Networks, Collective Action, and State Formation

SSRN-Networks, Collective Action, and State Formation by Andrew Conway: "Networks, Collective Action, and State Formation

Drew Conway
NYU - Department of Politics


December 15, 2010"

Abstract:
The study of state formation often focuses on building state capacity. The formation and subsequent bolstering of state capacity, however, are distinctly different activities. While the study of state capacity building has provided considerable insight into the role of formal institutions in maintaining stable governance, the implicit assumption in this work is the existence of a state upon which to build capacity. The collective decision to formalize institutions into a state - a necessary prior condition for building state capacity - is rarely addressed. In the following paper the role of informal institutions; specifically, social networks as informal institutions, in the process of state germination is explored. Using Afghanistan as a framework for the discussion, the research presented below attempts to illustrate the importance of the initial structural conditions of these networks, and the actors therein, in this process. The paper begins with a brief description of the role of informal institution and social networks in Afghanistan. Next, a provision point public goods game is presented as a basic model of the collective action problem inherent in state formation. Then, a network variant of this game is presented, which is implemented as a computational model. In the final sections the results of simulations from the computational model are presented, with a discussion and conclusions.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 23
Keywords: social networks, computational modeling, collective action, state building
JEL Classifications: C63, D74
Working Paper Series

CEN WS-LT Social Data

CEN WS-LT Social Data: "Metadata descriptions of learning objects can be gathered to create searchable catalogues of learning objects. Currently, looking up such metadata catalogues is the main way to search for learning objects, assess their usefulness, and retrieve them. Typically, metadata catalogues are stored in repositories that can be searched programmatically using a standard Application Programming Interface (API) such as the Simple Query Interface (SQI) or Search/Retrieve with URL (SRU). Very large catalogues can be created by harvesting (i.e., mirroring) metadata stored in repositories using protocols such as the Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Metadata contained within these repositories can also be published into one of these centralized catalogues using protocols such as the Simple Publishing Interface (SPI)."

Extended deadline i-KNOW - 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies

Call for Papers

i-KNOW - 11th International Conference on

Knowledge Management and Knowledge Technologies

7-9 September 2011, Graz, Austria

http://www.i-know.at/

Important Dates:
30 April 2011: Submission of the full papers (extended)
31 May 2011: Notification of acceptance
30 June 2011: Camera ready version
7 Sept.-9 Sept. 2011: i-KNOW 2011 Conference

Introduction
 i-KNOW reflects the increasing importance and convergence of knowledge management and knowledge technologies and aims at bridging the gaps between the various communities and their technology fields. Now in its eleventh year, i-KNOW has a tradition of bringing together Europe´s leading researchers and practitioners involved in knowledge management. Attracting more than 500 international attendees, i-KNOW is the premier conference on knowledge management and knowledge technologies in Europe. i-KNOW provides a perfect opportunity to stay abreast of the latest developments in these fields. The novelty and quality of the accepted contributions are ensured by a high-level program committee featuring international experts on a broad range of knowledge management topics. i-KNOW 2011 will be held concurrently with the I-SEMANTICS 2011- International Conference on Semantic Systems.

Submissions and Conference Proceedings
The conference proceedings of i-KNOW 2011 will be published by ACM ICPS and available in the ACM Digital Library! Submissions must be original and must not have been submitted for publication elsewhere. Articles should follow the ACM Guidelines for Formatting (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates).i-KNOW 2011
invites the submission of original contributions from academic, public and industrial/commercial sectors. The conference focus is on application-oriented research with emphasis on information technologies for knowledge management and new management tools and methods. We welcome papers which present methods, tools, technologies best practices, and case studies. Selected papers will appear in a special issue of J.UCS - Journal of Universal Computer Science.

Conference topics include (but are not limited to):
I. Knowledge Management
* Theories for Knowledge Management
* Concepts for Knowledge Management
* Models for Knowledge Management
* Innovative Approaches to Knowledge Management
* Evaluations and Use Case Studies of Knowledge Management
II. Knowledge Discovery
* Information Retrieval and Search Visualization
* Semantic Enhanced Knowledge Discovery
* Knowledge Discovery in the Future Internet
* Information Quality on the Web
* Knowledge Relationship Discovery and Statistical Relational Learning
* Large Scale Knowledge Discovery
* Text Mining & Semantic Enrichment
III. Knowledge Services
* User context detection and activity logging
* User profile modeling and maintenance
* Context-aware recommendation
* Collaborative knowledge construction and modeling
* Collaborative knowledge maturing
* Knowledge sharing and communication
... which are based on Knowledge Technologies such as
* Web 2.0 and Future Internet
* Social Network Analysis
* Adaptive, context-aware systems
* Semantic technologies
* Mobile computing approaches
* Web-services, SOA, service orchestration
* knowledge mash-ups
* Linked-open data
* Trust & privacy approaches
IV. Social Media
* Models of propagation and influence in twitter, blogs and social tagging systems
* Models of expertise and trust in twitter, wikis, newsgroups, question and answering systems
* Agent-based models of social media
* Models of emergent social media properties
* Cooperation and collaboration models
* Modeling social media users and their motivations and goals
* Architectural and framework models
* User modeling and behavioral models
* Social Media Engineering
V. Enterprise 2.0 and Social Web
* Enterprise 2.0
* Corporate Web 2.0
* Social Networking (Services) and the Enterprise
* Wikis, (Micro-)Blogs and the Enterprise
* Computer-Mediated Communication and Computer-Supported Collaborative Work with Social Media
* Communities and Social Media
* Knowledge Transfer, Sharing and Diffusion with Social Media
* Knowledge Management in the Future Internet of People, Content and Knowledge
* Knowledge Management and Business Model Innovation
* Web 2.0 and Viral Marketing

Keynote Speakers
Professor Gloria Mark, University of California, Irvine, USA
Professor Daniel A. Keim, University of Konstanz, Germany

Conference Chairs
Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center and Graz University of Technology, Austria
Michael Granitzer, Know-Center and Graz University of Technology, Austria

Program Chairs
Wolfgang Kienreich, Know-Center, Austria
Horst Bischof, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Werner Haas, Joanneum Research, Austria
Dietrich Albert, University of Graz, Austria

Program Committee
* Andrea Back, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
* Silke Balzert, DFKI, Germany
* Jean-Yves Blaise, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France
* Timo Borst, German National Library of Economics (ZBW) - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, Germany
* Richard Chbeir, Bourgogne University, France
* Giuseppe Conti, Fondazione Graphitech, Italy
* Ulrike Cress, Knowledge Media Research Institute Tübingen, Germany
* Raffaele De Amicis, Fondazione Graphitech, Italy
* Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
* Andreas Dengel, DFKI, Germany
* Vania Dimitrova, University of Leeds, Great Britain
* Monica Divitini, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway
* Mario Doeller, University of Passau, Germany
* Peter Dolog, Aalborg University, Denmark
* Hendrik Drachsler, Open University of the Netherlands, Netherlands
* Erik Duval, University of Leuven, Belgium
* Marcelo Errecalde, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
* Heinz Erretkamps, Johnson Controls GmbH, Germany
* Andreas Faatz, SAP Research CEC Darmstadt, Germany
* Joaquim Filipe, School of Technology of Setubal, Portugal
* Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada
* Chiara Ghidini, FBK Povo, Italy
* Denis Gillet, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland
* Marcin Grzegorzek, University of Siegen, Germany
* Knut Hinkelmann, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW, Schweiz
* Barbara Kieslinger, Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Austria
* Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen, Germany
* Tomaž Klobucar, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia
* Michael Koch, Universität der Bundeswehr München, Germany
* Jörn Kohlhammer, Fraunhofer IGD, Germany
* Rob Koper, Open University of the Netherlands, Netherlands
* Harald Kosch, University of Passau, Germany
* Sobha Lalitha Devi, Anna University Chennai, India
* Sheng-Tun Li, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
* Allison Littlejohn, Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, UK
* Dickson Lukose, MIMOS, Malaysia
* Mathias Lux, Alpe Adria University Klagenfurt, Austria
* Johannes Magenheim, Universität Paderborn, Germany
* Katherine Maillet, Institut Telecom SudParis, France
* Nikos Manouselis, Agricultural University of Athens, Greece
* Martin Memmel, DFKI - German Research Center for AI, Germany
* Manuel Montes-Y-Gómez, National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, Mexico
* Wolfgang Nejdl, L3S, Germany
* Tomas Pitner, Masaryk University of Brno, Czek Republic
* Andrew Ravenscroft, London Metropolitan University, Great Britain
* Uwe Riss, SAP Research, Germany
* Marc Rittberger, DIPF - German Institute for International Educational Research, Germany
* Paolo Rosso, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain
* Andreas Schmidt, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Germany
* Luciano Serafini, Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK-IRST), Italy
* Grigori Sidorov, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico
* Marc Spaniol, Max Planck Institute for Computer Science, Germany
* Efstathios Stamatatos, University of the Aegean, Greece
* Benno Stein, Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany
* Rudi Studer, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
* Robert Tolksdorf, Free University of Berlin, Germany
* Andrew Trotman, University of Otago, New Zealand
* Eric Tsui, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
* Bodo Urban, Fraunhofer IGD, Germany
* Vasudeva Varma, University of Hyderabad, India
* Katrien Verbert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
* Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany

