This study explores learning and instruction within a technology-rich, collaborative, participatory learning environment by tracking the emergence of shared understanding and products through student and teacher practices. The focus is not only on the interactions among students or between students and teachers, but on student–resource interactions, especially student–technology interactions. I...

There are surprisingly many anisotropically reflecting objects in the real world. Some examples are brushed metal, cloth, CDs, and even many brands of paper. Despite the importance of anisotropic reflections in the real world, most of todays computer graphics systems cannot deal with them appropriately. This is particularly true for interactive and hardware-accelerated rendering systems, which ...

Electronic Commerce over the Internet is one of the most rapidly growing areas in todays business. However, considering the most important phase of Electronic Commerce, the payment, it has to be noted that in most currently exploited approaches, support for at least one of the participants is limited. From a general point of view, a couple of requirements for correct payment interactions exist,...

Electronic Commerce over the Internet is one of the most rapidly growing areas in todays business. However, considering the most important phase of Electronic Commerce, the payment, it has to be noted that in most currently exploited approaches, support for at least one of the participants is limited. From a general point of view, a couple of requirements for correct payment interactions exist,...

Although experts sense a big future for virtual worlds (VWs) in the workplace scenario, their use in the business world is still in a nascent stage. A key challenge for organizations is to motivate users for utilizing VW for workplace related tasks. This research investigates the behavioral intention (BI) to use VW as a workplace ‘collaboration tool’. The model, grounded in literature on ‘motiv...

Nowadays one of the most important issues in our economy, both from economic and political view is the link between monetary policy and business cycle fluctuations. Amongst the shocks related to the supply side, the shock of oil price is the important factor that has affected the world economy since the 1970s. This paper examines the effects of monetary policy and oil price shocks on the busine...

Developing economic relations with the countries of the world is necessary for any country, and the nations of the world are always looking to build their business. The expansion of the phenomenon of economic globalization has led states to engage in countries' engagement in pursuing their interests in the form of regional cooperation and the formation of monetary :union:s. Therefore, according...

To be sure, all the industries try to be involved in globalization with a constant trend to find out ways to increase productivity across different functions within an organization to maintain competitive advantage world. Pharmaceutical industries are not exceptional and further are based on fragmentation. So these kind of companies need to cope with several barriers such as silo mentality that...

Sensor network technology is pushing towards integration into the business world. By using sensor node hardware to augment real life business items it is possible to capture the world and support processes where they actually happen. Many problems of the business logic running our world can be efficiently implemented “on the item”. In order for these smart items to couple back to the virtualize...