance the practice and theory of quantitative research in education. In this journal, education is defined in the broadest sense of the word, to include settings outside the school. IJQRE publishes peer-reviewed, empirical research employing a variety of quantitative methods and approaches, including but not limited to surveys, cross sectional studies, longitudinal research, structural equation modelling, multilevel modelling and Rasch modelling.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

Special issue: "Transmigration, Emotions and Labour"

International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion 5(3) 2013

• Performing the postcolonial: the 'migrant' body as a site of veneration, repugnance and blame
• 'Like a white crow': migrant women and their emotion work in Sweden
• Separation and emotional distance: cases of Mexican undocumented transnational families
• Experiences of forced labour amongst Chinese migrant workers: exploring the context of vulnerability and protection
• Transnational emotion work: Punjabi migration, caste and identity
• 'Sometimes I just wish I never hear of this term bilingual worker': difficult clients, emotion work and interpreting with migrants

Special issue: "Planning and Sustainability"

International Journal of Society Systems Science 5(3) 2013

• The becoming of problems in planning
• Understanding the urbanisation process in sub-Saharan Africa: the Mozambican rural towns
• Sustainability narratives and planning agendas: charting the influence of sustainable development discourse on planning policy in Western Australia
• Urban sprawl management, smart growth: challenges from the implementation phase
• The problem with community cohesion

Malware bites

Antivirus software running on your computer has one big weak point – if a new virus is released before the antivirus provider knows about it or before the next scheduled antivirus software update, your system can be infected. Such zero-day infections are common.

However, a key recent development in antivirus software is to incorporate built-in defences against viruses and other computer malware for which they have no prior knowledge. These defences usually respond to unusual activity that resembles the way viruses behave once they have infected a system. This so-called heuristic approach combined with regularly updated antivirus software will usually protect you against known viruses and even zero-day viruses. But, in reality, there are inevitably some attacks that continue to slip through the safety net.

Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, researchers at the Australian National University, in Acton, ACT, and the Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE jointly with Victorian Institute of Technology, in Melbourne Victoria, have devised an approach to virus detection that acts as a third layer on top of scanning for known viruses and heuristic scanning.

The new approach employs a data mining algorithm to identify malicious code on a system and the anomaly of behaviour patterns detected is predominantly based on the rate at which various operating system functions are being “called”. Their initial tests show an almost 100% detection rate and a false positive rate of just 2.5% for spotting embedded malicious code that is in “stealth mode” prior to being activated for particular malicious purposes.

“Securing computer systems against new diverse malware is becoming harder since it requires a continuing improvement in the detection engines,” the team of Mamoun Alazab (ANU) and Sitalakshmi Venkatraman (NMIT) explain. “What is most important is to expand the knowledgebase for security research through anomaly detection by applying innovative pattern recognition techniques with appropriate machine learning algorithms to detect unknown malicious behaviour.”

Alazab M. & Venkatraman S. (2013). Detecting malicious behaviour using supervised learning algorithms of the function calls, International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 5 (2) 90. DOI: 10.1504/IJESDF.2013.055047

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Int. Journal of Technology Policy and Law to publish expanded papers from 1st International Conference on ICT LAW

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 1st International Conference on ICT LAW (8-9 November 2013, Porto, Portugal) will be published by the International Journal of Technology Policy and Law.

Call for papers: "Decision Support Systems for Supply Chain Risk Management: Theories, Models and Empirical Studies"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience.

Global manufacturing, low-cost country sourcing and adoption of lean principles have provided organisations with opportunities for cost minimisation. However, such opportunities often concur to increase companies’ exposure and vulnerability to risks that might lead to supply chain disruptions, which can seriously affect companies’ revenues and credibility with stakeholders.

Therefore, supply chain risk management (SCRM) represents a growing concern; ensuring supply and distribution continuity without disruptions has become a challenging task for supply chain managers. In practice, SCRM is gaining more and more attention in companies as supply chain managers realise that continued physical and financial flows are key components of business growth and success.

