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CONTEMPORARY CYBERNETICS, New researches

SYSTEMS AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCE and
developments
New researches
and developments 485
B.H. Rudall and C.J.H. Mann
Norbert Wiener Institute, Bangor, UK, and
Bangor University, Bangor, UK

Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to review current research and developments with particular reference to
new research and development initiatives.
Design/methodology/approach – A general review and survey of selected research and
development topics is given, and some of the new challenges and applications of future technologies
are considered.
Findings – The paper illustrates the multi- and trans-disciplinary natures of studies in cybernetics,
systems and management science, with a view to further research and development activity.
Practical implications – The choice of reviews provides an awareness of current trends in these
areas of endeavour.
Originality/value – The reviews are selected from a global database and give a studied assessment
of current research and development initiatives.
Keywords Computers, Cybernetics, Management, Research and development,
Communication technologies
Paper type Technical paper

1. Management prepares for cloud computing

Many organisations are slowly beginning to realise that the so-called “tried and tested”
way of running their information technology (IT) departments has changed
considerably. There are some very obvious, reasons for this. Many IT departments
are slow in their response to fulfil a request. This means that business operations are
disrupted or indeed the need has moved to other concerns.
Many argue that IT services can be wasteful because quite simply every business
need is not the same. We are told that industry estimates that utilization rates rarely
are greater than 15 per cent for servers and 25 per cent for storage systems. From
the environmental viewpoint, the systems still require energy to power them. For
sudden peak working and to meet demands extra equipment is required, also to be
powered.

1.1 New response to business needs

It is inevitable therefore that IT departments will change in a response to advances in Kybernetes
Vol. 39 No. 4, 2010
technology and strategy. The constant message in business is “infrastructures must be pp. 485-491
simplified” made more cost-effective more versatile, and readily available. This need q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0368-492X
appears to have been initially met by developments in cloud computing. DOI 10.1108/03684921011036736
K 1.2 Cloud computing
39,4 Most organisations are aware of what cloud computing has to offer. It is an IT software
and hardware resource that is capable of offering a service on an “as-needed basis” and
paid for as it is used. Organisations will quickly see the advantages of these systems
which range from expense savings and lower capital expenditure as well as to rapid
use of a service which has great elasticity.
486 These reasons are so compelling that it is not surprising to read (Raconteur, 2009)
that industry research suggests that cloud computing will be the number one priority
for 2010.
Many organisations have already introduced virtualisation into their data centres.
This, of course, is a technology that enables data centre operations staff to run multiple
applications on a single server in the form of virtual machines.
Many other organisations are capitalising on the success of virtualisation by adding
service-management and automation tools and are creating what is described as their
own “private clouds”. They produce an extremely efficient service and cater for
applications and the provision of infrastructure resources as a service to users.

1.3 Federated cloud environment

A typical federated cloud environment would have an integrated concept where an
“Internal Cloud” is linked to an “External Cloud” Providing virtualisation, information and
security. The internal cloud would have its own “virtualized data centre” and the external
cloud its “cloud computing” function. These are integrated into constituents that form the
“Private Cloud” which contains the virtual applications linked to the virtual clients.
In effect, the application loads are processed on a mixture of internal and external
resources, operating under the customer organisation’s centralised policies for information
governance and data security. Virtualization has an essential role in cloud-enabling
internal IT resources. Private cloud models are set to change and will reflect the increasing
needs of organisations and the advances in technology in the coming decades.

2. Management data system

2.1 Need to retrieve and judge data
The need to explore the context of a piece of retrieved information in order to
understand it and to use it is one that requires examination and the development of new
strategies and methods.
Researchers in data mining are well aware of the problems involved when data are
prepared for storage, for manipulation or processing, and for its retrieval in a form that
can be understood and subsequently used.
Recent researches have addressed the problems encountered and although much
effort has been directed toward specific applications, there has still been much that can
be transferred to the more general and academic solutions that are needed.

2.2 Construction management data

One such research project has been concerned with the specific application of
exploring context in repositories of construction management data. Researchers at
Loughborough University in the UK have addressed this problem and have initiated
a prototype construction management system called CoMem-XML. The project leaders
Damian and Balatsoukas (2009a) believe that:
 Engineers often seek to explore context in order to judge the relevance of a retrieved piece of New researches
information. The “Finding needles in (hierarchical) haystacks” project [. . .] is examining new
methods of information representation that will support exploration and understanding of and
context in hierarchical repositories of construction management projects. developments
In this particular project, the engineers explored the database and the operations to
retrieve a piece of information in order to understand the item was made more complicated
by the highly structured and hierarchical nature of engineering information. Researchers 487
found, for example, that a construction project can include details about a building as well
as the individual components and sub-components of that build. This information, context
is defined as:
[. . .] by the hierarchical relationship between a piece of information and other information
items within the hierarchy, for example components and subcomponents in a parts hierarchy
of a designed product.

