Authoring System

As companies migrate from a centralized to a distributed computing environment, the administration and management of security policies, in particular authorization policies, is becoming an increasingly difficult task. This paper considers the design of an authorization system that is suitable for distributed applications. It discusses the architectural design principles, describes the constructs of the authorization policy language and outlines the authorization service and components involved. The paper gives some examples policy specifications and illustrates how privileges are specified and evaluated as well as how privilege resolutions are achieved.

Disadvantages faced by Hispanic children in the U.S., compared to non-Hispanic Whites, have been widely reported. Economic differences account for some of the gaps, but the social isolation of Hispanic families also serves as a barrier to children's success. Whereas Hispanic families tend to have strong kinship networks, their social ties often do not encompass the school and other authority systems. As a result, Hispanic families may have less access to social capital, that is, relations of trust and shared expectations that foster the flow of relevant information and support social norms that contribute to children's academic and social development. To study the role of social capital in child development, we embarked on a school-randomized trial in two cities with large Hispanic populations: San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona. In this paper, we report on first-year data from what will be a three-year longitudinal study, including 24 of an eventual 52 schools and about 1300 of what will be a sample of over 3000 children. We aimed to manipulate social capital through an intervention called Families and Schools Together (FAST), a multi-family afterschool program that enhances relations among families, between parents and schools, and between parents and children through a sequence of structured activities over 8 weekly sessions. In the first year, 12 schools were randomly assigned to participate in FAST, and 12 served as controls. Data come from district administrative records, surveys of parents prior to FAST, and surveys of parents and teachers immediately after FAST. Surveys prior to FAST confirm that Hispanic parents have less extensive parent-school networks compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Comparisons of school means on post-FAST surveys indicate that parents in FAST schools experience more extensive social networks than those in control schools, but the differences are much more apparent in Phoenix than in San Antonio. Similarly, a pattern of better behavioral outcomes for children in FAST schools is evident in Phoenix but not San Antonio. Individual-level comparisons suggest that for some outcomes, effects may be larger for non-Hispanic Whites than for Hispanics, which would undermine potential contributions to reducing inequality.

In this paper we propose an infrastructure for a secure remote authentication, management and operation system for a distributed global wireless sensor network testbed. We base the design of the architecture on an existing well-established, widely deployed and frequently used authentication and authorization system developed to simplify inter-organizational access to web-resources. The proposed infrastructure addresses the main challenges of a interconnected distributed sensor network testbed, such as secure remote availability, multi-user access, confidentiality and integrity. The paper further describes our perspective of a testbed workflow management and operation system aiming to provide a simple and comprehensive interface for remote wireless sensor network configuration and experimentation.

Existing multimedia document models like HTML, MHEG, SMIL, and HyTime lack appropriate modeling primitives to fit the needs of next generation multimedia applications which bring up requirements like reusability of multimedia content in different presentations and contexts, and adaptation to user preferences. In this paper, we motivate and present new requirements stemming from advanced multimedia applications and the resulting consequences for multimedia document models. Along these requirements, we discuss HTML, HyTime, MHEG, SMIL, and Z Y X, a new model that has been developed with special focus on reusability and adaptation. The analysis and comparison of the models show the limitations of existing models, point the way to the need for new flexible multimedia document models, and throw light on the many implications on authoring systems, multimedia content management, and presentation.

A three layer e-learning course development model has been defined based on a conceptual model of learning content object. It starts by decomposing the learning content into small chunks which are initially placed in a hierarchic structure of units and blocks. The raw content components, being the atomic learning objects (ALO), were linked to the blocks and are structured in the database. We set forward a dynamic generation of LO's using re-usable e-learning raw materials or ALO's In that view we need a LO authoring/ assembling system fitting the requirements of interoperability and reusability and starting from selecting the raw learning content from the learning materials content database. In practice authoring systems are used to develop e-learning courses. The company EDUWEST has developed an authoring system that is database based and will be SCORM compliant in the near future.

Information has never been as accessible. But the increase of the volume of information has been accompanied by a considerable increase of tools destined to help and assist the final user to find information. Different skills used in such tools increase cognitive problems of the user (reader, student, beginner, …). User has to find on the one hand a coherence in plethoric information that he browses through information networks, and on the other hand to adapt to the different logics of these tools. HyWebMap represents a new generation of tool designed to reduce disorientation and cognitive overhead of users being in learning context. The goal being to allow them to organize a customized navigation space built around imported data and information produced by user himself

Grid systems, which are composed of autonomous domains, are open and dynamic. In such systems, there are usually a large number of users, the users are changeable, and different domains have their own policies. The traditional access control models that are identity based are closed and inflexible. The Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC) model, which makes decisions relying on attributes