Search results for: spatial information

Authors: Laura A. Rodriguez-Villamizar, Alvaro Osornio-Vargas, Brian H. Rowe, Rhonda J. Rosychuk

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Introduction/Objectives: The Census Metropolitan Area of Edmonton (CMAE) has important industrial emissions to the air from the Industrial Heartland Alberta (IHA) at the Northeast and the coal-fired power plants (CFPP) at the West. The objective of the study was to explore the presence of clusters of children asthma ED visits in the areas around the IHA and the CFPP. Methods: Retrospective data on children asthma ED visits was collected at the dissemination area (DA) level for children between 2 and 14 years of age, living in the CMAE between April 1, 2004, and March 31, 2010. We conducted a spatial analysis of disease clusters around putative sources with count (ecological) data using descriptive, hypothesis testing, and multivariable modeling analysis. Results: The mean crude rate of asthma ED visits was 9.3/1,000 children population per year during the study period. Circular spatial scan test for cases and events identified a cluster of children asthma ED visits in the DA where the CFPP are located in the Wabamum area. No clusters were identified around the IHA area. The multivariable models suggest that there is a significant decline in risk for children asthma ED visits as distance increases around the CFPP area this effect is modified at the SE direction with mean angle 125.58 degrees, where the risk increases with distance. In contrast, the regression models for IHA suggest that there is a significant increase in risk for children asthma ED visits as distance increases around the IHA area and this effect is modified at SW direction with mean angle 216.52 degrees, where the risk increases at shorter distances. Conclusions: Different methods for detecting clusters of disease consistently suggested the existence of a cluster of children asthma ED visits around the CFPP but not around the IHA within the CMAE. These results are probably explained by the direction of the air pollutants dispersion caused by the predominant and subdominant wind direction at each point. The use of different approaches to detect clusters of disease is valuable to have a better understanding of the presence, shape, direction and size of clusters of disease around pollution sources.

Keywords: air pollution, asthma, disease cluster, industry

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Authors: Aijing Luo, Zirui Xin, Yifeng Yuan

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Background: With the rapid development of the online health community, more and more patients or families are seeking health information on the Internet. Objective: This study aimed to discuss how to fully reveal the health information needs expressed by hypertensive patients in their questions in the online environment. Methods: This study randomly selected 1,000 text records from the question data of hypertensive patients from 2008 to 2018 collected from the website www.haodf.com and constructed a classification system through literature research and content analysis. This paper identified the background characteristics and questioning the intention of each hypertensive patient based on the patient’s question and used co-occurrence network analysis to explore the features of the health information needs of hypertensive patients. Results: The classification system for health information needs of patients with hypertension is composed of 9 parts: 355 kinds of drugs, 395 kinds of symptoms and signs, 545 kinds of tests and examinations , 526 kinds of demographic data, 80 kinds of diseases, 37 kinds of risk factors, 43 kinds of emotions, 6 kinds of lifestyles, 49 kinds of questions. The characteristics of the explored online health information needs of the hypertensive patients include: i)more than 49% of patients describe the features such as drugs, symptoms and signs, tests and examinations, demographic data, diseases, etc. ii) these groups are most concerned about treatment (77.8%), followed by diagnosis (32.3%); iii) 65.8% of hypertensive patients will ask doctors online several questions at the same time. 28.3% of the patients are very concerned about how to adjust the medication, and they will ask other treatment-related questions at the same time, including drug side effects, whether to take drugs, how to treat a disease, etc.; secondly, 17.6% of the patients will consult the doctors online about the causes of the clinical findings, including the relationship between the clinical findings and a disease, the treatment of a disease, medication, and examinations. Conclusion: In the online environment, the health information needs expressed by Chinese hypertensive patients to doctors are personalized; that is, patients with different background features express their questioning intentions to doctors. The classification system constructed in this study can guide health information service providers in the construction of online health resources, to help solve the problem of information asymmetry in communication between doctors and patients.

Keywords: online health community, health information needs, hypertensive patients, doctor-patient communication

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Authors: Rewati Raman, Uttam K. Roy

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One of the main adversaries of city planning in present times is the ever-expanding problem of urbanization and the antagonistic issues accompanying it. The prevalent challenges in urbanization such as population growth, urban sprawl, poverty, inequality, pollution, congestion, etc. call for reforms in the urban fabric as well as in planning theory and practice. One of the various paradigms of city planning, land use planning, has been the major instruments for spatial planning of cities and regions in India. Zoning regulation based land use planning in the form of land use and development control plans (LUDCP) and development control regulations (DCR) have been considered mainstream guiding principles in land use planning for decades. In spite of many advantages of such zoning based regulations, over a period of time, it has been critiqued by scholars for its own limitations of isolation and lack of vitality, inconvenience in business in terms of proximity to residence and low operating cost, unsuitable environment for small investments, higher travel distance for facilities, amenities and thereby higher expenditure, safety issues etc. Mixed land use has been advocated as a tool to avoid such limitations in city planning by researchers. In addition, mixed land use can offer many advantages like housing variety and density, the creation of an economic blend of compatible land use, compact development, stronger neighborhood character, walkability, and generation of jobs, etc. Alternatively, the mixed land use beyond a suitable balance of use can also bring disadvantages like traffic congestion, encroachments, very high-density housing leading to a slum like condition, parking spill out, non-residential uses operating on residential premises paying less tax, chaos hampering residential privacy, pressure on existing infrastructure facilities, etc. This research aims at studying and outlining the various challenges and potentials of mixed land use zoning, through modeling tools, as a competent instrument for city planning in lieu of the present urban scenario. The methodology of research adopted in this paper involves the study of a mixed land use neighborhood in India, identification of indicators and parameters related to its extent and spatial pattern and the subsequent use of system dynamics as a modeling tool for simulation. The findings from this analysis helped in identifying the various advantages and challenges associated with the dynamic nature of a mixed use urban settlement. The results also confirmed the hypothesis that mixed use neighborhoods are catalysts for employment generation, socioeconomic gains while improving vibrancy, health, safety, and security. It is also seen that certain challenges related to chaos, lack of privacy and pollution prevail in mixed use neighborhoods, which can be mitigated by varying the percentage of mixing as per need, ensuring compatibility of adjoining use, institutional interventions in the form of policies, neighborhood micro-climatic interventions, etc. Therefore this paper gives a consolidated and holistic framework and quantified outcome pertaining to the extent and spatial pattern of mixed land use that should be adopted to ensure sustainable urban planning.

