Intelligent environments (IEs) are smart spaces that are equipped with seamless computing technologies to empower the occupants/users of those spaces for completing the activities of daily living in an efficient way, while insuring security, safety and optimal usage of resources. Naturally, IEs cover a number of settings going from offices, hospitals, schools, factories to cities. While IEs tec...

This paper discusses how to make a distributed multimedia object system exible so as to satisfy applications' requirements in change of the system environment. The system change is modeled to be the change of not only for types of service but also quality of service (QoS) supported by the objects. A method changes not only the state of the object but also QoS of the state. We discuss new equiva...

In this paper, we suggest an integrated architecture that makes use of the objective-technical information provided by the designer and the subjectiveperceptual information supplied by the user for intelligent decision making in the construction of communication protocols. Thus, this approach, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process, incorporates not only classical Quality of Service (QoS) cons...

The acquisition case was built around an ambitious business plan that called for rapid growth of SSB’s business over the next three years, accompanied by cost reductions and efficiency improvements. Specifically, the business plan relied on the winning of five new large private banks as justification for a €40 million IT investment directed at improving service quality and lowering IT maintenan...

In recent years, the development of e-commerce market is facing a more serious crisis of trust than the traditional market, because e-commerce has the characteristics as global and virtual. In this paper, the author makes qualitative analysis of the E-commerce logistics trust degree based on network economic security perspective. The network shopping has put forward higher request to the logist...

Dear Editor: Despite mounting evidence that hospice provides highvalue, high-quality care, many eligible Medicare beneficiaries do not enroll, and lengths of hospice stay remain short. Policymakers have considered changes to Medicare policies to encourage hospice use, but there are persistent concerns about the impact of expanding services on the long-term financial solvency of the program. In ...