Who Says What to Whom on Twitter | Yahoo! Research

You can download this fascinating paper here: Who Says What to Whom on Twitter | Yahoo! Research

Authors:Wu, S.; Hofman, J.M.; Mason, W.A.; Watts, D.J.

Source: (2011)"

Abstract:

We study several longstanding questions in media communications research, in the context of the microblogging service Twitter, regarding the production, flow, and consumption of information. To do so, we exploit a recently introduced feature of Twitter---known as Twitter lists---to distinguish between elite users, by which we mean specifically celebrities, bloggers, and representatives of media outlets and other formal organizations, and ordinary users. Based on this classification, we find a striking concentration of attention on Twitter---roughly 50% of tweets consumed are generated by just 20K elite users---where the media produces the most information, but celebrities are the most followed. We also find significant homophily within categories: celebrities listen to celebrities, while bloggers listen to bloggers etc; however, bloggers in general rebroadcast more information than the other categories. Next we re-examine the classical ``two-step flow'' theory of communications, finding considerable support for it on Twitter, but also some interesting differences. Third, we find that URLs broadcast by different categories of users or containing different types of content exhibit systematically different lifespans. And finally, we examine the attention paid by the different user categories to different news topics.

Evaluation of recommender technology using multi agent simulation

Check out this SlideShare Presentation by Zinayida Petrushyna.

Evaluation of recommender technology using multi agent simulation

View more presentations from petrushyna.

Post-doctoral Research Assistant Post at Oxford, UK

The Oxford University Computing Laboratory has a vacancy for a Research Assistant to work with Dan Olteanu on a research project primarily concerned with graph data management.
The aim of this project is to develop a graph data storage manager and techniques  for scalable query processing in graph databases. Candidates should have a first degree and a doctorate in computer science; a strong record of research in the area of databases and experience of programming using C++.
The post, which is a fixed term contract, is available for up to 12 months, will have a salary on the University grade 07S scale (currently £29,099-£35,788) and will include membership of USS as well as an annual leave entitlement of 38 days per year (inclusive of all public holidays and university closed periods).
Further details of the post, including the selection criteria and method of application are
available here:
http://www.comlab.ox.ac.uk/news/documents/Databasesfps.pdf
The closing date for applications is Friday 8th April 2011.
Interviews will be held week commencing 11th April 2011.

The International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2011)

The International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES 2011)

In cooperation with ACM SIGAPP and IFIP WG 2.6

http://sigappfr.acm.org/MEDES/11/

November 21-24, 2011

San Francisco, California, USA

Description and Objectives
In the world of the Internet, the rapid growth and exponential use of digital medias leads to the emergence of virtual environments namely digital ecosystems composed of multiple and independent entities such as individuals, organizations, services, software and applications sharing one or several missions and focusing on the interactions and inter-relationships among them. The digital ecosystem exhibits self-organizing environments, thanks to the re-combination and evolution of its "digital components", in which resources provided by each entity are properly conserved, managed and used. The underlying resources mainly comprehend data management, innovative services, computational intelligence and self-organizing platforms. Due to the multi-disciplinary nature of digital ecosystems and their characteristics, they are highly complex to study and design. This also leads to a poor understanding as to how managing resources will empower digital ecosystems to be innovative and value-creating. The application of Information Technologies has the potential to enable the understanding of how entities request resources and ultimately interact to create benefits and added-values, impacting business practices and knowledge. These technologies can be improved through novel techniques, models and methodologies for fields such as data management, web technologies, networking, security, human-computer interactions, artificial intelligence, e-services and self-organizing systems to support the establishment of digital ecosystems and manage their resources.
The International ACM Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems (MEDES) aims to develop and bring together a diverse community from academia, research laboratories and industry interested in exploring the manifold challenges and issues related to resource management of Digital Ecosystems and how current approaches and technologies can be evolved and adapted to this end. The conference seeks related original research papers, industrial papers and proposals for demonstrations.

Topics
In this call, we solicit original research and technical papers not published elsewhere. The papers can be theoretical, practical and application oriented on the following themes (but not limited to):
- Digital Ecosystem Infrastructure
- Web Technologies
- Service systems and Engineering
- Emergent Intelligence
- Data & Knowledge Management Systems
- Multimedia Information Retrieval
- Ontology Management
- Social Networks
- Game Theory
- Networks and Protocols
- Green computing
- Security & Privacy
- Standardization and Extensible Languages
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Business Intelligence
- E-Services , E-Learning, E-Humanities and E-Government
- B2B, B2C, B2A, E-Commerce, E-Business, E-Marketing and E-Procurement
- Digital Library
- Open Source

Paper Submission
Submissions must be in an electronic form as PDF format and should be uploaded using the conference website. The submitted paper should be at most 8 ACM single-space printed pages. Papers that fail to comply with length limit will be rejected. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 peer reviewers. After the preliminary notification date, authors rebut by evidence and arguments all reviewer inquiries and their
comments. Based on the rebuttal feedback, reviewers notify authors with the final decision. Selection criteria will include:  relevance, significance, impact, originality, technical soundness, and quality of presentation.
Preference will be given to submissions that take strong or challenging positions on important emergent topics
related to Digital Ecosystems. At least one author should attend the conference to present the paper.
The conference Proceedings will be published by ACM and indexed by the ACM Digital Library and DBLP.

Important Dates
- Submission Date: June 20th, 2011
- Preliminary Notification of Acceptance: September, 5th 2011
- Rebuttal Date: September 15th, 2011
- Final Notification of Acceptance: September, 20th 2011
- Camera Ready: September 30th, 2011
- Conference Dates: November 21-24, 2011

Special issues and Journal Publication
Extended versions of the selected papers will be published in one of the following reviewed journals.
-International Journal on Subject-Centric Computing (IJSCC)
-International Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence (IJOCI)
-International Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management (IJIEM)

General Chair
William Grosky, University of Michigan, USA
Xiaohua Tony Hu, Drexel University, USA

Program Chair
Youakim Badr, INSA de Lyon, France

International Advisory Board Members
Asanee Kawtrakul, NECTEC, Thailand
Janusz Kacprzyk, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
Philippe De Wilde, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland
Yasuo Matsuyama, Waseda University, Japan
Albert Zomaya, The University of Sydney, Australia

Steering Committee Members
Fernando Ferri, IRPPS-CNR, Italy
Frederic Andres, National Institute of Informatics, Japan
Richard Chbeir, University of Bourgogne, France
Hiroshi Ishikawa, Shizuoka University, Japan
Asanee Kawtrakul, NECTEC, Thailand
Dominique Laurent, University of Cergy-Pontoise, France
Epaminondas Kapetanios, University of Westminster, UK

Keynote Speakers
Paul Hofmann, VP Office of the Chief Scientist at SAP Labs, USA
Ruoyi Zhou, Senior Manager at IBM Almaden Research Center, USA

International Program Committee:
(Please check the web site for the full list)

Knowledge, networks and nations | Royal Society

Knowledge, networks and nations | Royal Society: "Knowledge, Networks and Nations surveys the global scientific landscape in 2011, noting the shift to an increasingly multipolar world underpinned by the rise of new scientific powers such as China, India and Brazil; as well as the emergence of scientific nations in the Middle East, South-East Asia and North Africa. The scientific world is also becoming more interconnected, with international collaboration on the rise. Over a third of all articles published in international journals are internationally collaborative, up from a quarter 15 years ago."