Keywords: mixed land use, sustainable development, system dynamics analysis, urban dynamics modelling

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Authors: Estela Mayra de Moura Vianna, Thiago José Tavares Ávila, Bruno Morais Silva, Diego Henrique Bezerra, Paulo Henrique Gomes Silva, Alan Pedro da Silva

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The Brazilian Federal Constitution defines the access to information as a crucial right of the citizen and the Law on Access to Public Information, which regulates this right. Accordingly, the Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2000, amended in 2009 by the “Law of Transparency”, began demanding a wider disclosure of public accounts for the society, including electronic media for public access. Thus, public entities began to create "Transparency Portals," which aim to gather a diversity of data and information. However, this information, in general, is still published in formats that do not simplify understanding of the data by citizens and that could be better especially available for audit purposes. In this context, a proposal of ontology about Brazilian Transparency Portal can play a key role in how these data will be better available. This study aims to identify and implement in ontology, the data model about Transparency Portal ecosystem, with emphasis in activities that use these data for some applications, like audits, press activities, social government control, and others.

Keywords: audit, government transparency, ontology, public sector

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Authors: Yu Wang

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Nowadays, Internet enables its users to share the information online and to interact with others. Facing with numerous information, these Internet users are confused and begin to rely on the opinion leaders’ recommendations. The online opinion leaders are the individuals who have professional knowledge, who utilize the online channels to spread word-of-mouth information and who can affect the attitudes or even the behavior of their followers to some degree. Because utilizing the online opinion leaders is seen as an important approach to affect the potential consumers, how to identify them has become one of the hottest topics in the related field. Hence, in this article, the concepts and characteristics are introduced, and the researches related to identifying opinion leaders are collected and divided into three categories. Finally, the implications for future studies are provided.

Keywords: online opinion leaders, user attributes analysis, text mining analysis, network structure analysis

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Authors: M. Osipova

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Thanks to informational technologies development every sphere of economics is becoming more and more data-centralized as people are generating huge datasets containing information on any aspect of their life. Applying research of such data to human resources management allows getting scarce statistics on labor market state including salary expectations and potential employees’ typical career behavior, and this information can become a reliable basis for management decisions. The following article presents results of career behavior research based on freely accessible resume data. Information used for study is much wider than one usually uses in human resources surveys. That is why there is enough data for statistically significant results even for subgroups analysis.

Keywords: human resources management, salary expectations, statistics, turnover

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Authors: Mehmet Yörükoğlu, Serhat Aydın

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Since the discovery of the manuscript, mechanical methods for storing, transferring and using the information have evolved into digital methods over the time. In this process, libraries that are the center of the information have also become digitized and become accessible from anywhere and at any time in the world by taking on a structure that has no physical boundaries. In this context, some criteria for information obtained from digital libraries have become more important for users. This paper evaluates the user criteria from different perspectives that make a digital library more useful. The Step-Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis-Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (SWARA-WASPAS) method is used with flexibility and easy calculation steps for the evaluation of digital library criteria. Three different digital libraries are evaluated by information technology experts according to five conflicting main criteria, ‘interface design’, ‘effects on users’, ‘services’, ‘user engagement’ and ‘context’. Finally, alternatives are ranked in descending order.

Keywords: digital library, multi criteria decision making, SWARA-WASPAS method

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Authors: Nezha Alaoui

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The early 1950s French colonial context in Morocco provided an opportunity for architects to question the modernist established order by building dwellings for the local population. The dwellings were originally designed to encourage Muslims to adopt an urban lifestyle based on local customs. However, the inhabitants transformed their dwelling into a hybrid habitation. This paper aims to prove the relevance of the design process in accordance with the local colonial context by analyzing the dwellers' appropriation process and the modification of their habitat.

