Implications of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights for Cultural Dimensions of National Copyright Laws

Many national intellectual property laws contain provisions that reflect cultural values and have trade significance. Although cultural value defenses have generally been rejected by GATT and WTO panels, they may be more likely to succeed in intellectual property disputes because many culturally-laden rules are widely accepted in the international intellectual property arena. Moreover, intellectual products are less completely commodified than other products. Cultural economists can provide valuable insights to aid WTO in distinguishing between those culturally-laden intellectual property rules that should be or should not permitted when they have an impact on trade.     

Themenheft: Digitale Bibliotheken

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Sprinting analysis of elite soccer players during European Champions League and UEFA Cup matches

It has been suggested that assessment of high-intensity activities during a match is a valid measure of physical performance in elite soccer. Recently, sprinting activities have been analysed in more depth. The aim of this study was to develop a detailed analysis of the sprinting activities of different playing positions during European Champions League and UEFA Cup competitions. Altogether, 717 elite outfield soccer players were evaluated throughout 2002-2006 using ProZone? (Leeds, UK). Sprinting (explosive and leading) was analysed for each playing position. To compare positional differences, a Kruskal-Wallis analysis was performed. Differences were found among positions for total number of sprints and total sprint distance covered: wide midfielders > (attackers = wide defenders) > central midfielders > central defenders (P < 0.001), as well as for explosive sprints: (wide midfielders = attackers = wide defenders) > central defenders, wide midfielders > central midfielders > central defenders and attackers = wide defenders = central midfielders (P < 0.001), and leading sprints: wide midfielders > (attackers = wide defenders) > central midfielders > central defenders (P < 0.001). For each group, there were no differences in ratio of explosive to leading sprints. Wide midfielders performed a higher number of sprints in all five distance categories than all other positions. This study showed that sprinting characteristics are influenced by position. Wide midfielders have to complete additional high-intensity activities during training sessions compared with the other positions to achieve the performance level required during the match.     

Evaluating collaborative information-seeking interfaces with a search-oriented inspection method and re-framed information seeking theory

Despite the many implicit references to the social contexts of search within information seeking and retrieval research, there has been relatively little work that has specifically investigated the additional requirements for collaborative information-seeking interfaces. Here, we re-assess an existing analytical inspection framework, designed for individual information seeking, and then apply it to evaluate a recent collaborative information-seeking interface: SearchTogether. The framework was built upon two models of solitary information seeking, and so as part of the re-assessment we first re-frame the models for collaborative contexts. We re-frame a model of search tactics, providing revised definitions that consider known collaborators. We then re-frame a model of searcher profiles to analyse support for different group dynamics. After presenting an analysis of SearchTogether, we reflect on its accuracy, showing that the framework identified eight known truths, eight new insights, and no known-to-be-untrue insights into the design. We conclude that the framework: (a) can still be applied to collaborative information-seeking interfaces; (b) can successfully produce additional requirements for collaborative information-seeking interfaces; and (c) can successfully model different dynamics of collaborating searchers.     

Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Editorial

     

Retrieval quality vs. effectiveness of specificity-oriented search in XML collections

Content-only queries in hierarchically structured documents should retrieve the most specific document nodes which are exhaustive to the information need. For this problem, we investigate two methods of augmentation, which both yield high retrieval quality. As retrieval effectiveness, we consider the ratio of retrieval quality and response time; thus, fast approximations to the 'correct' retrieval result may yield higher effectiveness. We present a classification scheme for algorithms addressing this issue, and adopt known algorithms from standard document retrieval for XML retrieval. As a new strategy, we propose incremental-interruptible retrieval, which allows for instant presentation of the top ranking documents. We develop a new algorithm implementing this strategy and evaluate the different methods with the INEX collection.     

WHAT RESPONDENTS LEARN FROM SCALES: THE INFORMATIVE FUNCTIONS OF RESPONSE ALTERNATIVES

Survey respondents are often asked to report the frequency withwhich they engage in a certain behavior by checking the appropriatealternative from a list of response categories provided to them.A psychological research program, reviewed in the present paper,indicates that response alternatives are not only measurementdevices but constitute a source of information for the respondent.Specifically, respondents assume that the average or typicalbehavior is reflected by values stated in the middle range ofthe response alternatives and that the extremes of the listreflect the extremes of the distribution. This assumption affectstheir own responses in various ways. First, respondents usethe range of the response alternatives as a frame of referencein estimating their own behavioral frequencies and report higherfrequencies on scales that present high rather than low frequencyresponse alternatives. Second, respondents extract comparisoninformation from their own location on the response scale anduse this information in making comparative judgments. Finally,if the target behavior is open to interpretation, as is oftenthe case when subjective experiences are assessed, respondentsuse the response alternatives to determine the exact referenceof the question. Accordingly, the same question in combinationwith different response alternatives is likely to assess differentexperiences. Implications for questionnaire construction arediscussed.     

Generierte DB-Aufrufschnittstellen – Anwendungsspezifische Zugriffsoptimierung durch Bindungsflexibilit?t

Jede Datenbankprogrammierschnittstelle mu? sich daran messen lassen, inwieweit sie die Vorteile der durch sie integrierten Sprachen (Datenbank- und Programmiersprache) erh?lt. Neben dieser allgemeinen Zielsetzung müssen heutzutage neuere Konzepte in den Bereichen Programmiersprachen und Datenbanksysteme sowie die Anforderungen komplexer Anwendungsbereiche (z. B. CAD oder Software-Entwicklung) beachtet werden. Unser Ansatz der generierten Aufrufschnittstellen soll dazu beitragen, Datenmodelle objekt- relationaler Datenbanksysteme und Typsysteme objektorientierter Programmiersprachen n?her zusammenzurücken. Er erlaubt neben der Schnittstellengenerierung ihre anwendungsspezifische Konfigurierung, um die DB-Verarbeitung spezieller Anwendungen gezielt optimieren zu k?nnen. Wir werden neben Aspekten der Generierung/Konfigurierung die Nutzung von generierten Aufrufschnittstellen beschreiben und Experimente vorstellen, die den durch diesen Ansatz erzielbaren Leistungsgewinn verdeutlichen. Letzterer kann durch gezielten, auf die jeweilige Anwendung zugeschnittenen Einsatz von frühen Bindungen für Datenmanipulationsoperationen sowie von Pointer-Swizzling-/Prefetching-Mechanismen erreicht werden.