Extended deadline for DEXA-Workshop on Text-Based Information Retrieval (TIR 2011)

TIR'11 - 8th International Workshop on Text-Based Information Retrieval

In conjunction with the DEXA 2011

22nd International Conference on Database and Expert Systems Applications

Toulouse, France, August 29 - September 2

http://tir.webis.de

About this Workshop:

Intelligent algorithms for mining and retrieval are the key technology to cope with the information need challenges in our media-centered society. Methods for text-based information retrieval receive special attention, which results from the important role of written text, from the high availability of the Internet, and from the enormous importance of Web communities.
Advanced information retrieval and extraction uses methods from different areas: machine learning, computer linguistics and psychology, user interaction and modeling, information visualization, Web engineering, artificial intelligence, or distributed systems. The development of intelligent retrieval tools requires the understanding and combination of the achievements in these areas, and in this sense the workshop provides a common platform for presenting and discussing new solutions. The following list organizes classic and ongoing topics from the field of text-based IR for which contributions are welcome:

- Theory. Retrieval models, language models, similarity measures, formal analysis
- Mining and Classification. Category formation, clustering, entity resolution, document classification, learning methods for ranking
- Web. Community mining, social network analysis, structured retrieval from XML documents
- Information Quality. Quality assessment, information diffusion in social media
- NLP. Text summarization, keyword extraction, topic identification
- User Interface. Paradigms and algorithms for information visualization, personalization, privacy issue
- User Context. Context models for IR, context analysis from user behavior and from social networks
- Multilinguality. Cross-language retrieval, multilingual retrieval, machine translation for IR
- Evaluation. Corpus construction, experiment design, conception of user studies
- Semantic Web. Meta data analysis and tagging, knowledge extraction, inference, and maintenance
- Software Engineering. Frameworks and architectures for retrieval technology, distributed IR

The workshop is held for the eighth time. In the past, it was characterized by a stimulating atmosphere, and it attracted high quality contributions from all over the world. In particular, we encourage participants to present research prototypes and demonstration tools of their research ideas.

Important Dates:
Apr 13, 2011 Deadline for paper submission (extended)
May 10, 2011 Notification to authors
May 23, 2011 Camera-ready copy due

Contributions will be peer-reviewed by at least two experts from the related field. Accepted papers will be published as IEEE proceedings by IEEE CS Press.

Workshop Organization:
Benno Stein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Michael Granitzer, Know-Center Graz & Graz University of Technology

Contact: tir@webis.de
Information about the workshop can be found at http://tir.webis.de

4th Special Track on Computer-based Knowledge & Skill Assessment and Feedback in Learning Settings (CAF 2011)

1st CALL FOR PAPERS

4th Special Track on 

Computer-based Knowledge & Skill Assessment

and Feedback in Learning Settings (CAF 2011)

Pieštany, Slovakia, September 21 - 23, 2011

http://www.iicm.edu/CAF2011

In conjunction with 

14th International Conference on 

Interactive Computer aided Learning (ICL 2011)

Fourth Special Track on Computer-based Knowledge & Skill Assessment and Feedback in Learning Settings (CAF) http://www.iicm.edu/CAF2011This special track will take place during ICL 2011 in in Pieštany, Slovakia (21 - 23 September 2011) as a special programme item.

The Special Track CAF 2011 provides an interdisciplinary forum for international scientists and practitioners to discuss various aspects of computer-based knowledge & skill assessment in learning settings and based on that feedback provision for students and teachers. This year CAF is organized in cooperation with the European funded project ALICE (Adaptive Learning via Intuitive/Interactive, Collaborative and Emotional System), http://www.aliceproject.eu.
The International Conference on Interactive Computer aided Learning (ICL) is an interdisciplinary conference which aims to focus on the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in interactive computer aided learning.

Background
Our modern life at the beginning of the 21st century is strongly influenced by effects such as rapidly changing and developing information, technology-enhanced communication and information access, and new forms of production and services in a globalized world. This situation requires individuals to adapt their skills and competencies. Consequently, educational objectives and societal expectations have changed significantly in recent years. Modern learning settings must consider learning community aspects as well as learner-centered, knowledge-centered and assessment-centered aspects.
By focusing on the assessment, this concept can be further distinguished in (1) summative assessment, performed at the end of a set of learning activities, and (2) formative assessment, which is intended to give continuous feedback to students and teachers. The latter mentioned formative assessment gives information about the current state of knowledge and/or the degree of knowledge acquisition within learning activities.
Assessment is an important component of modern teaching and learning processes in face-to-face courses as well as in e-learning environments; it provides valuable feedback to teachers and students which allows the revision and adaptation of teaching and learning activities. Furthermore, assessment activities and results can also be utilized for building and strengthening metacognitive skills. However, continuous and frequent assessment in learning processes may cause excessive efforts and costs. Therefore, computer-assisted assessment systems (CaAS) and computer-based assessment systems (CbAS) have become of increasing interest over the years. Assessment systems may support parts or the entire chain of the assessment lifecycle. This lifecycle includes authoring and management of assessment items, compilation of specific tests, performance of assessments, and compilation and management results. Additionally, emerging interest in the sharing and re-use of assessment items or compiled assessment tests and the exchangeability of assessment outcomes has resulted in standardization efforts, such as the IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification (IMS QTI).
The special track will bring together international researchers as well as practitioners from different organisations who will have plenty of time for networking and real-world knowledge sharing.
CAF is interested in novel scientific research, findings from experiments and results form real-life applications.

We invite submissions that deal with issues including, but not limited to:
Aspects of formative and summative assessment
History and challenges of e-assessment
Computer-supported assessment rubric
Computer-based knowledge & skill assessment for individuals and groups
Computer-supported peer assessment for individuals and groups
Computer-supported self-assessment and group assessment
Computer-based student and teacher feedback about knowledge state and acquisition
Computer-based assessment in adaptive e-learning
Web 2.0 and assessment & feedback for individual and group learning
Automated essay grading
Natural short answer assessment
Assessment and feedback in computer-based simulations
Assessment and feedback in game-based learning settings
Test & training data and evaluation procedures
Reuse, Interoperability and Standardization
Security and Privacy

Important Dates
15 June 2011: Submission of full papers (8 pages)
1 Aug. 2011: Notification of acceptance
31 Aug. 2011: Camera ready version (8 pages)
21.-23. Sept. 2011: ICL 2011 Conference

Submission Procedure
File Types: Word for Windows
Language: English (British or US)
Style Guides & Template: http://www.icl-conference.org/template.doc
Paper Submission System: Please use the Electronic Submission Page http://www.conftool.com/icl-conference/
In case of problems or questions concerning the submission of papers, please contact the track chairs at CAF2011@iicm.edu.

Notification of Acceptance and Publishing
Accepted papers will be published within the ICL conference proceedings. At least one author has to register within 2 weeks after the notification of acceptance to be included into the conference programme (15. Aug. 2011). Authors fee is applicable only once per paper!
Some authors will be invited to submit extended versions of their paper for publication in the "European Journal of Open and Distance Learning" (EURODL) or the "International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning" (iJET).