Keywords: colonial heritage, appropriation process, islamic spatial habit, housing experiment, modernist mass housing

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Authors: Zeyad Abdelmageid, Xianbin Wang

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Choosing the operational channel for a WLAN access point (AP) in WLAN networks has been a static channel assignment process initiated by the user during the deployment process of the AP, which fails to cope with the dynamic conditions of the assigned channel at the station side afterward. However, the dramatically growing number of Wi-Fi APs and stations operating in the unlicensed band has led to dynamic, distributed, and often severe interference. This highlights the urgent need for the AP to dynamically select the best overall channel of operation for the basic service set (BSS) by considering the distributed and changing channel conditions at all stations. Consequently, dynamic channel selection algorithms which consider feedback from the station side have been developed. Despite the significant performance improvement, existing channel selection algorithms suffer from very high feedback overhead. Feedback latency from the STAs, due to the high overhead, can cause the eventually selected channel to no longer be optimal for operation due to the dynamic sharing nature of the unlicensed band. This has inspired us to develop our own dynamic channel selection algorithm with reduced overhead through the proposed low-overhead, cluster-based station reporting mechanism. The main idea behind the cluster-based station reporting is the observation that STAs which are very close to each other tend to have very similar channel conditions. Instead of requesting each STA to report on every candidate channel while causing high overhead, the AP divides STAs into clusters then assigns each STA in each cluster one channel to report feedback on. With the proper design of the cluster based reporting, the AP does not lose any information about the channel conditions at the station side while reducing feedback overhead. The simulation results show equal performance and, at times, better performance with a fraction of the overhead. We believe that this algorithm has great potential in designing future dynamic channel selection algorithms with low overhead.

Keywords: channel assignment, Wi-Fi networks, clustering, DBSCAN, overhead

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Authors: Naila Nasreen, Dianchen Lu

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This paper explores the dynamical behavior of the (2+1)-dimensional Boussinesq equation, which is a nonlinear water wave equation and is used to model wave packets in dispersive media with weak nonlinearity. This equation depicts how long wave made in shallow water propagates due to the influence of gravity. The (2+1)- dimensional Boussinesq equation combines the two-way propagation of the classical Boussinesq equation with the dependence on a second spatial variable, as that occurs in the two-dimensional Kadomstev- Petviashvili equation. This equation provides a description of head- on collision of oblique waves and it possesses some interesting properties. The governing model is discussed by the assistance of Ricatti equation mapping method, a relatively integration tool. The solutions have been extracted in different forms the solitary wave solutions as well as hyperbolic and periodic solutions. Moreover, the sensitivity analysis is demonstrated for the designed dynamical structural system’s wave profiles, where the soliton wave velocity and wave number parameters regulate the water wave singularity. In addition to being helpful for elucidating nonlinear partial differential equations, the method in use gives previously extracted solutions and extracts fresh exact solutions. Assuming the right values for the parameters, various graph in different shapes are sketched to provide information about the visual format of the earned results. This paper’s findings support the efficacy of the approach taken in enhancing nonlinear dynamical behavior. We believe this research will be of interest to a wide variety of engineers that work with engineering models. Findings show the effectiveness simplicity, and generalizability of the chosen computational approach, even when applied to complicated systems in a variety of fields, especially in ocean engineering.

Keywords: (2+1)-dimensional Boussinesq equation, solitary wave solutions, Ricatti equation mapping approach, nonlinear phenomena

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Authors: Bensaid A., Mostephaoui T., Nedjai R.

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Nowadays, wetlands are the subject of contradictory debates opposing scientific, political and administrative meanings. Indeed, given their multiple services (drinking water, irrigation, hydrological regulation, mineral, plant and animal resources...), wetlands concentrate many socio-economic and biodiversity issues. In some regions, they can cover vast areas (>100 thousand ha) of the landscape, such as the Camargue area in the south of France, inside the Rhone delta. The high biological productivity of wetlands, the strong natural selection pressures and the diversity of aquatic environments have produced many species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else. These environments are tremendous carbon sinks and biodiversity reserves depending on their age, composition and surrounding environmental conditions, wetlands play an important role in global climate projections. Covering more than 3% of the earth's surface, wetlands have experienced since the beginning of the 1990s a tremendous revival of interest, which has resulted in the multiplication of inventories, scientific studies and management experiments. The geographical and physical characteristics of the wetlands of the central region conceal a large number of natural habitats that harbour a great biological diversity. These wetlands, one of the natural habitats, are still influenced by human activities, especially agriculture, which affects its layout and functioning. In this perspective, decision-makers need to delimit spatial objects (natural habitats) in a certain way to be able to take action. Thus, wetlands are no exception to this rule even if it seems to be a difficult exercise to delimit a type of environment as whose main characteristic is often to occupy the transition between aquatic and terrestrial environment. However, it is possible to map wetlands with databases, derived from the interpretation of photos and satellite images, such as the European database Corine Land cover, which allows quantifying and characterizing for each place the characteristic wetland types. Scientific studies have shown limitations when using high spatial resolution images (SPOT, Landsat, ASTER) for the identification and characterization of small wetlands (1 hectare). To address this limitation, it is important to note that these wetlands generally represent spatially complex features. Indeed, the use of very high spatial resolution images (>3m) is necessary to map small and large areas. However, with the recent evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning methods for satellite image processing have shown a much better performance compared to traditional processing based only on pixel structures. Our research work is also based on spectral and textural analysis on THR images (Spot and IRC orthoimage) using two object-oriented approaches, the nearest neighbour approach (k-NN) and the Super Vector Machine approach (SVM). The k-NN approach gave good results for the delineation of wetlands (wet marshes and moors, ponds, artificial wetlands water body edges, ponds, mountain wetlands, river edges and brackish marshes) with a kappa index higher than 85%.

