An unprecedented amount of information encompassing almost every facet of human activities across the world is generated daily in the form of zeros and ones, and that is often the only form in which such information is recorded. A good fraction of this information needs to be preserved for periods of time ranging from a few years to centuries.…

Over the past several decades, millions of digital objects of significant scientific, economic, cultural, and historic value have been published and distributed to libraries and archives on removable media. Providing long-term access to these documents, media files, and software executables is an increasingly complex task because of dependencies…

Due to the opportunities provided by the Internet, people are taking advantage of e-learning courses and during the last few years enormous research efforts have been dedicated to the development of e-learning systems. So far, many e-learning systems are proposed and used practically. However, in these systems the e-learning completion rate is…

The national science standards, along with prominent researchers, call for increased focus on scientific argumentation in the classroom. Over the past decade, researchers have developed sophisticated online science learning environments to support these opportunities for scientific argumentation. Assessing the quality of dialogic argumentation,…

Research on cognitive modeling of information search and Web navigation emphasizes the importance of "information scent" (the relevance of semantic cues such as link labels and headings to a reader's goal; Pirolli & Card, 1999). This article shows that not only semantic but also structural knowledge is involved in navigating the Web…

Interactive computer simulations with complex representations and sophisticated graphics are a relatively new addition to the classroom, and research in this area is limited. We have conducted over 200 individual student interviews during which the students described what they were thinking as they interacted with simulations. These interviews…

An important issue of the demographic change in the German population is the maintenance and promotion of the employability of aging workforces. However, there are hardly any suitable concepts or usable tools available to realize this goal. Possible approaches should push the individual strengths of the aging workers to the foreground and…

It is proposed that action research is an appropriate methodology for studying wikis, and is akin to research "the wiki way". This proposal is contextualised within the case of Wikiversity, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. A framework for a participative research project is outlined, and challenges and implications of such a…

This report discusses some of the problems and limitations in existing internetwork design for the connection of packet-switching networks of different technologies and presents an algorithm that has been shown to be suitable for internetworks of unbounded size. Using a new form of address and a flat routing mechanism called Cartesian routing,…

With the introduction of the digital medium, an abundance of content previously obtainable through other media became available in digital form. Digital delivery implied the necessity for some kind of content modification dictated by the specific characteristics of the digital medium. The situation is further complicated by the convergence of…

Discusses the problem of processing fuzzy queries in databases and information retrieval systems and presents a prototype of a fuzzy query processing system for databases that is based on data clustering and uses Pascal programing language. Clustering schemes are explained, and the system architecture that uses natural language is described. (14…

Discusses some basic notions of modern cryptography: public key systems and digital signatures. Describes how theoretical modern cryptography can help solve security problems on the Internet. (Author/JKP)

Outlines the basic nature of performance support and describes a generic model that can be used to facilitate electronic performance support system (EPSS) development. Performance measures are discussed; performance support guidelines are summarized; and a case study of the use of an EPSS is presented. (LRW)

Presents a computational modeling system (CMS) which is intended to provide scientific investigators with a unified computation environment and easy access to a broad range of modeling tools. A major objective of the design of CMS is to hide computational details that are irrelevant to scientific research. (53 references) (Author/JKP)

Discusses data modeling techniques for the design of information systems and presents the idea of defining a kernel for object role modeling (ORM) techniques upon which different drawing styles can be based. Highlights include syntactical and semantic aspects of the ORM kernel; entity relationships; and the NIAM modeling technique. (50 references)…