To manage risks in today’s complex and uncertain supply chains, companies need effective decision support systems (DSS) to analyse different scenarios and assess the impact of potential risks on their supply chain from end to end. To achieve this, companies can today leverage the availability of huge amount of data (big data) that requires specific tools and approaches to detect potential problems earlier, and with sufficient accuracy. Furthermore, DSS may enable the identification and assessment of risk mitigation and management strategies, providing evidence-based and quantitative support to decision makers.

This special issue aims to promote the publishing of cutting-edge, relevant and rigorous research in the area of SCRM with particular emphasis on the decision making process and support systems. We invite papers on cutting-edge research employing both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Particularly, we welcome submissions in the form of conceptual, case-based or empirical papers offering insights in the area of DSS for SCRM.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Supply/demand risk identification and management strategy assessment approaches
• Decision support system architectures for SCRM
• Decision making processes for risk management strategy design
• Evidence-based reactive and proactive strategies for SCRM
• Collaborative decision making process for SCRM
• Information sharing as risk mitigation strategy
• Supply/demand risk measures and assessment approaches
• Agent-based or web-based systems for SCRM
• ICT support for SCRM
• Big data analysis for supply chain risk identification and management
• Cases studies and surveys on SCRM 

Important Dates

Full-paper submission: 15 March, 2014
Notification to authors: 30 April, 2014
Final versions due: 31 May, 2014
Final manuscript acceptance: 15 July, 2014

Special issue: "Multidimensional Financial Decision Aid"

International Journal of Financial Engineering and Risk Management 1(2) 2013

Includes expanded versions of papers presented at the 2011 International Conference on Multidimensional Finance, Insurance and Investment (ICMFII’2011).

• SMA and MACD combinations for stock investment decisions in frontier markets: evidence from Dubai financial market
• Portfolio selection of projects based on a relative efficiency measurement
• Stock market interdependence and its determinants: comparative analysis of developed and emerging markets

Additional Papers

• Benchmark approach for defaultable claims under partial information
• The estimation of corporate liquidity management using artificial neural networks

E-Health services ill-prepared for epidemics

National and international organizations are ill-prepared to exploit e-health systems in the event of the emergence of a major pandemic disease, according to a research paper to be published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology.

E-health systems and associated information technology could radically alter the course of a pandemic disease, such as a major outbreak of influenza internationally. It could provide healthcare workers, emergency services, patients and those at-risk with access to much-needed data on how disease is spreading and what measures could be taken to halt its progress. Unfortunately, suggest Junhua Li of the Asia-Pacific Ubiquitous Healthcare Research Centre (APuHC), at The University of New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues, the widespread adoption of e-health represents a significant disruption to current healthcare protocols and systems and stakeholders are not in a position to take full advantage of it.

Emergent infections have spread wildly throughout human history, plague, influenza and more recently SARS and MERS have claimed many lives. With the advent of global air travel, the potential for a previously unknown strain of an animal pathogen to jump the species gap and cause widespread human illness seems to be much greater than it ever was in the days when a round-the-world trip would take many months rather than a day or two.

Conversely, technology has brought us a much greater capacity through modern medicine to treat those infected and to stymie the spread of any given pathogen. Additionally, fast global communications and super computers allow information and data concerning any given disease to be shared and studied in ways that were not possible even a decade ago.

Li and colleagues, Holly Seale, Pradeep Ray, Amina Tariq and Raina MacIntyre, suggest that the adoption of e-health principles could allow healthcare facilities to mitigate against the spread of pandemic influenza, and perhaps other emergent pathogens. They have devised a multi-pronged approach to assessing the preparedness of authorities and organizations to utilize effectively e-health on the basis of specific knowledge, supportive policies, computing and communications facilities and access and adequate funding. Their approach should allow organizations to ascertain what is missing from their e-health systems if they have them and to implement the necessary technology and protocols where they are absent before a pandemic hits.

Li J., Seale H., Ray P., Tariq A. & MacIntyre C.R. (2013). Are organisations prepared for e-health implementation to respond to pandemic influenza?, International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 11 (3) 215. DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2013.055373

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Call for papers: "Dynamic Design Requirement Management for Complex Product Development"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Product Development.

