There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Data Mining - Concepts and Techniques.

How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

The knowledge-creating company

An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems.

The advancement in wireless sensor and information technology has offered enormous healthcare opportunities for wearable healthcare devices and has changed the way of health monitoring. Despite the importance of this technology, limited studies have paid attention for predicting individuals’ influential factors for adoption of wearable healthcare devices. The proposed research aimed at determining the key factors which impact an individual's intention for adopting wearable healthcare devices. The extended technology acceptance model with several external variables was incorporated to propose the research model. A multi-analytical approach, structural equation modelling-neural network, was considered for testing the proposed model. The results obtained from the structural equation modelling showed that the initial trust is considered as the most determinant and influencing factor in the decision of wearable health device adoption followed by health interest, consumer innovativeness, and so on. Moreover, the results obtained from the structural equation modelling applied as an input to the neural network indicated that the perceived ease of use is one of the predictors that are significant for adoption of wearable health devices by consumers. The proposed study explains the wearable health device implementation along with test adoption model, and their outcome will help providers in the manufacturing unit for increasing actual users’ continuous adoption intention and potential users’ intention to use wearable devices.

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An Integrated SEM-Neural Network Approach for Predicting Determinants of Adoption of Wearable Healthcare Devices

Cloud computing (CC) is a recently developed computing paradigm that can be utilized to deliver everything-as-a-service to various businesses. In higher education institutions (HEIs), CC is rapidly being deployed and becoming an integral part of institution experience. CC adoption in HEIs is accompanied by numerous scientific contributions that address the topic from different perspectives. A systematic review of these heterogeneous contributions, which provide a coherent taxonomy, can be considered interesting for HEIs to identify opportunities to use CC in its own context. Therefore, this systematic literature review aims to analyze existing research on adopting and using CC in HEIs, review background research to develop a coherent taxonomy and provide a landscape for future research on CC in HEIs. The outcomes of this paper include a coherent taxonomy and an overview of the basic characteristics of this emerging field in terms of motivation and barriers of adopting CC in HEIs, existing individual and organizational theoretical models to understand the future requirements for extensively adopting and using CC in HEIs, and factors that influence the adoption of CC in HEIs at individual and organizational levels. Considerable information is available in relation to adopting and using CC in HEIs. This review will enhance this information by offering an in-depth analysis of the existing data to bridge any gap and expand on existing literature.

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Cloud Computing Adoption in Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Review

Problem statement: E-learning is gaining more acceptance as days pass because it provides learning opportunity any time and in any place. Different people have different preferences in terms of learning style such as reading text, listing audio or video, speaking and communication. To support these different learning preferences, there is need for multiple e-learning delivery methods and teaching techniques. Furthermore, there are many stakeholders of e-learning systems such as system developers, administrators, instructors, instructional designers, multimedia designers, online facilitators, independent evaluators. Whose views are important indicators for a complete e-learning system evaluation, but the most important views of e-learning quality are user view, developer’s view and manger’s view. Approach: The main aim of this study is to propose a new technique to evaluate e-learning website quality from developer’s view. To achieve our objective an extensive study on related resources was conducted. Our technique adopts the weights of quality characteristics which are obtained by carefully selected questionnaires’ from professional developers. We also present the evaluation process using AHP technique and the result of trial evaluation for validation of our technique Result: We proposed four quality characteristics named Service Content, System Functionality, Information Technology and System Reliability. We further, proposed 11 sub-characteristics with its attributes by following the structure of standard IOS/IEC 912. Conclusion: Our results show that the proposed technique could be useful and effective for ensuring that high quality systems are developed.

A Technique for Quality Evaluation of E-Learning from Developers Perspective

Our continuous dependencies on software (i.e. to assist as well as facilitate our daily chores) often raise dependability issue particularly when software is being employed harsh and life threatening or (safety) critical applications. Here, rigorous software testing becomes immensely important. Many combinations of possible input parameters, hardware/software environments, and system conditions need to be tested and verified against for conformance. Due to resource constraints as well as time and costing factors, considering all exhaustive test possibilities would be impossible (i.e. due to combinatorial explosion problem). Earlier work suggests that pairwise sampling strategy (i.e. based on two-way parameter interaction) can be effective. Building and complementing earlier work, this paper discusses an efficient pairwise test data generation strategy, called G2Way. In doing so, this paper demonstrates the correctness of G2Way as well as compares its effectiveness against existing strategies including AETG and its variations, IPO, SA, GA, ACA, and All Pairs. Empirical evidences demonstrate that G2Way, in some cases, outperformed other strategies in terms of the number of generated test data within reasonable execution time.

G2Way A Backtracking Strategy for Pairwise Test Data Generation

Cloud computing (CC) delivers services for organizations, particularly for higher education institutions (HEIs) anywhere and anytime, based on scalability and pay-per-use approach. Examining the factors influencing the decision-makers’ intention towards adopting CC plays an essential role in HEIs. Therefore, this study aimed to understand and predict the key determinants that drive managerial decision-makers’ perspectives for adopting this technology. The data were gathered from 134 institutional managers, involved in the decision making of the institutions. This study applied two analytical approaches, namely variance-based structural equation modeling (i.e., PLS-SEM) and artificial neural network (ANN). First, the PLS-SEM approach has been used for analyzing the proposed model and extracting the significant relationships among the identified factors. The obtained result from PLS-SEM analysis revealed that seven factors were identified as significant in influencing decision-makers’ intention towards adopting CC. Second, the normalized importance among those seven significant predictors was ranked utilizing the ANN. The results of the ANN approach showed that technology readiness is the most important predictor for CC adoption, followed by security and competitive pressure. Finally, this study presented a new and innovative approach for comprehending CC adoption, and the results can be used by decision-makers to develop strategies for adopting CC services in their institutions.

Rusli Abdullah

Papers

An Integrated SEM-Neural Network Approach for Predicting Determinants of Adoption of Wearable Healthcare Devices

Cloud Computing Adoption in Higher Education Institutions: A Systematic Review

A Technique for Quality Evaluation of E-Learning from Developers Perspective

G2Way A Backtracking Strategy for Pairwise Test Data Generation

A Multi-Analytical Approach to Predict the Determinants of Cloud Computing Adoption in Higher Education Institutions