2.3 Process of understanding

It is, of course, appreciated already in database programmes that the process of
understanding and exploring context is more difficult to achieve in external information
processes, than in internal, resources. Examples are knowledge management systems
and corporate databases, and internal resources such as personal memory, Damian and
Balatsoukas (2009a) write that:
Many of these external systems fail to provide contextual information to aid the
understanding of retrieved items’ (e.g. highlighting an item’s position in the granular
hierarchy and exposing relationships with other parent and child items).

2.4 Current project

This project at Loughborough builds on previous research at Stanford University
(California, USA) which explored the application of visualization in the design of
corporate memories. Currently, the prototype query driven repository of construction
management projects, named CoMem-XML, has been built, as its title suggests, using
XML technology. The researchers say that this system:
[. . .] supports relevance ranking and presents the context of the retrieved information at
various levels of granularity. The content stored in the CoMem-XML is hierarchical. A Project
item (e.g. Imaginary Hotel in Manchester) is made up of multiple Discipline items (e.g. the
architectural layout of the hotel or the structural frame of the hotel). Each Discipline item is
made up of multiple Building Components (a particular room or structural column). Each
Building Component is decomposed into two further levels: Subcomponent (e.g. a joint at the
end of a column) and sub-subcomponent (e.g. a bolt in the joint).
Further details of the project are available (Damian and Balatsoukas, 2009b).

2.5 Results of the developments

Usability tests have shown that both CoMem and CoMem-XML can improve
user performance and satisfaction when searching and judging relevance of
retrieved information, the researchers report. They compare this with typical browsing
trees such as, for example, Microsoft file explorer, search engines such as Google, and
repositories that present the retrieved information out of context. This particular project
K contributes to the general research endeavour in management data and indeed to data
39,4 mining and data-processing researches.

3. Biocybernetics
3.1 Virtual patient
Virtual 3D patients have been created at Bangor University UK to help train medical
488 students in pin-hole surgery. The simulator uses computer game technology to recreate
the feeling of guiding a surgical needle into the body. The device is called the
ImaGINe-S and the research team hope to see it introduced as a training tool within
the health service of the UK over the next few years. Professor Nigel John of the
university’s School of Computer Science says that:
[. . .] what we are trying to do is to create a virtual patient that a doctor can practice on. Rather
than having to practice on you or me they can have a virtual patient that does’nt scream too
much, to work out how to do a procedure.

3.2 Project details

The research team explain that:
The user wears 3D glasses to see a projection of a patient, and then moves two hand-held
devices that simulate the role of a scanner and needle.
Using the force-feedback, technology found in items like game controllers and video racing
steering wheels, users can then feel the pressure of pushing the virtual needle – and guiding
a wire through the body.
“It’s meant to be able to duplicate scanning the patient with an ultrasound image to look for
the target”.
Either the kidney, liver or an artery that you want to puncture with a needle.

3.3 Future developments

The ImaGINe-S team is working with interventional radiologist Professor Derek Gould
of the Royal Liverpool Hospital, UK, who says that:
[. . .] many modern procedures only require minimal intervention with a needle, rather than
full open surgery, which benefits both doctor and patient.
Their post-operative pain is less, recovery is less, they don’t have a scar afterwards.
Interventional radiology had been described as pin-hole surgery, as it goes through
such a tiny puncture site into the patient.
With greater use of pin-hole surgery the ImaGINe-S team believe that their simulator
could be taken up across different health services.
The Bangor researchers claim that their system can be used with the average
office PC and that the cost will be likely to fall in the future. Much of the technology
used comes from the computer games market which is already bringing its prices
down and increasing performance of what can be achieved using computer
graphics.
The success of the project has been demonstrated by the team’s award of second
place in the Eurographics 2009 Medical Prize for their Imaging Needle Simulation
(ImaGINe-S) together with their collaborators at Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds,
Imperial College, London and Hull Universities.
4. Bio-inspired sensor New researches
Recent researches from the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) by Kogler et al. (2009) and
has led to the development of a 3D Event-Based Silicon Retina Stereo Sensor which
provides an alternative to the conventional stereo vision systems and algorithms. These developments
conventional systems require very high processing power and are costly.
For the many applications where moving objects (either source or target or both) are
the main goal to be detected, a new kind of bio-inspired analogue sensor that provides 489
only event-triggered information are providing, the developers claim, a very fast and
cost-efficient alternative called the silicon retina sensors (SR) they are described by
AIT at their web site: www.ait.ac.at
The challenge, we are told, of stereo vision is the reconstruction of depth information in
images as a scene captured from two different points of view. The SR stereo sensor uses
new technology and an algorithmic approach to processing 3D stereo information.