Keywords: land development, GIS, sand dunes, segmentation, remote sensing

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Authors: David Polcari, Samuel C. Perry, Loredano Pollegioni, Matthias Geissler, Janine Mauzeroll

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ᴅ-serine acts as an endogenous co-agonist for N-methyl-ᴅ-aspartate receptors in neuronal synapses. This makes it a key component in the development and function of a healthy brain, especially given its role in several neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Despite such clear research motivations, the primary site and mechanism of ᴅ-serine release is still currently unclear. For this reason, we are developing a biosensor for the detection of ᴅ-serine utilizing a microelectrode in combination with a ᴅ-amino acid oxidase enzyme, which produces stoichiometric quantities of hydrogen peroxide in response to ᴅ-serine. For the fabrication of a biosensor with good selectivity, we use a permselective poly(meta-phenylenediamine) film to ensure only the target molecule is reacted, according to the size exclusion principle. In this work, we investigated the effect of the electrodeposition conditions used on the biosensor’s response time and selectivity. Careful optimization of the fabrication process allowed for enhanced biosensor response time. This allowed for the real time sensing of ᴅ-serine in a bulk solution, and also provided in means to map the efflux of ᴅ-serine in real time. This was done using scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) with the optimized biosensor to measure localized release of ᴅ-serine from an agar filled glass capillary sealed in an epoxy puck, which acted as a model system. The SECM area scan simultaneously provided information regarding the rate of ᴅ-serine flux from the model substrate, as well as the size of the substrate itself. This SECM methodology, which provides high spatial and temporal resolution, could be useful to investigate the primary site and mechanism of ᴅ-serine release in other biological samples.

Keywords: ᴅ-serine, enzymatic biosensor, microelectrode, scanning electrochemical microscopy

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Authors: Pi Hsia Liang

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The rise of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks significantly changes in interconnections between people, enhancing the process of information dissemination and amplify the influence of that information. Therefore, to develop informational efficiency or signaling equilibrium type of information environment among social networks, without adverse selection effects, becomes an important issue. Thus, someone may post a piece of intentional information in relation to personal interest for trying to create marginal influence. Therefore, economists are seeking to establish theories of informational efficiency under social network environment in order to resolve adverse selection issues. Reputation could be one of the important factors in the process of creating informational efficiency. Additionally, investors how to process green information, or information of corporate social responsibility is a very important study. This study essentially employs experimental study for examining how investors use stock relevant green information in Facebook and various Taiwan local networks. Facebook, and blogs of Money DJ, Technews and cnYES, respectively, are the primary sites for this examination that also allow to differentiate effects between Facebook and other local social networks. Questionnaire is developed for such an experimental testing. Note that questionnaire allows this study to group, for example, decision frequency and length of time duration focusing on social networks that are used for discriminating investor type and competence of informed investor. This study selects 500 investors that can be separated into two respective 250 samples as the control group and 250 samples in such an experimental. The quantity of sample investor sufficiently results in statistic significance of this experimental study. The empirical results of this study can be used for explaining how financial information in relation to corporate social responsibility would be disseminated in social websites. Therefore, we can lead to better interpretation of price/earnings relationship type of study and empirical studies of green information usefulness or informational efficiency Note that the above mentioned empirical studies did not exist any social network and annual report of corporate social responsibility. This study expects to find the results that both network degree and network cluster significantly affected green information dissemination frequency. In other words, investors with more connections and with high clustered connections might exert a greater influence on their green information dissemination process. The preferred users of financial social networks could make better stock decision that could amplify effects of green information. In addition, Facebook would be more influential than other local Taiwan financial social networks, although Facebook is not a specialized financial social network. In other words, the popularity and reputation effects of Facebook significantly contribute to usefulness of green information and influence of green information. Third, it has a better chance to find rumor or cheating information in local Taiwan financial social networks than Facebook. In other words, Facebook possesses reputation effect, or a better informational efficiency. Or, even though Taiwan local financial social networks have marginal informational effects on stock price, because of shortage of informational efficiency or monitoring system, information could be a tool for those whom owning superior information.

Keywords: network effect on financial services, informational efficiency theory, social networks, social websites

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Authors: Orkan Ozcan, Nebiye Musaoglu, Murat Turkes

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Climate change is largely recognized as one of the real, pressing and significant global problems. The concept of ‘climate change vulnerability’ helps us to better comprehend the cause/effect relationships behind climate change and its impact on human societies, socioeconomic sectors, physiographical and ecological systems. In this study, multifactorial spatial modeling was applied to evaluate the vulnerability of a Mediterranean forest ecosystem to climate change. As a result, the geographical distribution of the final Environmental Vulnerability Areas (EVAs) of the forest ecosystem is based on the estimated final Environmental Vulnerability Index (EVI) values. This revealed that at current levels of environmental degradation, physical, geographical, policy enforcement and socioeconomic conditions, the area with a ‘very low’ vulnerability degree covered mainly the town, its surrounding settlements and the agricultural lands found mainly over the low and flat travertine plateau and the plains at the east and southeast of the district. The spatial magnitude of the EVAs over the forest ecosystem under the current environmental degradation was also determined. This revealed that the EVAs classed as ‘very low’ account for 21% of the total area of the forest ecosystem, those classed as ‘low’ account for 36%, those classed as ‘medium’ account for 20%, and those classed as ‘high’ account for 24%. Based on regionally averaged future climate assessments and projected future climate indicators, both the study site and the western Mediterranean sub-region of Turkey will probably become associated with a drier, hotter, more continental and more water-deficient climate. This analysis holds true for all future scenarios, with the exception of RCP4.5 for the period from 2015 to 2030. However, the present dry-sub humid climate dominating this sub-region and the study area shows a potential for change towards more dry climatology and for it to become a semiarid climate in the period between 2031 and 2050 according to the RCP8.5 high emission scenario. All the observed and estimated results and assessments summarized in the study show clearly that the densest forest ecosystem in the southern part of the study site, which is characterized by mainly Mediterranean coniferous and some mixed forest and the maquis vegetation, will very likely be influenced by medium and high degrees of vulnerability to future environmental degradation, climate change and variability.

