Search results for: social semiotics

Authors: P. Wlodarczak, J. Soar, M. Ally

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The dramatic rise in the use of Social Media (SM) platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide access to an unprecedented amount of user data. Users may post reviews on products and services they bought, write about their interests, share ideas or give their opinions and views on political issues. There is a growing interest in the analysis of SM data from organisations for detecting new trends, obtaining user opinions on their products and services or finding out about their online reputations. A recent research trend in SM analysis is making predictions based on sentiment analysis of SM. Often indicators of historic SM data are represented as time series and correlated with a variety of real world phenomena like the outcome of elections, the development of financial indicators, box office revenue and disease outbreaks. This paper examines the current state of research in the area of SM mining and predictive analysis and gives an overview of the analysis methods using opinion mining and machine learning techniques.

Keywords: Social Media, text mining, knowledge discovery, predictive analysis, machine learning.

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Authors: Masatora Daito, Hisashi Kojima

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In this research, the authors analyze network stability using agent-based simulation. Firstly, the authors focus on analyzing large networks (eight agents) by connecting different two stable small social networks (A small stable network is consisted on four agents.). Secondly, the authors analyze the network (eight agents) shape which is added one agent to a stable network (seven agents). Thirdly, the authors analyze interpersonal comparison of utility. The “star-network "was not found on the result of interaction among stable two small networks. On the other hand, “decentralized network" was formed from several combination. In case of added one agent to a stable network (seven agents), if the value of “c"(maintenance cost of per a link) was larger, the number of patterns of stable network was also larger. In this case, the authors identified the characteristics of a large stable network. The authors discovered the cases of decreasing personal utility under condition increasing total utility.

Keywords: Social Network, Symmetric Situation, Network Stability, Agent-Based Modeling.

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Authors: Asif Ali, Daud Salim Faruquie

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With the advancement of knowledge about the utility and impact of sustainability, its feasibility has been explored into different walks of life. Scientists, however; have established their knowledge in four areas viz environmental, economic, social and cultural, popularly termed as four pillars of sustainability. Aspects of environmental and economic sustainability have been rigorously researched and practiced and huge volume of strong evidence of effectiveness has been founded for these two sub-areas. For the social and cultural aspects of sustainability, dependable evidence of effectiveness is still to be instituted as the researchers and practitioners are developing and experimenting methods across the globe. Therefore, the present research aimed to identify globally used practices of social and cultural sustainability and through evidence synthesis assess their outcomes to determine the effectiveness of those practices. A PICO format steered the methodology which included all populations, popular sustainability practices including walkability/cycle tracks, social/recreational spaces, privacy, health & human services and barrier free built environment, comparators included ‘Before’ and ‘After’, ‘With’ and ‘Without’, ‘More’ and ‘Less’ and outcomes included Social well-being, cultural coexistence, quality of life, ethics and morality, social capital, sense of place, education, health, recreation and leisure, and holistic development. Search of literature included major electronic databases, search websites, organizational resources, directory of open access journals and subscribed journals. Grey literature, however, was not included. Inclusion criteria filtered studies on the basis of research designs such as total randomization, quasirandomization, cluster randomization, observational or single studies and certain types of analysis. Studies with combined outcomes were considered but studies focusing only on environmental and/or economic outcomes were rejected. Data extraction, critical appraisal and evidence synthesis was carried out using customized tabulation, reference manager and CASP tool. Partial meta-analysis was carried out and calculation of pooled effects and forest plotting were done. As many as 13 studies finally included for final synthesis explained the impact of targeted practices on health, behavioural and social dimensions. Objectivity in the measurement of health outcomes facilitated quantitative synthesis of studies which highlighted the impact of sustainability methods on physical activity, Body Mass Index, perinatal outcomes and child health. Studies synthesized qualitatively (and also quantitatively) showed outcomes such as routines, family relations, citizenship, trust in relationships, social inclusion, neighbourhood social capital, wellbeing, habitability and family’s social processes. The synthesized evidence indicates slight effectiveness and efficacy of social and cultural sustainability on the targeted outcomes. Further synthesis revealed that such results of this study are due weak research designs and disintegrated implementations. If architects and other practitioners deliver their interventions in collaboration with research bodies and policy makers, a stronger evidence-base in this area could be generated.