4.1 SR sensor development

Kogler et al. (2009) describe new sensors technology as being:
[. . .] based on bio-inspired analogue circuits. These sensors exploit a very efficient,
asynchronous, event driven data protocol that delivers information only on variations of
intensity (’event-triggered’), meaning data redundancy processing requirements are reduced
considerably. Unaltered parts of a scene that have no intensity variation need neither be
transmitted nor processed, and the amount of data depends on the motion of the scene.
The second generation of the sensor has a resolution of 302x240 pixels, and measurements
show that for a typical scene we anticipate about 2 mega data events per second. Depending
on the protocol used, one data event requires a minimum of 32 bits.
The Silicon Retina Stereo Sensor needed to meet the requirements for detection range;
field of view; systems reaction time and location; and consists of:
[. . .] two silicon retina imagers that are synchronized to have a common understanding of the
local timing where variations of the intensity occur. The pair of imagers is called a silicon
retina stereo imager (SRSI). One imager acts as a slave device, permitting a synchronization
mechanism with the master imager.
It was noted that early prototypes showed that by using the developed algorithm the
advantage of the SR technology could be fully exploited at very high processing frame
rates.

4.2 Application project

This technology has been used in the European Community-funded project “Reliable
Application-Specific Detection of Road Users with Vehicle-On-Board Sensors”
(ADOSE). This is a project that focuses on the development and evaluation of new
cost-efficient sensor technology for automotive safety solutions (Kogler et al., 2009).

4.3 ADOSE Project

ADOSE, the new in-vehicle sensor technology for vehicle safety in road traffic
(Kogler et al., 2009) is developing and evaluating a new cost-effective sensor technology
that will provide vehicles with a “virtual safety belt” by addressing complementary
functions. Such sensors are necessary for systems such as the EU-funded Reliable
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) which are designed to aid drivers in
K a variety of traffic and environment/weather conditions. Growing traffic volumes
require sensors and systems that handle difficult urban and non-urban scenarios.
39,4 These are the systems that ADOSE is developing and evaluating such as the new
cost-efficient sensor technology described in this section. Such sensors are needed in
traffic systems, like ADAS for “lane departure warnings”, “collision warnings”,
“high-beam assists” and in many other conditions.
490 The SRS is specially designed to serve for example as a pre-crash warning and
preparation sensor for side impacts where it is necessary to take distance measurements
of objects approaching the sensor where stereo vision is essential. The contribution of
the AIT scientists to these projects is surely to be commended.
It is evident that both researchers and manufacturers need to find ways not only to
develop such systems, but also to reduce the prices of such safety options to increase
customer acceptance.

5. Whither the e-mail?

5.1 Main e-mail users
A recent report in a UK newspaper quoted Professor David Zeitly of the University of
Kent, Canterbury UK, who is a social anthropologist, about the UK’s internet habits
stated that:
[. . .] emails are much more popular among older rather than younger segments of the UK
population and that apparently, 86 per cent of 15-24 year-olds used email as compared with
98 per cent of people aged 65 or over. Meanwhile only 51 per cent of Britons in their teens or
early twenties say that email is their first choice of communication.
Obviously, there are both social and medical reasons for this so it does not wholly
imply that e-mail is slowly dying out.

5.2 Business e-mail users

We are told that in a survey of business users of e-mails the biggest complaint is that there
is too much of it. People, it seems, may be using e-mail as a way of demonstrating that they
are working and have great chains of messages with other users about work-related
business. Instead, it is suggested that their messaging involves interacting with people
about quite inconsequential corporate developments which in consequence clog the
inboxes across the whole system. As to the receipt of e-mails, recipients receive them in
such high volumes and with such frequency, that only the most urgent can be replied to,
whilst the others often remain neglected and often forgotten.

5.3 Unsolicited massages

Unsolicited messages are a real problem for any user of an online system, whether
for personal or business reasons. One survey has suggested that some three-quarters
of all e-mails are spam. Spam filters are said to have high success rate of some 99.5 to
99.9 per cent, which must certainly help the user.

5.4 The consequences for the user

E-mailing can be slow and inefficient, another survey tells us. As few as one in five e-mail
messages are never opened whereas more than 95 per cent of text messages are opened.
The report also informs us that the average time for a recipient, to view an e-mail message
is 6.4 h, whereas the time for the recipient to view a text message is 14 min.
 The effect of sites like Facebook or Twitter or Myspace, etc. which allow you to New researches
message at the same time, has an obvious effect on e-mailing and other changes are
at hand. It has been argued that e-mail is beginning to fade and other methods of
and
communicating, such as instant messaging, are becoming more popular as a means developments
of communication for personal as well as for business. New technology as exhibited in
the latest mobile systems will surely hasten its demise as the most popular method of
communication. 491
References
Damian, P. and Balatsoukas, P. (2009a), “CoMem-XML; exploring context in repositories of
construction management data”, ERCIM News – “Towards Green ICT”, No. 79, pp. 43-4.
Damian, P. and Balatsoukas, P. (2009b), available at: p.demian@lboro.ac.uk
Kogler, J., Suizbachner, C., Schoitsch, E. and Kubingerer, W. (2009), web site: www.adose-eu.org;
e-mail: wilfried.kubinger@arcs.ac.at; juergen.kogler@arcs.ac.at; christoph.sulzbachner@
arcs.ac.at; erwin.schoitsch@arcs.ac.at
Raconteur (2009), Cloud Computing, Raconteur Media, London, pp. 1-15, available at: www.
raconteurmedia.co.uk

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