Keywords: forest ecosystem, Mediterranean climate, RCP scenarios, vulnerability analysis

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Authors: Babak Forouraghi

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A genetic circuit is a collection of interacting genes and proteins that enable individual cells to implement and perform vital biological functions such as cell division, growth, death, and signaling. In cell engineering, synthetic gene circuits are engineered networks of genes specifically designed to implement functionalities that are not evolved by nature. These engineered networks enable scientists to tackle complex problems such as engineering cells to produce therapeutics within the patient's body, altering T cells to target cancer-related antigens for treatment, improving antibody production using engineered cells, tissue engineering, and production of genetically modified plants and livestock. Construction of computational models to realize genetic circuits is an especially challenging task since it requires the discovery of flow of genetic information in complex biological systems. Building synthetic biological models is also a time-consuming process with relatively low prediction accuracy for highly complex genetic circuits. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the utility of a pre-trained bidirectional encoder transformer that can accurately predict gene expressions in genetic circuit designs. The main reason behind using transformers is their innate ability (attention mechanism) to take account of the semantic context present in long DNA chains that are heavily dependent on spatial representation of their constituent genes. Previous approaches to gene circuit design, such as CNN and RNN architectures, are unable to capture semantic dependencies in long contexts as required in most real-world applications of synthetic biology. For instance, RNN models (LSTM, GRU), although able to learn long-term dependencies, greatly suffer from vanishing gradient and low-efficiency problem when they sequentially process past states and compresses contextual information into a bottleneck with long input sequences. In other words, these architectures are not equipped with the necessary attention mechanisms to follow a long chain of genes with thousands of tokens. To address the above-mentioned limitations of previous approaches, a transformer model was built in this work as a variation to the existing DNA Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (DNABERT) model. It is shown that the proposed transformer is capable of capturing contextual information from long input sequences with attention mechanism. In a previous work on genetic circuit design, the traditional approaches to classification and regression, such as Random Forrest, Support Vector Machine, and Artificial Neural Networks, were able to achieve reasonably high R2 accuracy levels of 0.95 to 0.97. However, the transformer model utilized in this work with its attention-based mechanism, was able to achieve a perfect accuracy level of 100%. Further, it is demonstrated that the efficiency of the transformer-based gene expression classifier is not dependent on presence of large amounts of training examples, which may be difficult to compile in many real-world gene circuit designs.

Keywords: transformers, generative ai, gene expression design, classification

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Authors: S. O. Uwaifo

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The paper examines the pivotal role of the library in university education through the provision of a wide range of information materials (print and non- print) required for the teaching, learning and research activities of the university. However certain impediments to the effectiveness of Nigerian university libraries, such as financial constraints, high foreign exchange, global disparities in accessing the internet, lack of local area networks, erratic electric power supply, absence of ICT literacy, poor maintenance culture, etc., were identified. Also, the necessity of repositioning Nigerian university libraries for effective information provision and delivery was stressed by pointing out their dividends, such as users’ access to Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), Institutional Repositories, Electronic Document Delivery, Social Media Networks, etc. It therefore becomes necessary for the libraries to be repositioned by way of being adequately automated or digitized for effective service delivery, in this age of globalization. Based on the identified barriers by this paper, some recommendations were proffered.

Keywords: repositioning, Nigerian university libraries, effective information provision and delivery, globalization

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Authors: Nilamadhab Mohanty

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It is essential to use message formats that make communication understandable and correct. It is because; the information format can influence consumer decision on the purchase of a product. This study combines information from qualitative inquiry, media trend analysis, eye tracking experiment, and questionnaire data to examine the impact of specific message format and consumer perceived risk on attention to the information and risk retention. We investigated the influence of message framing (goal framing, attribute framing, and mix framing) on consumer memory, study time, and decisional uncertainty while deciding on the purchase of drugs. Furthermore, we explored the impact of consumer perceived risk (associated with the use of the drug, i.e., RISK-AB and perceived risk associated with the non-use of the drug, i.e., RISK-EB) on message format preference. The study used eye-tracking methods to understand the differences in message processing. Findings of the study suggest that the message format influences information processing, and participants' risk perception impacts message format preference. Eye tracking can be used to understand the format differences and design effective advertisements.

Keywords: message framing, consumer perceived risk, advertising, eye tracking

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Authors: Yoshinori Wakatake

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Many defects after the release of software packages are caused due to omissions of sufficient test items in test specifications. Poor test specifications are detected by manual review, which imposes a high human load. The prevention of omissions depends on the end-user awareness of test specification writers. If test specifications were written while envisioning the behavior of end-users, the number of omissions in test items would be greatly reduced. The paper pays attention to the point that writers who can achieve it differ from those who cannot in not only the description richness but also their gaze information. It proposes a method to estimate the degree of user-awareness of writers through the analysis of their gaze information when writing test specifications. We conduct an experiment to obtain the gaze information of a writer of the test specifications. Test specifications are automatically classified using gaze information. In this method, a Random Forest model is constructed for the classification. The classification is highly accurate. By looking at the explanatory variables which turn out to be important variables, we know behavioral features to distinguish test specifications of high quality from others. It is confirmed they are pupil diameter size and the number and the duration of blinks. The paper also investigates test specifications automatically classified with gaze information to discuss features in their writing ways in each quality level. The proposed method enables us to automatically classify test specifications. It also prevents test item omissions, because it reveals writing features that test specifications of high quality should satisfy.