Keywords: Built environment, cultural sustainability, social sustainability, sustainable architecture.

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Authors: Xueqin Shan, Chuanming Wu, Wenhua Hou, Xiaosu Ye

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Successful public-private-partnership (PPP) implementation can not be achieved without the active participation of private sector companies. This paper examines the decision-making of private sector companies in public works delivered by the PPP model on the basis of social responsibility theory. It proposes that private sector companies should indentify objectives of entering into PPP projects, and shoulder relevant social responsibilities, while a minimum return should also be guaranteed in their favor, so as to compensate for their assumed risk and support them to take on responsibilities in the future. The paper also gives a calculation regarding the appropriate scale and reasonable degree of private sector involvement in PPP projects through the cost-benefit analysis in a specific case study, with the purpose to guide the private sector companies to create a cooperation environment resembling “symbiosis" and facilitate the smooth implementation of public works delivered by the PPP model.

Keywords: Social Responsibility Theory, Cost-benefit Analysis, PPP Projects, Private Sector Companies, Decision-making Modell

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Authors: Christina Babatsou, Efthimios Zervas

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Since 2008 a new economic crisis is present is the entire planet. This crisis affects several domains of the economic but also of the social life. Consumption decreases due to the lack of necessary resources of households to increase their expenditures. The car manufacturing is one of the main industrial activities in European Union (EU) and the present crisis particularly affects it. The present study examines the correlations between several socio-economic indicators and car market in European Union. The target is to find out the impact of the present economic crisis on the car market in EU.

Keywords: European Union, Passenger cars, Social indicators, Correlations

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Authors: Siddegowda, Y. A. Sathish, G. Krishnegowda, T. M. Mohan Kumar

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Road accidents are a human tragedy. They involve high human suffering and monetary costs in terms of untimely death, injuries and social problems. India had earned the dubious distinction of having more number of fatalities due to road accidents in the world. Road safety is emerging as a major social concern around the world especially in India because of infrastructure project works. A case study was taken on NH – 07 which connects to various major cities and industries. The study shows that major cases of fatalities are due to bus, trucks and high speed vehicles. The main causes of accidents are due to high density, non-restriction of speed, use of mobile phones, lack of board signs on road parking, visibility restriction, improper geometric design, road use characteristics, environmental aspects, social aspects etc. Data analysis and preventive measures are enlightened in this paper.

Keywords: Accidents, environmental aspects, fatalities, geometric design, road user characteristics.

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Authors: Gracia V. Navarro, Maria V. Gonzalez, Carlos G. Reed

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The eudaimonic perspective in philosophy and psychology suggests that a good life is closely related to developing oneself in order to contribute to the well-being and happiness of other people and of the world as a whole. Educational psychology can help to achieve this through the design and validation of educative models. Since 2004, the University of Concepcion and other Chilean universities apply an educative model to train socially responsible professionals, people that in the exercise of their profession contribute to generate equity for the development and assess the impacts of their decisions, opting for those that serve the common good. The main aim is to identify if a relationship exists between achieved learning, attitudes toward social responsibility, self-attribution of socially responsible behavior, value type, professional behavior observed and, participation in a specific model to train socially responsible (SR) professionals. The Achieved Learning and Attitudes Toward Social Responsibility Questionnaire, interview with employers and Values Questionnaire and Self-attribution of SR Behavior Questionnaire is applied to 394 students and graduates, divided into experimental and control groups (trained and not trained under the educative model), in order to identify the professional behavior of the graduates. The results show that students and graduates perceive cognitive, affective and behavioral learning, with significant differences in attitudes toward social responsibility and self-attribution of SR behavior, between experimental and control. There are also differences in employers' perceptions about the professional practice of those who were trained under the model and those who were not. It is concluded that the educative model has an impact on the learning of social responsibility and educates for a full life. It is also concluded that it is necessary to identify mediating variables of the model effect.