CAF 2011 Chair
Christian Gütl, Graz University of Technology, Austria

CAF 2011 Organization team
Alexander Nussbaumer, University of Graz, Austria
Mohammad AL-Smadi, Graz University of Technology, Austria

CAF 2011 Program Committee (tentative)
•    Dietrich Albert, University of Graz, Austria
•    Ezendu Ariwa, London Metropolitan University, UK
•    Manuel Castro, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain
•    Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
•    Heinz Dreher, Curtin University, Australia
•    Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain
•    Michael Granitzer, Know-Center Graz, Austria
•    Margit Höfler, Graz University of Technology, Austria
•    Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
•    Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer, University Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia
•    Sven Meyer zu Eissen, Bayer Business Services, Germany
•    Jochen Musch, Universität Düsseldorf, Germany
•    Peter Reimann, University of Sydney, Australia
•    Diane Salter, University of Hong Kong, China
•    Sandra Schaffert, Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, Austria
•    Marcus Specht, Open University of the Netherlands, Netherlands
•    Benno Stein, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany
•    Daniela Tuparov, South Western University, Bulgarian
•    Sandra Helen Williams, Open University UK, UK
•    SylviaWong, Aston University, UK

Further Information:
Information about ICL 2011: http://www.icl-conference.org/
Travel Information: http://virtuni.eas.sk/rocnik/2011/accomodation.htm
Tourist Informaton: www.pic.piestany.sk

Postdoctoral Position in Mining, Analysis and Modelling of Online User Dynamics, DERI Galway, Ireland

Postdoctoral Position in Mining, Analysis and Modelling of Online User Dynamics

We are looking for a suitably qualified candidate for a challenging position as postdoctoral researcher in mining, analysis and computational modelling of individual and collective behaviour in online communities and social networks. The successful candidate will work in the Unit for Information Mining and Retrieval (uimr.deri.ie) at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (www.deri.ie), NUI Galway as part of the CLIQUE Strategic Research Cluster in Network Analysis and Visualisation (www.cliquecluster.org).
We would encourage potentially interested applicants to email us with expressions of interests in advance of a full application. Please e-mail Dr. Conor Hayes (conor.hayes@deri.org)

About the CLIQUE Strategic Research Cluster:
CLIQUE is a Science Foundation Ireland-funded research cluster of six academic principal investigators, industry collaborators and collaborating academics  based at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Galway and University College Dublin. The research cluster addresses the development of analytical, modelling and visualisation techniques for the analysis of large scale, dynamic graph and network data. The CLIQUE research programme addresses four core research challenges: the identification of coherent communities, the identification of nodes that have pivotal roles, the identification of anomalous network structure and the question of how to model and analyse information flow. In particular the research will address datasets that are massive, multi-attribute and dynamic.

About DERI and the Unit for Information Mining and Retrieval:
DERI is one of the founders of the Web Science Network of Laboratories (WSTNet - http://webscience.org/WSTNet.html) and a world-leading centre for research on the Semantic Web. The Unit for Information Mining and Retrieval at DERI focuses on topics such as web-mining, graph theoretic analysis, social network analysis, information diffusion and modelling, modelling of dynamic social systems, adaptive personalisation for the Web, case-based reasoning and machine learning for Semantic Web and the Web of Data. The unit has several national and internationally funded projects and extensive academic and industrial collaborations at national and international level. Currently in DERI, there are over 130 people from more than 20 nations working on national and international research projects.

The Topic:
The UIMR conducts fundamental analysis and modelling of the principles underlying the evolution and structures of large social, communication and collaborative networks on the Web. A key area of interest is in detecting, analysing and modelling the micro-level features and behaviour that impact upon the macro level functionality and health of online communities and social networks. In particular, we are interested in being able to profile the norms for different types of online communities in terms of user composition and behaviour and being able to predict risks and incipient failure to the services being offered by the community.


Current areas of interest include but are not limited to:
* Analysis of user roles in social networks and designing efficient algorithms to find these
* Analysis and predictive modelling of network functionality in terms of information diffusion or services such as question-answering
* Analysis and modelling of the interactions between online communities
* Formulating predictive models for information diffusion in social and collaborative networks;
* The effect of user features on churn in social networks
* Designing efficient graph algorithms to find evolving communities with correlated change behaviour
* Community detection in dynamic networks
* Studying and classifying online forum dynamics from a user engagement perspective
* Scalable approaches to generalised block-modelling
* Designing scalable, distributed, real-time algorithms to tackle problems in massive dynamic graph datasets;
In addition, the successful candidate will help coordinate the supervision and work of the research students in the group and collaborate with researchers in related EU projects in the institute.
More information about the position and the our research interests can be found at http://uimr.deri.ie/vacancies

Salary
The salary for this position is defined according to the NUI Galway salary scales for postdoctoral researchers (http://www.nuigalway.ie/payscales/index.php?name=POST%5EDOC%5ERESEARCHER_RESEARCH%5EASSOCIATE).
The position will be available from June 2011 for a 2-year term with the possibility of an extension subject to a performance review and funding renewal.

To Apply
Applications must include the following:
A letter of introduction; a detailed Curriculum Vitae; the names and addresses of at least three and not more than five referees; a focused statement of research interests summarising how the candidate's experience and expertise could contribute to and extend the research interests of the group. Applications should be sent via email (with PDF attachments) to conor.hayes@deri.org. Please include the code NUIG-UIMR-BHV in the subject line of the email.
The closing date for receipt of applications is 5pm GMT on Thursday 21st April 2011. However, we would encourage potentially interested applicants to email us with expressions of interests in advance of a full application. Please e-mail Dr. Conor Hayes (conor.hayes@deri.org)

Essential skills
* A PhD, typically in computing-related discipline, with a strong empirical and analytical component. We would welcome applications from suitably qualified candidates in the social science discipline.
* A PhD with a substantial focus on the any of the following: graph analysis and mining, social network analysis, behaviour analysis and modelling, statistics, Web-mining, analysis of dynamic data streams.
* Good programming skills
* A good record of published research in good quality peer-reviewed conferences or journals.
* An ability to develop and manage their own research agenda.
* Ability to work in an interdisciplinary team.
* Good interpersonal skills and a commitment to working collaboratively in a research team and delivering on project goals.

Desirable skills
Academic Skills:
* Experience and familiarity with multi-relational datasets of social networks
* Experience with analysis tools such as Matlab, Mathematica or R.
* Experience of managing and processing large volumes of data.
* Ability to quickly develop research prototypes
* Experience in the preparation of research grant proposals.
* Some experience assisting in the supervision of research students.
Project Management Skills:
* Experience in managing the delivery of research project deliverables such as reports and prototypes
* Experience in the development of research software.
* Experience in developing an effective working relationship with researchers from other disciplines or industrial collaborators.

Survey Book on Social Network Analysis

Title: Social Network Data Analytics

Aggarwal, Charu C. (Ed.)

1st Edition., 2011, XIV, 502 p. 100 illus., 50 in color., Hardcover

ISBN: 978-1-4419-8461-6

Social Network Data Analytics covers an important niche in the social network analytics field. This edited volume contains survey chapters contributed by prominent researchers in this field. The book spans a wide range of topics in social network data mining, and the coverage is designed to be comprehensive. This book is unique in focussing on the data analytical aspects of social networks in the internet scenario, rather than the traditional sociology-driven emphasis prevalent in the existing books, which do not focus on the unique data-intensive characteristics of online social networks. Emphasis is placed on simplifying the content so that students and practitioners benefit from this book. The table of contents and introductory chapter for the book may be
found at www.charuaggarwal.net/socialtoc.pdf

IEEE TIST Special Issue on Intelligent Systems for Socially Aware Computing

Special Issue on Intelligent Systems for Socially Aware Computing

ACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology (TIST)

http://tist.acm.org/

Guest Editors: Zhiwen Yu, Daqing Zhang, Nathan Eagle, Diane Cook

Recent advance of pervasive computing technologies promises to significantly enhance the capabilities for data capture and data analysis. In this socially aware era, it holds great promise and challenge to use the sensory data to understand human behavior, human mobility, and human activities, and ultimately to help solve human social problems. The integration of pervasive computing and social computing results in a new emerging research field in computer science "Socially Aware Computing". While the concept of social awareness has been developed in the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work for decades, the notion of Socially Aware Computation and Communication has only recently been raised by Alex Pentland, which promises to bring new light to the design of new software methodology, infrastructure, data analysis, and applications. This new paradigm aims to leverage the large-scale and diverse sensing devices that can be deployed in human daily lives to recognize individual behaviors, discover group interaction patterns,  and support communication and collaboration. Intelligent systems powered by artificial intelligence play an important
role in realizing socially aware computing in various aspects, such as sensing, processing and supporting human interaction. This special issue will focus on intelligent systems and related applications for socially aware computing. The special issue seeks original research papers that report on the latest results and advances in this area. It will also consider a survey article that  focuses on the state-of-the-art in intelligent systems for socially aware computing, highlighting trends and challenges. The papers will be peer reviewed and will be selected on the basis of their quality and relevance to the theme of this special issue.