Keywords: blink, eye tracking, gaze information, pupil diameter, quality improvement, specification document, user-awareness

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Authors: Benhenni Abdellaziz

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Irrigation is a limiting factor for agricultural production and socio-economic development of many countries in arid and semiarid in the world. However, the sustainability of irrigation systems requires a rational management of the water resource that is becoming increasingly rare in these regions. The objective of this work is to apply a geographic information system (GIS) coupled to a model for calculating crop water requirements (CROPWATER) for the management of irrigation water in irrigated area and offer managers with an effective tool to better manage water resources in these areas. The application area of GIS is the irrigated perimeter of Western Middle Cheliff which is located in a semi-arid region (Middle Cheliff). The scope in question is a considerable agrarian dynamics and an increased need for irrigation of most crops.

Keywords: geographical information, irrigation, economical, use rational

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Authors: Yi-Ting Liu, Pei-Ying Wen

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In order to improve the overall safety of chemotherapy, safety-protecting net was established for the whole process from prescribing by physicians, transcribing by nurses, dispensing by pharmacists to administering by nurses. The information system was used to check and monitor whole process of administration and related sheets were computerized to simplify the paper work.

Keywords: chemotherapy, bar code medication administration, medication safety

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Authors: B. Mack, K. Tampe-Mai, E. Diesch

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Findings of an ongoing discrete choice study of future transport mode choice will be presented. Many urban centers face the triple challenge of having to cope with ever increasing traffic congestion, environmental pollution, and greenhouse gas emission brought about by private car use. In principle, private car use may be diminished by extending public transport systems like bus lines, trams, tubes, and trains. However, there are limits to increasing the (perceived) spatial and temporal flexibility and reducing peak-time crowding of classical public transport systems. An emerging new type of system, publicly or privately operated on-demand shuttle bus services, seem suitable to ameliorate the situation. A fleet of on-demand shuttle busses operates without fixed stops and schedules. It may be deployed efficiently in that each bus picks up passengers whose itineraries may be combined into an optimized route. Crowding may be minimized by limiting the number of seats and the inter-seat distance for each bus. The study is conducted as a discrete choice experiment. The choice between private car, public transport, and shuttle service is registered as a function of several push and pull factors (financial costs, travel time, walking distances, mobility tax/congestion charge, and waiting time/parking space search time). After the completion of the discrete choice items, the study participant is asked to rate the three modes of transport with regard to the pull factors of comfort, safety, privacy, and opportunity to engage in activities like reading or surfing the internet. These ratings are entered as additional predictors into the discrete choice experiment regression model. The study is conducted in the region of Stuttgart in southern Germany. N=1000 participants are being recruited. Participants are between 18 and 69 years of age, hold a driver’s license, and live in the city or the surrounding region of Stuttgart. In the discrete choice experiment, participants are asked to assume they lived within the Stuttgart region, but outside of the city, and were planning the journey from their apartment to their place of work, training, or education during the peak traffic time in the morning. Then, for each item of the discrete choice experiment, they are asked to choose between the transport modes of private car, public transport, and on-demand shuttle in the light of particular values of the push and pull factors studied. The study will provide valuable information on the potential of switching from private car use to the use of on-demand shuttles, but also on the less desirable potential of switching from public transport to on-demand shuttle services. Furthermore, information will be provided on the modulation of these switching potentials by pull and push factors.

Keywords: determinants of travel mode choice, on-demand shuttle services, private car use, public transport

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Authors: Diego Roberto Goncalves De Pontes, Sergio Donizetti Zorzo

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Studies show that most users do not read privacy policies from the online services they use. Some authors claim that one of the main causes of this is that policies are long and usually hard to understand, which make users lose interest in reading them. In this scenario, users may agree with terms without knowing what kind of data is being collected and why. Given that, we aimed to develop a model that would present the privacy policies contents in an easy and graphical way for the user to understand. We call it the Privacy Label. Using information recovery techniques, we propose an architecture that is able to extract information about what kind of data is being collected and to what end in the policies and show it to the user in an automated way. To assess our model, we calculated the precision, recall and f-measure metrics on the information extracted by our technique. The results for each metric were 68.53%, 85.61% e 76,13%, respectively, making it possible for the final user to understand which data was being collected without reading the whole policy. Also, our proposal can facilitate the notice-and-choice by presenting privacy policy information in an alternative way for online users.

Keywords: privacy, policies, user behavior, computer human interaction

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Authors: Samira Karimi-Mansoub, Rahem Abri

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Currently, users expect high quality and personalized information from search results. To satisfy user’s needs, personalized approaches to web search have been proposed. These approaches can provide the most appropriate answer for user’s needs by using user context and incorporating information about query provided by combining search technologies. To carry out personalized web search, there is a need to make different techniques on whole of user search process. There are the number of possible deployment of personalized approaches such as personalized web search, personalized recommendation, personalized summarization and filtering systems and etc. but the common feature of all approaches in various domains is that user modeling is utilized to provide personalized information from the Web. So the most important work in personalized approaches is user model mining. User modeling applications and technologies can be used in various domains depending on how the user collected information may be extracted. In addition to, the used techniques to create user model is also different in each of these applications. Since in the previous studies, there was not a complete survey in this field, our purpose is to present a survey on applications and techniques of user modeling from the viewpoint of improvement in search results by considering the existing literature and researches.