In highly sophisticated technology- and labour-intensive industries (e.g. aerospace, automotive), future product development is significantly impacted by technological, economic, societal and political factors. Within a rather long design cycle, product requirements have to shift continuously to meet the contextual evolutions of the user, the client, the market and their environments by integrating new technologies.

However, the complexity of product structures and respective processes, and of organisational behavior in such industries, creates a major challenge for the integration of technological innovations.

Two kinds of research efforts are addressing this challenge. In addition to “after-the-fact” approaches (e.g. lean principles) which respond reactively to rapidly changing environments, several proactive methodologies, such as scenario planning, anticipatory design and design foresight, have been proposed to reduce the risks caused by the unstable design specifications of product requirements, and by providing rapid responses to proper change management in the early stages of product development.

This special issue aims to publish theories and techniques related to proactive and active change management strategies for the future development of complex products in order to reduce the risks and associated costs caused by dynamic changes of design requirements.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to:

• Anticipatory design
• Strategic and scenario planning
• Design foresight
• Lean manufacturing
• Product and process modelling
• Evolutionary design
• Multidisciplinary optimisation for product design
• Change management

Important Dates
Submission of Manuscripts: 31 March, 2014
Completion of first-round review: 31 May, 2014
First-round revised papers: 31 August, 2014
Target of the second (last) round of reviews: 31 October, 2014
Second-round revised papers: 30 November, 2014
Final Versions Due: 31 December, 2014

Special issue: "Lessons from the Crisis: Banking, Executive Compensation and Risk Management"

International Journal of Management Practice 6(3) 2013

• The supervision of strategy and risk in German two-tier boards: lessons learned from the crisis
• How do securities dealers trade in the Taiwan stock market? Evidence from the financial crisis of 2008
• On the appraisal of LVaR throughout the close-out period: an investment management outlook from recent global financial crisis
• Financial market returns before, during and after five European banking crises

New Editor for the International Journal of Nonlinear Dynamics and Control

Professor Ebrahim Esmailzadeh has been appointed to edit the International Journal of Nonlinear Dynamics and Control. Professor Esmailzadeh is from the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

Call for papers: "Triple Helix Innovation in the EU New Member States and Candidate Countries: Catching Up, Muddling Through, Forging Ahead?"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Transitions and Innovation Systems.

The 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU) with ten countries from Central and Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus ), followed by the 2007 accession of two Eastern Europe countries (Romania and Bulgaria), and recently, in July 2013, of a Western Balkan country, Croatia, has been seen as a natural evolution of the political process on the “old continent”, bringing an end to the territorial divisions inherited from World War II and a start to a new zone of peace, stability and economic prosperity. Future enlargement with the candidate countries Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey is aimed to advance progress towards these goals. New assets, such a population of more than 500 million and the largest internal market in the world, have been expected to bring the enlarged Union significant economic, legal, environmental, cultural and social benefits, in addition to a stronger role in global governance affairs.

In order to narrow the disparities between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ Member States, a comprehensive process of EU integration has been put in place, at two key levels: (i) a political one, encompassing all the legislation, policies and programmes associated with the accession, and (ii) an economic one, driven mainly by foreign direct investment (FDI) and Structural Funds. Economic, trade, investment and la­bour mobility obstacles, in addition to legacies of a planned economy system, had to be (and still need to be) overcome to reduce the gap between the ‘new’ EU-10 and the ‘old’ EU-15. Today, years after the official accession to the EU, the “transition” is still ongoing on many fronts in the new Member States. Both the political and the economic integration are complex processes, far from straightforward and effortless, requiring political will, pragmatism and long-term visionary thinking in both European and national institutions. Adding to the already existing complexity, the global crisis has had profound consequences on the EU economy and made it clear that a more integrated economic union cannot be achieved without a deeper reform of economic policies, as well as political and governance structures.

The innovation field, in the entirety of its policies, programmes, institutions and actors across the EU, is part and parcel of the economic policies and governance structures that need a significant rethinking in order to boost economic growth. A cursory analysis of the Innovation Union Scoreboard 2013 shows that although innovation performance in the EU has improved year on year in spite of the continuing economic crisis, the innovation divide between Member States is widening. Some new Member States, like Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia recorded the strongest improvements over the 2008-2013 period, with Estonia being the unquestionable innovation growth leader (7.1%), while Poland and Bulgaria had the lowest positive innovation growth rates (0.4% and 0.6%, respectively), and Cyprus saw its innovation performance decline at an average annual rate of 0.7%.