Keywords: Educative model, good life, professional social responsibility (SR), values.

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Authors: Meryem Elif Çelebi Yakartepe, Ayşe Betül Gökarslan

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Today, preservation of the historical constructions in "single construction" scale creates an inadequate preservation model in terms of the integrity of the historical environment in which they are located. However, in order to preserve these structures forming this integrity with a holistic approach, the structures either need to continue their unique functions or to be reshaped for function conforming to today's comfort conditions brought by the modern life.

In this work, the preservation of Ayazma Social Complex located in Ayazma Neighborhood of Üsküdar, one of the most important historical districts of İstanbul, with integrated preservation method has been discussed. In the conventional Turkish architecture, the social complex is a structure complex formed via constructing the public buildings required for the daily life of the people living in a settlement. Thus, the preservation of the social complexes within the scope of "integrated preservation" has gained importance. Ayazma Social Complex that forms the examination area of this work consists of a mosque in its center and structures around this mosque such as sultan mansion, time assignment center, primary school, stores, bath and water reservoirs. Mosque, sultan mansion and the water reservoirs survived to today as mostly preserved status. However, time assignment center, primary school and the stores didn't survive to today and new structures were built on their plots. The bath was mostly damaged and only the wall residues survive to today. Thus, it's urgent and crucial especially carry out the preservation restoration of the bath in accordance with integrated preservation principles. The preservation problems of the bath based on the social complex were determined as a working method and preservation suggestions were made to overcome these problems and to include the bath into daily life. Furthermore, it was suggested that the bath should be reshaped for a different function in order to be preserved with the social complex.

Keywords: Üsküdar, Ayazma Complex, Ayazma Bath, Conservation, Restoration.

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Authors: Sally A. Brown

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Over the last 30 years, researchers have developed models or frameworks to provide a more structured understanding of the reading comprehension process. Cognitive information processing models and social cognitive theories both provide frameworks to inform reading comprehension instruction. The purpose of this paper is to (a) provide an overview of the historical development of reading comprehension theory, (b) review the literature framed by cognitive information processing, social cognitive, and integrated reading comprehension theories, and (c) demonstrate how these frameworks inform instruction. As integrated models of reading can guide the interpretation of various factors related to student learning, an integrated framework designed by the researcher will be presented. Results indicated that features of cognitive processing and social cognitivism theory—represented in the integrated framework—highlight the importance of the role of the teacher. This model can aide teachers in not only improving reading comprehension instruction but in identifying areas of challenge for students.

Keywords: Explicit instruction, integrated models of reading comprehension, reading comprehension, teacher’s role.

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Authors: Aliya Idrissova

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Civil service (public administration) is an important social institution of society properties. Civil service institution had a significant impact on modernization processes in Kazakhstan through ensuring the functioning of all the subsystems of social life. This article is an attempt to analyze the reforms of public service institution in Kazakhstan and to assess its influence on modernization processes.

Keywords: Civil service, Kazakhstan, modernization, a national model of civil service, civil service reforms, bureaucracy.

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Authors: Svetlana Cojocaru, Mircea Petic, Inga Titchiev