Keywords: filtering systems, personalized web search, user modeling, user search behavior

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Authors: Ali Raouli, Amin Chegenizadeh, Hamid Nikraz

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The Perth metropolitan area and its surrounding regions have been expanding rapidly in recent decades and it is expected that this growth will continue in the years to come. With this rapid growth and the resulting increase in population, consideration should be given to strategic planning and modelling for the future expansion of Perth. The accurate estimation of projected traffic volumes has always been a major concern for the transport modelers and planners. Development of a reliable strategic transport model depends significantly on the inputs data into the model and the calibrated parameters of the model to reflect the existing situation. Trip distribution is the second step in four-step modelling (FSM) which is complex due to its behavioral nature. Gravity model is the most common method for trip distribution. The spatial separation between the Origin and Destination (OD) zones will be reflected in gravity model by applying deterrence functions which provide an opportunity to include people’s behavior in choosing their destinations based on distance, time and cost of their journeys. Deterrence functions play an important role for distribution of the trips within a study area and would simulate the trip distances and therefore should be calibrated for any particular strategic transport model to correctly reflect the trip behavior within the modelling area. This paper aims to review the most common deterrence functions and propose a calibrated deterrence function for work trips within the Perth Metropolitan Area based on the information obtained from the latest available Household data and Perth and Region Travel Survey (PARTS) data. As part of this study, a four-step transport model using EMME software has been developed for Perth Metropolitan Area to assist with the analysis and findings.

Keywords: deterrence function, four-step modelling, origin destination, transport model

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Authors: Elaheh Talebi, Fariba Yavari, Lucy Philip, Lesley Town

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The mining industry generates vast amounts of data, necessitating robust data management systems and advanced analytics tools to achieve better decision-making processes in the development of mining production and maintaining safety. This paper highlights the advantages of Power BI, a powerful intelligence tool, over traditional Excel-based approaches for effectively managing and harnessing mining data. Power BI enables professionals to connect and integrate multiple data sources, ensuring real-time access to up-to-date information. Its interactive visualizations and dashboards offer an intuitive interface for exploring and analyzing geotechnical data. Advanced analytics is a collection of data analysis techniques to improve decision-making. Leveraging some of the most complex techniques in data science, advanced analytics is used to do everything from detecting data errors and ensuring data accuracy to directing the development of future project phases. However, while Power BI is a robust tool, specific visualizations required by geotechnical engineers may have limitations. This paper studies the capability to use Python or R programming within the Power BI dashboard to enable advanced analytics, additional functionalities, and customized visualizations. This dashboard provides comprehensive tools for analyzing and visualizing key geotechnical data metrics, including spatial representation on maps, field and lab test results, and subsurface rock and soil characteristics. Advanced visualizations like borehole logs and Stereonet were implemented using Python programming within the Power BI dashboard, enhancing the understanding and communication of geotechnical information. Moreover, the dashboard's flexibility allows for the incorporation of additional data and visualizations based on the project scope and available data, such as pit design, rock fall analyses, rock mass characterization, and drone data. This further enhances the dashboard's usefulness in future projects, including operation, development, closure, and rehabilitation phases. Additionally, this helps in minimizing the necessity of utilizing multiple software programs in projects. This geotechnical dashboard in Power BI serves as a user-friendly solution for analyzing, visualizing, and communicating both new and historical geotechnical data, aiding in informed decision-making and efficient project management throughout various project stages. Its ability to generate dynamic reports and share them with clients in a collaborative manner further enhances decision-making processes and facilitates effective communication within geotechnical projects in the mining industry.

Keywords: geotechnical data analysis, power BI, visualization, decision-making, mining industry

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Authors: Renato Figueira Franco

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This paper aims to create a representational information system applied to the securities market, particularly the development of an ontology applied to the analysis of the Key Information Documents of Contracts for Difference. The process of obtaining knowledge and its proper formal representation has raised the attention both from the scientific literature and the capital markets supervisory authorities. The formal knowledge representation is embodied in the construction of ontologies, which are responsible for defining a knowledge base structure of a given scientific domain, facilitating its understanding, and allowing its sharing among the scientific community. The scope of this study is restricted to the analysis of capital markets ontologies in order to capture its structure, semantics and knowledge sharing between people and systems.

Keywords: ontology, financial markets, CFD, PRIIPs, key information documents

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Authors: Eliza. E. Camaso, Guiller. B. Damian, Miguelito. F. Isip, Ronaldo T. Alberto

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Land-cover maps were important for many scientific, ecological and land management purposes and during the last decades, rapid decrease of soil fertility was observed to be due to land use practices such as rice cultivation. High-precision land-cover maps are not yet available in the area which is important in an economy management. To assure   accurate mapping of land cover to provide information, remote sensing is a very suitable tool to carry out this task and automatic land use and cover detection. The study did not only provide high precision land cover maps but it also provides estimates of rice production area that had undergone chemical degradation due to fertility decline. Land-cover were delineated and classified into pre-defined classes to achieve proper detection features. After generation of Land-cover map, of high intensity of rice cultivation, soil fertility degradation assessment in rice production area due to fertility decline was created to assess the impact of soils used in agricultural production. Using Simple spatial analysis functions and ArcGIS, the Land-cover map of Municipality of Quezon in Nueva Ecija, Philippines was overlaid to the fertility decline maps from Land Degradation Assessment Philippines- Bureau of Soils and Water Management (LADA-Philippines-BSWM) to determine the area of rice crops that were most likely where nitrogen, phosphorus, zinc and sulfur deficiencies were induced by high dosage of urea and imbalance N:P fertilization. The result found out that 80.00 % of fallow and 99.81% of rice production area has high soil fertility decline.