Varying innovation performances place the new EU Member States and candidate countries in different country groups: Slovenia, Cyprus, Estonia and Iceland are among the I nnovation Followers, which show a performance close to that of the EU average. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Malta, Lithuania, Croatia and Serbia are part of the Moderate Innovators, whose performance is below that of the EU average, while Poland, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria, next to Macedonia and Turkey are part of the Modest Innovators, with a performance that is well below that of the EU average. None of the New EU Member States and candidate countries are among the Innovation Leaders that have a performance well above that of the EU average.

Moreover, mobility among country groups is very limited, with only two new Member States changing their performance group due to marginal changes in their innovation performance: Lithuania, going up to Moderate Innovators, and Poland going down to Modest Innovators. The 2010 launch of the Europe 2020 Innovation Union flagship initiative boosted the innovation performance of all Innovation leaders and Innovation followers (except the UK), but similar effects were observed only in a few of the Moderate Innovators (Lithuania, Slovakia) and Modest Innovators (Latvia). In fact, the majority of new Member States, like Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Malta saw deteriorations of their innovation index. Most worryingly, the process of convergence and catching-up in innovation performance within the EU has been shown to have come to a halt and a mismatch between the innovation performance, the policy models being implemented in the countries and the country specific innovation challenges has been reported. A diverging trend appeared over the crisis period 2008-2012, with the Innovation Leaders and Followers increasing their innovation growth rates and becoming even stronger, while the Moderate and Modest Innovators went in the opposite direction and failed to catch up (Innovation Union Scoreboard 2013).

A reorientation of the innovation policy mix and strengthening of framework conditions and institutional environment are much needed in order to enhance the innovation performance of the countries lagging behind. At the same time, the role of RDI in the country’s economic revival needs to be significantly strengthened, departing from the marginal RDI impact on economic growth caused by the slow reform of national RDI systems that has ambiguously evolved between restructuring and erosion of potentially viable R&D and technology capacities (Radosevic, 1998)1. A closer connection between RDI policies and actors, on the one hand, and the market, on the other, is needed to stimulate business investments in RDI and enhance the absorptive potential of the local business community. Also, closer synergies with other strategic policies at the national and regional level, such as education, employment, environment, digital agenda, etc. are also needed.

A rethinking of the main models for conceptualising innovation is also necessary to better capture the interactions between various innovation actors, the mechanisms, sources and development paths of innovation. Most reform and restructuring efforts in the new Member States have been guided by the theoretical framework of National/Regional Innovation Systems, which highlights various innovation actors and the interactions between them at the regional and national levels (e.g. Freeman, 19872; Lundvall, 19923; Nelson, 19934; Edquist, 19975). In contrast, the Triple Helix model of university-industry-government relations (e.g. Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 19986; 20007), has been much less visible and had significantly less impact in these countries, mainly because of some structural characteristics that impeded the diffusion and use of the model. Among them, one can mention universities being primarily teaching institutions and having relatively low levels of academic research and entrepreneurial activities (patenting, licensing, formation of academic spin-offs and incubation, etc.), weak RDI capacity of domestic firms and internal RDI demand, low public and private RDI expenditure, virtual absence of seed capital, relatively weak horizontal policy co-ordination, etc. However, many of these aspects have changed dramatically, especially over the last decade. This raises the question of whether the recent transformations within and among university, industry and government institutional spheres can now provide a good basis for the application of a Triple Helix-based innovation strategy in the new Member States, as well as in the candidate countries. The recent vision of Triple Helix Systems (Ranga and Etzkowitz, 20138) as an analytical framework that bridges innovation systems theory and the key features of the Triple Helix model could provide useful insights for this analysis.