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Humanity faces more and more often with different social disasters, which in turn can generate new accidents and catastrophes. To mitigate their consequences, it is important to obtain early possible signals about the events which are or can occur and to prepare the corresponding scenarios that could be applied. Our research is focused on solving two problems in this domain: identifying signals related that an accident occurred or may occur and mitigation of some consequences of disasters. To solve the first problem, methods of selecting and processing texts from global network Internet are developed. Information in Romanian is of special interest for us. In order to obtain the mentioned tools, we should follow several steps, divided into preparatory stage and processing stage. Throughout the first stage, we manually collected over 724 news articles and classified them into 10 categories of social disasters. It constitutes more than 150 thousand words. Using this information, a controlled vocabulary of more than 300 keywords was elaborated, that will help in the process of classification and identification of the texts related to the field of social disasters. To solve the second problem, the formalism of Petri net has been used. We deal with the problem of inhabitants’ evacuation in useful time. The analysis methods such as reachability or coverability tree and invariants technique to determine dynamic properties of the modeled systems will be used. To perform a case study of properties of extended evacuation system by adding time, the analysis modules of PIPE such as Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPN) Analysis, Simulation, State Space Analysis, and Invariant Analysis have been used. These modules helped us to obtain the average number of persons situated in the rooms and the other quantitative properties and characteristics related to its dynamics.

Keywords: Lexicon of disasters, modelling, Petri nets, text annotation, social disasters.

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Authors: Sri Ratna Rahayu, Oktia Woro Kasmini Handayani, Lourensiana Y. S. Ngaga, Imade Sudana, Irwan Budiono

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Malaria is an infectious disease that still cannot be solved in Kori village, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, where the most of people live in rumah panggung (Stilts House). The purpose of this study was to know whether there were the effects of rumah panggung environment, social culture, and behavior on malaria incidence in the Kori village. A cross-sectional study was performed to explore the effects of rumah panggung environment, social culture and behavior on malaria incidence. This study recruited 280 respondents, who live in the rumah panggung, permanent residents in Kori village, were age above 17 years old, and suffered from malaria in the past year. The collected data were analyzed with path analysis. The results of this study showed that the environment of rumah panggung and behavior have a direct effect on the incidence of malaria (p < 0.05). It could be concluded that improvement of environmental conditions of rumah panggung, sociocultural, and behavioral changes to maintain a healthy environment are needed to reduce the malaria incidence.

Keywords: Rumah panggung, socio cultural, behavior, malaria.

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Authors: Mary-Magdalene N. Chumbow

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This study explores how a reality TV show which aired in Nigeria in 2019 (Big Brother Naija - BBN), played a role in enhancing gender-biased conversations among its viewers and social media followers. Thematic analysis is employed here to study Twitter conversations among BBN 2019 followers, which ensued after the show had stopped airing. The study reveals that the show influenced the way viewers and fans engaged with each other, as well as with the show’s participants, on Twitter, and argues that, despite having aired for a short period of time, BBN 2019 was able to draw people together and provide a community where viewers could engage with each other online. Though the show aired on TV, the viewers found a digital space where they could air their views, react to what was happening on the show, as well as simply catch up on action that they probably missed. Within these digital communities, viewers expressed their attractions, disgust and identities, most of these having a form of reference to sexuality and gender identities and roles, as were also portrayed by the show’s producers both on TV and on social media.

Keywords: Commodification of Bodies, gender stereotypes, Big Brother Naija, social media, Nigeria.

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Authors: K. Nirmala Devi, V. Murali Bhaskaran

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The exponential growth of social media arouses much attention on public opinion information. The online forums, blogs, micro blogs are proving to be extremely valuable resources and are having bulk volume of information. However, most of the social media data is unstructured and semi structured form. So that it is more difficult to decipher automatically. Therefore, it is very much essential to understand and analyze those data for making a right decision. The online forums hotspot detection is a promising research field in the web mining and it guides to motivate the user to take right decision in right time. The proposed system consist of a novel approach to detect a hotspot forum for any given time period. It uses aging theory to find the hot terms and E-K-means for detecting the hotspot forum. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms k-means for detecting the hotspot forums with the improved accuracy.

Keywords: Hotspot forums, Micro blog, Blog, Sentiment Analysis, Opinion Mining, Social media, Twitter, Web mining.