Keywords: aerial image, landcover, LiDAR, soil fertility degradation

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Authors: Arej Alhemimah

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This study investigates the influence of tourists’ perceptions of destination image on their intention to use a tourism app. It examines the roles played by tourists’ perceptions of app/website usability, information quality, and risk in shaping tourism destination image and, subsequently, their app use intention. Using an online questionnaire, the study surveyed 194 international tourists in Saudi Arabia. Results were analysed using PLS-SEM. All the proposed hypotheses were supported and significant. Perceived risk had the strongest influence, followed by the influence of tourists’ perceptions of information quality, then app usability. Additionally, perceived risk was found to have a strong effect on the application use intention. The study makes a significant contribution to the tourism website/application literature; its implications provide practical insights and recommendations for destination marketers and managers to improve their online and social media presence in terms of enhancing e-platform usability, quality of provided information, and most importantly, to create a destination strategy to manage tourists’ risk perceptions.

Keywords: destination image, perceived risk, use intention, tourism app, information quality

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Authors: Claudia Trillo

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Regional innovation eco-ecosystems are composed of a variety of interconnected urban innovation eco-systems, mutually reinforcing each other and making the whole territorial system successful. Combining principles drawn from the new economic growth theory and from the socio-constructivist approach to the economic growth, with the new geography of innovation emerging from the networked nature of innovation districts, this paper explores the spatial configuration of urban innovation districts, with the aim of unveiling replicable spatial patterns and transferable portfolios of urban policies. While some authors suggest that cities should be considered ideal natural clusters, supporting cross-fertilization and innovation thanks to the physical setting they provide to the construction of collective knowledge, still a considerable distance persists between regional development strategies and urban policies. Moreover, while public and private policies supporting entrepreneurship normally consider innovation as the cornerstone of any action aimed at uplifting the competitiveness and economic success of a certain area, a growing body of literature suggests that innovation is non-neutral, hence, it should be constantly assessed against equity and social inclusion. This paper draws from a robust qualitative empirical dataset gathered through 4-years research conducted in Boston to provide readers with an evidence-based set of recommendations drawn from the lessons learned through the investigation of the chosen innovation districts in the Boston area. The evaluative framework used for assessing the overall performance of the chosen case studies stems from the Habitat III Sustainable Development Goals rationale. The concept of inclusive growth has been considered essential to assess the social innovation domain in each of the chosen cases. The key success factors for the development of the Boston innovation ecosystem can be generalized as follows: 1) a quadruple helix model embedded in the physical structure of the two cities (Boston and Cambridge), in which anchor Higher Education (HE) institutions continuously nurture the Entrepreneurial Environment. 2) an entrepreneurial approach emerging from the local governments, eliciting risk-taking and bottom-up civic participation in tackling key issues in the city. 3) a networking structure of some intermediary actors supporting entrepreneurial collaboration, cross-fertilization and co-creation, which collaborate at multiple-scales thus enabling positive spillovers from the stronger to the weaker contexts. 4) awareness of the socio-economic value of the built environment as enabler of cognitive networks allowing activation of the collective intelligence. 5) creation of civic-led spaces enabling grassroot collaboration and cooperation. Evidence shows that there is not a single magic recipe for the successful implementation of place-based and social innovation-driven strategies. On the contrary, the variety of place-grounded combinations of micro and macro initiatives, embedded in the social and spatial fine grain of places and encompassing a diversity of actors, can create the conditions enabling places to thrive and local economic activities to grow in a sustainable way.

Keywords: innovation-driven sustainable Eco-systems , place-based sustainable urban development, sustainable innovation districts, social innovation, urban policie

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Authors: Nguyen Chi Quang, Nguyen Duong Tri Nguyen

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This article is the first step to research and outline the structure of the geotechnical database in the geological survey of a power project; in the context of this report creating the database that has been carried out for the Bac Ai pumped storage hydropower project. For the purpose of providing a method of organizing and storing geological and topographic survey data and experimental results in a spatial database, the RockWorks software is used to bring optimal efficiency in the process of exploiting, using, and analyzing data in service of the design work in the power engineering consulting. Three-dimensional (3D) geotechnical models are created from the survey data: such as stratigraphy, lithology, porosity, etc. The results of the 3D geotechnical model in the case of Bac Ai pumped storage hydropower project include six closely stacked stratigraphic formations by Horizons method, whereas modeling of engineering geological parameters is performed by geostatistical methods. The accuracy and reliability assessments are tested through error statistics, empirical evaluation, and expert methods. The three-dimensional model analysis allows better visualization of volumetric calculations, excavation and backfilling of the lake area, tunneling of power pipelines, and calculation of on-site construction material reserves. In general, the application of engineering geological modeling makes the design work more intuitive and comprehensive, helping construction designers better identify and offer the most optimal design solutions for the project. The database always ensures the update and synchronization, as well as enables 3D modeling of geological and topographic data to integrate with the designed data according to the building information modeling. This is also the base platform for BIM & GIS integration.

Keywords: database, engineering geology, 3D Model, RockWorks, Bac Ai pumped storage hydropower project

Procedia PDF Downloads 161