This Special Issue aims to examine recent innovation developments in the new EU Member States and candidate countries from a Triple Helix perspective, in the context of transformations induced by the EU integration, or the preparations in view of this process, respectively. The main objective is to assess the impact of EU integration on the reform and modernisation of national RDI policies, programmes, actors, infrastructures, institutional framework, strengthening of science-industry links and research commercialisation, internationalisation, etc. The impact of the economic crisis on the three major Triple Helix actors: university, industry and government, and the overall effect at the national and regional level will be also examined.

Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Reform of the national/regional RDI policy mix, programmes, actors, infrastructures institutional framework and mechanisms, in the context of the EU integration, from a Triple Helix perspective, absorption and impact of EU Structural Funds, articulation between national and EU funds for financing RDI objectives;
• The role of the Triple Helix in helping universities, businesses and government meet innovation challenges: enhancing the role of universities as innovation actors, increasing the absorptive capacity of academic knowledge within firms and by other users, increasing RDI in the private sector, stimulating innovation in the public sector, stimulating public procurement for RDI and intellectual property management and policies, increasing international collaboration within the EU and beyond, stimulating the role of government as an entrepreneur;
• Emergence of the Entrepreneurial University: development of university technology transfer and commercialisation structures, academic patenting and licensing, academic entrepreneurship education and practice for students and faculty, creation of university start-ups, increasing role of university as partner in regional systems of governance and player in regional technological and commercial advances, e.g. leading and supporting sector-specific initiatives, etc.;
• Triple Helix Systems and regional development: drivers, dynamics, policies, research-intensive clusters, sciencesCities, innovative SMEs, spin-offs, development of and articulation between the knowledge, innovation and consensus spaces;
• The role of the Triple Helix in enhancing human resources for innovation: education, retention, mobility, stimulating the return of diasporas and using them as support for entrepreneurs or as path to international markets, providing more skills for innovation, management and leadership for high growth firms, dual careers (recruitment of staff from industry and the public sector by universities and recruitment of staff and students from universities by industry and by the public sector), building careers in innovation and tech transfer;
• The role of the Triple Helix in identifying new forms of financing innovation: building more innovation-friendly financial institutions, strengthening links with business angels and venture capital investors (government venture capital interventions for regional innovation, university venture capital funds, regional venture capital funds).
• Triple Helix and ’smart specialisation’ for regional innovation strategies: how to construct comparative advantages, changing patterns of R&D and technological specialization (is there a shift from the stronger natural resource-driven sector to the knowledge-driven sector, is the much stronger bias towards labour-intensive and manufacturing-driven cluster categories in the EU-10 still present, while being relatively weak in advanced services and knowledge-intensive cluster categories9), role of institutional settings for research, education and innovation, relationship between regional clusters and innovation performance;
• Triple Helix indicators: indicators of mobility across Triple Helix institutional spheres (local, national, international), indicators for the measurement of the knowledge, innovation and consensus spaces;
• Impact of the global economic crisis on national and regional Triple Helix actors and overall effects on the innovation performance, government intervention to support innovation as a strategy of recovery from crisis.

References
1 Radosevic, S. 1998.’ The Transformation of National Systems of Innovation in Eastern Europe: Between Restructuring and Erosion ’, Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press, vol. 7(1), pages 77-108.
2 Freeman, C. 1987. Technology Policy and Economic Performance: Lessons from Japan. Pinter, London.
3 Lundvall, B.-Å. 1992 (Ed.) National Systems of Innovation. Pinter: London.
4 Nelson, R. 1993 (Ed.) National Innovation Systems. Oxford University Press, New York.
5 Edquist, C. 1997. Systems of innovation approaches—their emergence and characteristics. In: Edquist, C. (Ed.), Systems of Innovation: Technologies, Institutions and Organizations. Pinter Publishers, London.
6 Etzkowitz, H., Leydesdorff, L.1998.The endless transition: A "triple helix" of university-industry-government relations. Minerva 36: 203-208. 
7 Etzkowitz, H., Leydesdorff, L. 2000. The dynamics of innovation: from National Systems and "Mode 2" to a Triple Helix of university-industry-government relations. Research Policy 29 (2): 109-123.
8 Ranga, M. and H. Etzkowitz. 2013. ‘Triple Helix Systems: An Analytical Framework for Innovation Policy and Practice in the Knowledge Society ”, Industry and Higher Education 27 (4), Special Issue (August 2013).
9 Ketels, C. H.M., and Ö. Sölvell. "Clusters in the EU-10 New Member Countries" Report, European Commission, Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General, Brussels, July 2006.