Topics
Topics include (but are not limited to):
- Mobile social networking systems
- Location-based intelligent systems
- Collaborative recommender systems
- Large-scale pervasive sensing and search
- Human mobility understanding
- Community construction and evolution
- Pattern mining of human communication through phones, email, instant messaging
- Group interaction and collaboration
- Supporting social interaction with RFID, smart phones, and public displays
- Infrastructure, architectures, and platforms for socially aware systems
- Applications such as human health, public safety, city resource management, environment monitoring, and transportation management
- Evaluation of socially aware systems

Important Dates
Full manuscript due: Jun. 30, 2011
Notification of the first review process: Sep. 15, 2011
Final acceptance notification: Nov. 20, 2011
Final manuscript due: Nov. 30, 2011
Publication date: Spring 2012 (Tentative)

Submission Guidelines
Original manuscripts should be submitted through the Manuscript Central system at
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tist. Please select "Special Issue: Intelligent Systems for Socially Aware Computing" as the manuscript type. Further details on manuscript preparation as well as publication policies are available on the ACM TIST Web site at http://tist.acm.org/authors.html.

Guest Editors
Zhiwen Yu, Northwestern Polytechnical University, P. R. China, Email:
zhiwenyu@nwpu.edu.cn
Daqing Zhang, Institut TELECOM SudParis, France, Email:
daqing.zhang@it-sudparis.eu
Nathan Eagle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, Email:
nathan@mit.edu
Diane Cook, Washington State University, USA, Email: cook@eecs.wsu.edu

The sixth International Conference on Embedded and Multimedia Computing (EMC 2011)

The sixth International Conference on Embedded and Multimedia Computing (EMC-11)  

http://grid.hust.edu.cn/EMC2011  

Enshi, China, August 11-13, 2011 

Published by IEEE  

Joint Conference: HumanCom-11 

The 4th International Conference on Human-Centric Computing (HumanCom-11) 

http://grid.hust.edu.cn/HumanCom2011

Important Dates
Paper Submission Deadline    : April 1, 2011 (Extended)
Acceptance Notification      : April 25, 2011
Camera Ready Due         : May 10, 2011
Conference Dates             : August 11-13, 2011

Special Issues:
Distinguished papers accepted and presented in EMC-11, after further revisions, will be published in some special issues. The submission system will be prepared. Some confirmed journals are listed:
- International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence  (IJITCC) - Inderscience
- Journal of Convergence (JoC) - FTRA Publishing
- Journal of Information Processing Systems (JIPS) - KIPS
- International Journal of Multimedia and Image Processing (IJMIP)

Submission Guidelines
The proceedings will be published by Conference Publishing Services. Papers not exceed 8 pages with free layout style should be submitted via:
http://cse.stfx.ca/~emc2011/sub/ (Will be open on 1th., March)
Every submitted paper will be carefully reviewed by at least three members of the International Program Committee. All accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings published by IEEE Press (IEEE eXpress Conference Publishing group) and will be included in the IEEE Xplorer. Authors should submit a paper with 4-8 pages in length by using online systems for review.

The 6th International Conference on Embedded and Multimedia Computing (EMC-11), technically co-sponsored by FTRA, will be held in Enshi, China, on August 11-13, 2011.

EMC-11 will be the most comprehensive conference focused on the various aspects of advances in Embedded and Multimedia (EM) Computing.

EMC 2011 will provide an opportunity for academic and industry professionals to discuss the latest issues and progress in the area of EM. In addition, the conference will publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories and practical applications in EM.

In addition, the conference will publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories and practical applications in human-centric computing. Furthermore, we expect that the conference and its publications will be a trigger for further related research and technology improvements in this important subject.  The EMC-11 is the next event, in a series of highly successful International Conference on Embedded and Multimedia Computing, previously held as EMC-10 (Cebu, Philippines, Aug. 2010), EM-Com 2009 (Korea, Dec. 2009), UMC-08 (Australia, Oct. 2008), ESO-08(China, Dec. 2008), UMS-08 (Korea, April, 2008), UMS-07(Singapore, Jan. 2007), ESO-07(Taiwan, Dec. 2007), ESO-06(Korea, Aug. 2006).

Topics
We are inviting new and unpublished papers on, but not limited to, the following topics:

Track 1. Embedded Systems, Software and Applications
Track 2. Cyber-Physical Systems
Track 3. Real-time systems
Track 4. Multimedia Computing&  Intelligent Services
Track 5. Distributed Multimedia Systems
Track 6. Multimedia Software Engineering

Contact Information
If you have any question about the CFPs and papers submission, please email to Dr. Ran Zheng (zhraner@hust.edu.cn).

PhD Position available in Service Science, Tilburg, The Netherlands

ERISS, the European Research Institute in Service Science, part of the Department of Information Management, Tilburg University, is seeking a  highly motivated and dedicated PhD candidate to work on exceedingly challenging, interdisciplinary research projects at the intersection of software service systems and cloud computing.

You will have the opportunity to work in an international environment and collaborate with and visit a number of high-profile researchers from universities and research institutes all over Europe.

Candidate Profile

Candidates should meet the following requirements:

• An excellent Masters degree  (avg. over 8/10) in Computer Science or a closely related field;
• Programming skills in languages such as Java, PHP, Perl and/or C++.
• Web service programming skills and XML
• Strong formal background (mathematics, logic, etc.);
• Very good communication and writing skills in English;
• Knowledge and experience within the fields of SOA, business process management and cloud computing, and software modeling and development skills will be highly rated.

Candidates should be able to work in a collaborative environment with a strong commitment to achieving research excellence.

Application Procedure

Interested candidates are requested to send their application to Alice Kloosterhuis, A.M.Kloosterhuis@uvt.nl, including:

• A cover letter describing yourself and your interests;
• Soft copy of your publications (e.g. master thesis, conference/workshop/journal papers);
• Your CV;
• Your transcripts;
• Proof of proficiency in English (e.g. TOEFL test or IELTS) if English is not your first language.

The position will remain open until filled.

Contact Person
Alice Kloosterhuis

Development of Computer Science Disciplines - A Social Network Analysis Approach

Development of Computer Science Disciplines - A Social Network Analysis Approach

Authors: Manh Cuong Pham, Ralf Klamma, Matthias Jarke

Abstract: In contrast to many other scientific disciplines, computer science considers conference publications. Conferences have the advantage of providing fast publication of papers and of bringing researchers together to present and discuss the paper with peers. Previous work on knowledge mapping focused on the map of all sciences or a particular domain based on ISI published JCR (Journal Citation Report). Although this data covers most of important journals, it lacks computer science conference and workshop proceedings. That results in an imprecise and incomplete analysis of the computer science knowledge. This paper presents an analysis on the computer science knowledge network constructed from all types of publications, aiming at providing a complete view of computer science research. Based on the combination of two important digital libraries (DBLP and CiteSeerX), we study the knowledge network created at journal/conference level using citation linkage, to identify the development of sub-disciplines. We investigate the collaborative and citation behavior of journals/conferences by analyzing the properties of their co-authorship and citation subgraphs. The paper draws several important conclusions. First, conferences constitute social structures that shape the computer science knowledge. Second, computer science is becoming more interdisciplinary. Third, experts are the key success factor for sustainability of journals/conferences.