Important Dates
Submission of Manuscripts: 15 October, 2013
Notification to Authors: 1 November, 2013
Final Versions Due: 1 December, 2013

Understanding the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an extension of the internet where all kinds of physical objects and devices from washing machines and refrigerators to laboratory instruments and personal health monitoring gadgets will be interconnected through internet communication protocols. One might imagine books, home appliances, food products, lights, medicines and even furniture could be hooked up with sensors, actuators, processors and communication units. Indeed, this world is already emerging with smart homes kitted out with lights and other technology that can be accessed and controlled from a smart phone for instance.

Wiki has this to say about the IoT: “The Internet of Things refers to uniquely identifiable objects and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. The term Internet of Things was proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999. The concept of the Internet of Things first became popular through the Auto-ID Center at MIT and related market analysts publications. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is often seen as a prerequisite for the Internet of Things. If all objects and people in daily life were equipped with identifiers, they could be managed and inventoried by computers.”

As with the mythical “paperless office” though, one has to wonder whether a truly “smart world” will ever come to pass in the form of the IoT. Nevertheless, there are many people working towards this ideal. There are three visions of the IoT that are in focus, according to a report written by Paul Estrada-Martinez and Antonio Garcia-Macias in the appropriately named International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing. The team is based in the Department of Computer Science, at the CICESE Research Centre, in Ensenada, Mexico and they describe these three paradigms thus:

1. Things-oriented: It addresses the design and creation of smart objects, exploring new forms of interaction in smart spaces as well as the development of IoT applications.


2. Internet-oriented: This vision is related with communication protocols, architectures, network technologies for smart objects and services that harness this technological infrastructure.


3. Semantic-oriented: It involves research about representation, storage, interconnection, searching and organization of information generated by smart objects and smart spaces aided by semantic technologies.

It is the third concept – the semantics – that the CICESE researchers have homed in on. They are therefore exploring how semantic information can enable richer interactions for IoT applications and systems. By building the necessary information infrastructure they can then provide a way to address the interaction problems that will emerge as people and things interact. For instance, a semantic approach will allow the following questions to be answered on an ad hoc basis in the IoT smart era: When a person enters a smart space, how to automatically know which smart objects are present and which ones are they? How to know the type and format of information provided by smart objects? How to determine what type of interactions are possible with a smart object?

“Beyond identifying certain characteristics of individual objects, our work also addresses physical spaces where systems are formed with collections of smart objects,” the team explains. “With these kinds of smart spaces it is possible to have context-aware and proactive systems that anticipate user needs.”

Martinez P.E.E. & Macias J.A.G. (2013). Semantic interactions in the Internet of Things, International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 13 (3/4) 167. DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2013.055464

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Int. J. of Computational Vision and Robotics to publish expanded papers from CCCS2013

Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Computer, Control and Cognitive Sciences (1 September 2013, Bengaluru, India) will be published by the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics.

Special issue: "ICT Adoption: Issues, Challenges and Perspectives"

International Journal of Management Practice 6(2) 2013

• Multi-Layer Integration Methodology for development of ICT competences in SMEs
• Education as a determining factor in ICT adoption: a case study of ICT SMEs
• Low-cost Internet of Things digital technology adoption in SMEs
• Multiview as a reflective framework: enabling reflection, transforming practice
• The acceptance and adoption of mobile telephony by Bangladeshi farmers: a qualitative enquiry
• The real SAP® Business One cost: a case study of ERP adoption in an SME

First issue: International Journal of Swarm Intelligence (free sample issue available)

Swarm intelligence is a computational intelligence technique to solve complex real-world problems. It involves the study of collective behaviour of individuals in a population who interact locally with one another and with their environment in a decentralised control system. The International Journal of Swarm Intelligence is a peer-reviewed international publication dedicated to reporting research and new developments in the multidisciplinary field of swarm intelligence.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.