Subjects:	Digital Libraries (cs.DL)
Report number:	DBIS-0001
Cite as:	arXiv:1103.1977v1 [cs.DL]

Serious Games Development and Applications (SGDA 2011)

CALL FOR PAPERS 

SGDA’11 : Serious Games Development and Applications 

http://groups.ist.utl.pt/sgda11/ 

Lisbon, Portugal, 19th and 20th September 2011 

This Conference aims at collecting and disseminating knowledge on serious games technologies, design and development; to provide game designers and interdisciplinary communities with a peer-reviewed forum to discuss the state-of-the-art in serious games research, their ideas and theories, and innovative applications of serious games; to explain cultural, social and scientific phenomena by means of serious games; to concentrate on the interaction between theory and application; to develop new methodologies in various application domains using games technologies; and to explore perspectives of future developments and innovative applications relevant to serious games and related areas. The strong focus of the conference on the application of serious games by organizations implies the strong involvement of industry through the fostering of an environment where all interested stakeholders share knowledge and network with one another.

TOPICS:

. Game design, game study, game theories
. Storytelling
. Simulation, modelling
. Gaming; post-experience analysis; role-play; gameplay
. Virtual Reality, 3D Visualisation
. Active learning, experiential learning, social learning
. Medical applications of games technology
. Competence development, Advertisement and awareness building
. Case studies of industrial and scientific applications of Serious Games in engineering, healthcare, education and learning theories, training, military, production, human interfaces, crisis response, public policy, cognition, psychology, communication, decision making, environmental issues, sociology, international studies, peace and conflict studies, organization studies, etc.
. Serious Games in economics, marketing, business, management, and entrepreneurship
. Serious Games in mobile computing applications and social networks


IMPORTANT DATES:

. Full papers (maximum of 12 pages) : 8th April 2011
. Case studies (6 pages) : 8th April 2011
. Notification of acceptance : 8th May 2011
. Final Manuscript : 24th May 2011



SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

All contributions must be of high quality, original, should not have been published elsewhere and
should not be intended for publication elsewhere during the review period or time of the conference.
Contributions from applied fields in industry are very welcome.

Authors of accepted publications are expected to present their work at the conference.

The conference proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in Lecture Notes in Computer
Science (http://www.springer.com/lncs) as part of the LNCS series. When formatting papers, please
refer to the Springer web site, and strictly follow the Instructions to LNCS Authors. Papers are
required in PDF format for review purposes, but authors are required to upload editable word-
processor files (LaTeX or MS Word) at the end of the review process (see the Springer web site to
find out about the files required).

Submission online at : http://senldogo0039.springer-sbm.com/SGDA2011/servlet/Conference/ 

CONTACT DETAILS:

Manuel Fradinho Oliveira

Manuel.oliveira@sintef.no

Call for Workshops - Sixth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL2011)

EC-TEL 2011

Sixth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning

Towards Ubiquitous Learning

http://www.ec-tel.eu

20-23 September 2011, Palermo, Italy

*** CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS ***

EC-TEL 2011 offers the opportunity to host several workshops. Parties interested to organize a workshop are asked to submit a proposal of max.4 pages outlining the theme of the workshop, workshop format, expected participants and domains addressed, dissemination activities, programme committee, and organizational requirements. Proposals should be submitted via the EasyChair system of EC-TEL.
Please Note: This year the workshop selection will be handled competitively. That is, the workshop proposals will be ranked according to innovativeness, overall quality, and comprehensive planning and the top 7-8 proposals will be chosen.

*** IMPORTANT DATES ***
Workshop proposals: 04 April 2011
Workshop acceptance: 09 May 2011
Workshops: 20-21 September 2011
Conference: 22-23 September 2011
Submissions will be handled through EasyChair ("ectel2011" conference,
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ectel2011)

*** PROJECT MEETINGS ***
In addition to the regular sessions and workshops, EC-TEL offers a unique opportunity for European Projects in TEL to held face-to-face meetings. Please contact the local organization Chair at your earliest
convenience to book meeting rooms. Room reservation for project meetings deadline: 15 June 2011

*** EC-TEL 2011 ***
EC-TEL is a unique setting for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers in Technology Enhanced Learning from Europe and other continents to meet together and exchange on the current challenges and advances in the field. At EC-TEL, experts and young researchers in Computer Science, Education, Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Social Science, as well as entrepreneurs have the opportunity to establish collaborations, strengthen their links and cross-fertilize their core disciplines. EC-TEL 2011will push further the Ubiquitous Learning paradigm by not only tackling the challenges of exploiting new trendy devices in various contexts, but also by investigating ways to meet and support formally and informally the learners in their learning playgrounds and social environments thanks to innovative scenarios.
In addition to regular papers, we invite contributions for demonstrations, workshops and project meetings. A doctoral consortium will also be organized concurrently with the workshops. See the extended
call for papers for more details: http://www.ec-tel.eu/call-for-papers

*** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS ***
Chris Dede (Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, USA):
"Emerging Technologies, Ubiquitous Learning, and Educational
Transformation".

Carlo Perrotta (Futurelab, UK): Ubiquitous learning vs. the value of
boundaries: reflections on five years of "innovation in education"

*** CONFERENCE ORGANISATION ***
· General Chair: Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
· Programme Chairs: Carlos Delgado Kloos, eMadrid/TELSpain/University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain; and Denis Gillet, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
· Workshop Chair: Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center Graz, Austria
· Poster and Demonstration Chair: Fridolin Wild, The Open University, UK
· Dissemination Chair: Abelardo Pardo, eMadrid/TELSpain/University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain
· Local Organization Chair: Mario Allegra, Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche, Italy
· Doctoral Consortium Chairs: Katherine Maillet, Télécom SudParis, France; and Mike Sharples, University of Birmingham, UK

IEEE Multimedia Special Issue on Large-Scale Multimedia Collections

CALL FOR JOURNAL PAPERS (http://vls-mcmr10.eurecom.fr/mu.cfp.v19n3.pdf)

IEEE MULTIMEDIA (Special Issue)

Large-Scale Multimedia Data Collections

Submission Deadline: 1 October 2011
Publication Issue: July-September 2012

Pivotal to many tasks in relation to multimedia research and development is the availability of a sufficiently large data set and its corresponding ground truth. Currently, most available data sets for multimedia research
are either too small, such as the Corel or Pascal data sets; too specific, such as the Text Retrieval Conference Video (Trecvid) data set; or without ground truth, such as the recent efforts by the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Microsoft Research Asia that gathered millions of Web images for testing. While it's relatively easy to crawl and store a huge amount of data, the creation of ground truth necessary to systematically train, test, evaluate, and compare the performance of various algorithms and systems is a major problem. For this reason, more and more research groups are individually putting efforts into the creation of such corpus to carry out research on large-scale data sets. There is a need to unify these individual efforts into the creation of a unified Web-scale repository that would benefit the entire multimedia research community.
The purpose of this special issue is to present and report on the construction and analysis of large-scale multimedia data sets and resources, and to provide a strong reference for multimedia researchers interested in
large-scale multimedia data sets. The issue will specifically address the construction of data sets; the creation of ground truths; the sharing and extending of such resources in terms results and analysis related to ground
truth, features, algorithms, and tools.
The IEEE MultiMedia special issue on large-scale multimedia data collections solicits original papers that will be of interest for IEEE MultiMedia readers. The list of possible topics includes, but is not limited to:
- Construction, unification, and evolution of corpus: the state of use, the lessons learned, and their impact, scalability of results, and range of applications.
- Framework for sharing of data sets, ground truths, features, algorithms, and tools, as well as comparison and analysis of results.
- Large-scale corpus analysis techniques: knowledge mining from large-scale multimedia corpus, optimization techniques on large-scale multimedia data for efficiency, and techniques for large-scale, content-based multimedia retrieval.
- Performance evaluation methodologies and standards.

Questions?

For more information, please contact the Guest Editors:
Benoit Huet, EURECOM
Alexander Hauptmann, Carnegie Mellon University
Tat-Seng Chua, National University of Singapore

Submission Procedures
Submit your paper at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee. When uploading your paper, please select the appropriate special issue title under the category "Manuscript Type." If you have any questions regarding
the submission system, please contact Andy Morton at mm-ma@computer.org. All submissions will undergo a blind peer review by at least two expert reviewers to ensure a high standard of quality. Referees will consider originality, significance, technical soundness, clarity of exposition, and relevance to the special issue topics. All submissions must contain original, previously unpublished research or engineering work. Papers must stay within the following limits: 6,500 words maximum, 12 total combined figures and tables with each figure counting as 200 words toward the total word count, and 18 references.

Deadlines
To submit a paper to the July-September 2012 special issue, please observe the following deadlines:
1 October 2011: Full paper must be submitted using our online manuscript submission service and prepared according to the instructions for authors (please see the Author Resources page at
http://www.computer.org/multimedia/author.htm).
15 January 2012: Authors notified of acceptance, rejection, or needed revisions.
5 April 2012: Final versions due.

Online Printable Version:
http://vls-mcmr10.eurecom.fr/mu.cfp.v19n3.pdf
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/computingnow/mmcfp3

8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2011)

The 8th International Conference on

Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2011)

- Building Smart Worlds in Real and Cyber Spaces -

http://cse.stfx.ca/~uic2011/

Technically Sponsored by IEEE CS TCSC 

Banff, Canada, September 01-04, 2011

Co-located with ATC 2011 and IEEE HPCC 2011 

== IMPORTANT DATES ==

Submission Deadline: April 15, 2011
Authors Notification: June 01, 2011
Final Manuscript Due: July 01, 2011


== PAPER SUBMISSION ==

Papers need to be prepared according to the LNCS format, and submitted in PDF format via the UIC 2011 submission site: http://cse.stfx.ca/~uic2011/sub/

== PAPER PUBLICATION ==

Accepted conference papers are planned to be published by Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS, SCIE and EI indexed). At least one author of each accepted paper is required to register and present their work at the conference; otherwise the paper will not be included in the proceedings. Selected papers, after further extensions and revisions, will be published in special issues of prestigious journals on pervasive and ubiquitous computing.


The UIC 2011 topics include but are not limited to the following:

1. Ubiquitous Intelligent/Smart Systems
* Sensor, Ad Hoc, Mesh & P2P Networks
* Social Networking and Computing
* Knowledge Representation and Ontology
* Wearable, Personal and Body Area Systems
* Middleware and Intelligent Platforms
* Intelligent Services and Architectures
* Agents, Swarm and Context-aware Systems
* Nature-inspired Intelligent Systems

2. Ubiquitous Intelligent/Smart Environments
* Smart Room, Home, Office, Laboratory
* Smart Shop, Hospital, Campus, City, etc.
* Smart Vehicle, Road, Traffic & Transportation
* Healthcare and Elder/Child Care Services
* Pervasive/Ubiquitous Media and Services
* Pervasive Learning, Games, Entertainment
* Other Intelligent/Smart Applications

3. Ubiquitous Intelligent/Smart Objects
* Electronic Labels, Cards, E-Tags and RFID
* Embedded Chips, Sensors & Actuators
* MEMS, NEMS, Micro & Biometric Devices
* Smart Appliances and Wearable Devices
* Material, Textile, Cloth, Furniture, etc.
* Embedded Software and Agents
* Interaction to Smart Objects/Devices
* Smart Object OS and Programming

4. Personal/Social/Physical Aspects
* Real/Cyber World Modeling and Semantics
* User/Object Identity and Activity Recognition
* Adaptive User Interfaces and Tools
* Security, Privacy, Safety and Legal Issues
* Emotional, Ethical and Psychological Factors
* Implication & Impact of Ubiquitous Intelligence
* Relations between Real and Cyber Worlds

== COMMITTEE ==

Honorary Chair
Stephen S. Yau, Arizona State University, USA

General Chairs
M. Jamal Deen, McMaster University, Canada
Witold Pedrycz, University of Alberta, Canada
Kay Chen Tan, National Univ. of Singapore, Singapore

Program Chairs
Robert C. Hsu, Chung Hua University, Taiwan
Torben Weis, University of Duisburg, Germany
Woontack Woo, GIST, Korea

Program Vice Chairs

Workshop Chairs
Bernady O. Apduhan, Kyushu Sangyo University, Japan
Waltenegus Dargie, Tech. Univ. of Dresden, Germany

Advisory Committee
Sumi Helal (Chair), University of Florida, USA
Norio Shiratori, Tohoku University, Japan
Jeffrey J.P. Tsai, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Mohan Kumar, University of Texas at Arlington, USA
Max Muehlhaeuser, Darmstadt Univ. of Tech., Germany
Yuanchun Shi, Tsinghua University, China
Zhaohui Wu, Zhejiang University, China
Xingshe Zhou, Northwest Polytechnic Univ., China
Ahhwee Tan, Nanyang Technological Univ., Singapore

Steering Committee
Jianhua Ma (chair), Hosei University, Japan
Laurence T. Yang (chair), St. Francis Xavier Univ., Canada
Hai Jin, Huazhong University of Sci. & Tech., China
Theo Ungerer, University of Augsburg, Germany
Jadwiga Indulska, University of Queensland, Australia
Daqing Zhang, Institute TELECOM SudParis, France

Publicity Chairs
Carlos Westphall, Federal Univ. of Santa Catarina, Brazil
Wenbin Jiang, Huazhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., China
Damien Sauveron, University of Limoges, France
Xingang Liu, Yonsei University, Korea
Mianxiong Dong, University of Aizu, Japan
Hao Chen, University of Florida, USA
Jiehan Zhou, University of Toronto, Canada
Agustinus Borgy Waluyo, Monash University, Australia
Senol Z. Erdogan, Maltepe University, Turkey

Panel Chairs
Daqing Zhang, Institute TELECOM SudParis, France
Ramiro Liscano, Univ. of Ontario Inst. of Tech., Canada

Demo/Exhibition Chairs
Gang Pan, Zhejiang University, China
Xing Xie, Microsoft Research Asia, China

Award Chairs
Judith Symonds, Auckland Univ. of Tech., New Zealand
Jong Hyuk Park, Kyungnam University, Korea

Special Track Chairs
Zheng Yan, Nokia Research Center, Finland
Yan Wang, Macquarie University, Australia

International Liaison Chairs
Bessam Abdulrazak, Univ. Sherbrooke, Canada
Frode Eika Sandnes, Oslo University College, Norway
Marius Portmann, University of Queensland, Australia
Jiannong Cao, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HK
Yo-Ping Huang, National Taipei Univ. of Tech., Taiwan

Industrial Liaison Chairs
Nagula Sangary, RIM, Canada
Alvin Chin, Nokia Research Centre Beijing, China

Local Chairs
Andy Yongwen Pan, St Francis Xavier University, Canada
Alice Ying Huang, St Francis Xavier University, Canada
Shizheng Jiang, St Francis Xavier University, Canada

Web Chair
Chunsheng Zhu, St Francis Xavier University, Canada

Program Committee
See UIC 2011 website: http://cse.stfx.ca/~uic2011
/

Computer Science Education Research Conference (CSERC ’11) programme published

The programme for Computer Science Education Research Conference (CSERC ’11) has been published. On Thursday 7 and Friday 8 April 2011 you can join presentations on recent research in the field of computer science education. Sally Fincher (UK) and Bernard Cornu (France) are the keynote speakers. There is a great variety of subjects, ranging from computer science education in South Africa to Plagiarism detection for Java, from student discussion forums to game based learning in computer science education.

CSERC ’11

It is the first time that CSERC ’11 is being organised collocated with the Nederlands Informatica Onderwijs Congres (NIOC). CSERC is an international scientific conference, creating a platform for researchers in the field of computer science education. NIOC en CSERC take place at the same time and the same place. Participants of NIOC can visit the presentations on CSERC ’11 and vice versa. The conferences are complementary, and jointly offer an enriched and more varied programme for the participants.

You find the complete programme of CSERC and short descriptions of the presentations on the conference site. You can also register there.

3 Days left - Call for PhD candidate participation in the Joint TEL Summer School (deadline March 18)

Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning 2011

(www.JTELSummerSchool.eu)

Chania, Crete, Greece, May 30 – June 3, 2011

Second Announcement

Deadline for applications: March 18, 2011

We are pleased to announce the 7th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning, to take place from Monday, May 30th to Friday June 3rd, 2011. Pre-summer school activities are organized all day on Sunday, May 29th.

The summer school aims to encourage participants to adopt a critical stance in thinking about the role of technologies in providing opportunities for learners and the potential of these opportunities in terms of learning.

The summer school provides a learning environment where participants get opportunities to: develop their research skills; increase their knowledge base; collaborate with others in their own and complementary research areas; engage in debate; have access to experts in the field; and discuss their own work.

The programme will include lectures from a broad range of domains which contribute to advancing the field of Technology Enhanced Learning. TEL research projects are encouraged to provide students with a perspective of the state-of-the-art research under study in their working groups. The programme will also include practical and methodological workshops and opportunities for doctoral candidates to develop their personal research. Students will have opportunities to present and discuss their doctoral work.

Applications should be submitted online before Friday, March 18, 2011. The online application form will be available from Friday, January 28, 2011 at www.JTELSummerSchool.eu.

Applicants will be required to submit:
- a CV outlining their educational background and work experience (maximum
 one page);
- a letter of motivation, explaining why they want to participate in
 the Summer School (maximum one page);
- a statement explaining how they think they might contribute to the Summer
 School and in particular how they can contribute to developing STELLAR
 Grand Challenges (maximum one page);
- a letter of support from their PhD advisor, which should include
 a statement of the level of support the institution is able to supply.

Applicants requiring financial support for participation or travel should explicitly mention it in their motivation letter, briefly explaining their circumstances. It is expected that applicants working on research projects which are able to fund them will not apply for financial support. To ensure a high ratio between tutors and students the school will be limited to 60 PhD students.

In order to increase social contacts among the summer school participants, the programme includes several social events. A variety of sport activities will also be offered to the summer school participants.

Cultural excursions are organised on the Sunday preceding the summer school and the Saturday which closes the summer school.


Support

This year the JTEL Summer School will benefit from special funding from the STELLAR Network of Excellence in Technology Enhanced Learning and the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning.


Venue Description

The Summer School will take place in Plataniás, Crete. The village of Plataniás has successfully retained its individual charm and hospitality whilst developed into a popular, cosmopolitan holiday destination with a wide range of taverns, shops, bars and restaurants, a bustling centre full of activity and entertainment. The centre of Hania with its enchanting Venetian harbour is 9km away from Plataniás.


Accommodation and social events

Accommodation and summer school facilities will be made available at Porto Plataniás Beach Resort, (http://www.portoplatanias.gr/) situated in a quiet, idyllic area of Plataniás, next to one of the cleanest beaches of the island. Within walking distance from the Resort you have the chance to explore the exceptionally picturesque village of Plataniás up on the hill, as well as the surrounding area.

PhD students are asked to share double rooms, triple or quadruple bungalows with other PhD students.


Cost of Summer School

The cost for PhD students is Euro 550 (including accommodation - 7 nights in double room, meals, excursions, local transportation to and from the airport). JTEL has secured funding to provide funding for about 40 PhD student grants to cover summer school accommodation, catering, and events. Please indicate if you are applying for a scholarship in your application. Some selected students with grants may be able to benefit from funding to cover travel expenses to Plataniás as well.


Calendar

March 18, 2011: Deadline for submitting applications to the Summer School

April 15, 2011:  Notification of acceptance

April 29, 2011: Pre-Summer School videoconferences begin

May 29, 2011:  Summer School begins

2nd Call for Workshop on Multimedia on the Web (MMWeb 2011) @ i-KNOW 2011

MWeb2011 // Workshop on Multimedia on the Web

in conjunction with i-Know and i-Semantics 2011

8th September 2011, Graz, Austria

http://www.mmweb2011.org/

Streaming video has recently surpassed peer-to-peer networks in terms of network capacity hunger. Reports estimate a share of 40% of peak network capacity dedicated to entertainment, mostly streaming video. A large share of this traffic originates from web based services. YouTube alone takes up to 8% of the prime time internet traffic. So multimedia on the web is currently a big issue. While transmission currently works in a best effort system, multimedia information system on the web are far from being perfect. Retrieval, annotation,
validated and useful metadata, reliable and trusted services, and user interaction and context-based adaptation are still under discussion and allow improvement. Currently, the Web itself faces dramatic changes, looking for example at the spread of social networks, Linked Data or the impact of HTML5 or WebM. These activities also have a deep effect on multimedia data and content provider. Following this, we aim to bring together researchers from the area of multimedia and the web to discuss innovative ideas and new directions in this workshop.

Topics of interest

We encourage the submission of high quality papers from applied and basic research as well as applications for multimedia on the web. Submissions have to relate to multimedia on the web, or more specifically on the following topics:

* Annotation of multimedia for the web
* Multimedia databases and metadata models
* Multimedia & metadata adaptation
* Multimedia in the social web
* Multimedia user communities
* Multimedia semantics & ontologies for the web
* Proactive delivery and recommender systems
* Semantic multimedia information services
* User interaction & context
* Web based emergence and self-organization
* Web based multimedia search and retrieval
* Organization

The workshop is organized by the Multimedia Metadata Community (http://www.multimedia-metadata.info/)which has already organized many successful events in the past. The Multimedia Metadata Community aims to extend the active and successful community and network with new members.

Submission

Full paper submissions are limited to a maximum of 4 pages and demo/poster submission to 2 pages. The papers must be in English and should be formatted according to the IEEE 2-column format. All submitted papers will be issue to a peer review by at least 3 program committee members.

All accepted and registered papers will be published in the workshop proceedings which will be indexed and distributed by the IEEExplore. The publishing media for extended paper versions is currently under
negotiation and will be announced in subsequent call for papers. Submission Site: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=mmweb2011

Important Dates

All papers:
* Submission deadline: April 30th, 2011
* Notification of acceptance: May 20th, 2011
* Camera ready papers due: June 15th, 2011

Contact

For any requests, please contact: chairs[at]mmweb2011[dot]org

Committees

Chairs:

* Laszlo Böszörmenyi, Klagenfurt University, Austria (General Chair)
* Oge Marques, Florida Atlantic University, USA (Co-Chair)
* Mathias Lux, Klagenfurt University, Austria (Co-Chair)
* Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen, Germany (Co-Chair)
* Florian Stegmaier, Passau University, Germany (Demo Chair & W3C Liaison)
* Werner Bailer, JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Austria (Demo Chair & W3C Liaison)

Workshop Technical Programme Committee (tentative):

* Marco Bertini (University of Firenze, Italy)
* Yiwei Cao (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
* Anna Carreras (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain)
* Pablo Cesar (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Netherlands)
* Vincent Charvillat (University of Toulouse, France)
* Richard Chbeir (Bourgogne University, Dijon-France)
* Ernesto Damiani (University of Milan, Italy)
* Jaime Delgado (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
* Thierry Delot (University of Valenciennes, France)
* Mario Doeller (University of Passau, Germany)
* Jean-Pierre Evain (European Broadcasting Union, Switzerland)
* William Grosky (University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA)
* Harald Kosch (University of Passau, Germany)
* Thomas Kurz (Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft, Austria)
* Christian Körner (TU Graz, Austria)
* Martha Larson (Delft University of Technology, Netherlands)
* Erik Mannens (Ghent University, Belgium)
* Klaus Meyer-Wegener (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
* Vincent Oria (University Heights, USA)
* Antonio Penta (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
* Dominik Renzel (RWTH Aachen, Germany)
* Marc Spaniol (Max-Planck-Institut für Informatik, Germany)
* Christian Timmerer (Klagenfurt University, Austria)
* Raphael Troncy (EURECOM, France)