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Authors: Fouzia Alsabah Shaikh, Anjali Ghosh

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The present study was done primarily to address two major research gaps: firstly, development of an empirical measure of life meaningfulness for substance users and secondly, to determine the psychosocial determinants of life meaningfulness among the substance users. The study is classified into two phases: the first phase which dealt with development of Life Meaningfulness Scale and the second phase which examined the relationship between life meaningfulness and social support, abstinence self efficacy and depression. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used for framing items. A Principal Component Analysis yielded three components: Overall Goal Directedness, Striving for healthy lifestyle and Concern for loved ones which collectively accounted for 42.06% of the total variance. The scale and its subscales were also found to be highly reliable. Multiple regression analyses in the second phase of the study revealed that social support and abstinence self efficacy significantly predicted life meaningfulness among 48 recovering inmates of a de-addiction center while level of depression failed to predict life meaningfulness.

Keywords: Perceived Life meaningfulness, Social Support, Abstinence Self Efficacy, Depression, Substance Use.

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Authors: Szu-Yuan Sun, Teresa L. Ju, Hao-Fan Chumg, Chang-Yao Wu, Pei-Ju Chao

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Despite the fact that Knowledge Sharing (KS) is very important, we found only little discussion about the reasons why people have the willingness to share knowledge at such platform even though there is no immediate benefit to the persons who contribute knowledge in it. The aim of this study is to develop an integrative understanding of the factors that support or inhibit individuals- knowledge sharing intentions in virtual communities and to find whether habit would generate people-s willingness to be involved. We apply Social Capital Theory (SCT), and we also add two dimensions for discussion: member incentive and habitual domain (HD). This research assembles the questionnaire from individuals who have experienced knowledge sharing in virtual communities, and applies survey and Structural Equation Model (SEM) to analyze the results from the questionnaires. Finally, results confirm that individuals are willing to share knowledge in virtual communities: (1) if they consider reciprocity, centrality, and have longer tenure in their field, and enjoy helping. (2) if they have the habit of sharing knowledge. This study is useful for the developers of virtual communities to insight into knowledge sharing in cyberspace.

Keywords: Habitual domains, knowledge sharing, social capital theory, virtual community.

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Authors: Yu Zhang, Pedro Desouza

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Since big data has become substantially more accessible and manageable due to the development of powerful tools for dealing with unstructured data, people are eager to mine information from social media resources that could not be handled in the past. Sentiment analysis, as a novel branch of text mining, has in the last decade become increasingly important in marketing analysis, customer risk prediction and other fields. Scientists and researchers have undertaken significant work in creating and improving their sentiment models. In this paper, we present a concept of selecting appropriate classifiers based on the features and qualities of data sources by comparing the performances of five classifiers with three popular social media data sources: Twitter, Amazon Customer Reviews, and Movie Reviews. We introduced a couple of innovative models that outperform traditional sentiment classifiers for these data sources, and provide insights on how to further improve the predictive power of sentiment analysis. The modeling and testing work was done in R and Greenplum in-database analytic tools.

Keywords: Sentiment Analysis, Social Media, Twitter, Amazon, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Text Mining.

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Authors: Wenhsuan Lee, Yachi Chang, Yingyih Shih

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In clinical practices, it is common that while facing the unknown progress of their disease, palliative care patients may easily feel anxious and depressed. These types of reactions are a cause of psychosomatic diseases and may also influence treatment results. However, the purpose of palliative care is to provide relief from all kinds of pains. Therefore, how to make patients more comfortable is an issue worth studying. This study adopted the “bio-psycho-social model” proposed by Engel and applied spontaneous breathing training, in the hope of seeing patients’ psychological state changes caused by their physiological state changes, improvements in their anxious conditions, corresponding adjustments of their cognitive functions, and further enhancement of their social functions and the social support system. This study will be a one-year study. Palliative care outpatients will be recruited and assigned to the experimental group or the control group for six outpatient visits (once a month), with 80 patients in each group. The patients of both groups agreed that this study can collect their physiological quantitative data using an HRV device before the first outpatient visit. They also agreed to answer the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire” before the first outpatient visit, to fill a self-report questionnaire after each outpatient visit, and to answer the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire” after the last outpatient visit. The patients of the experimental group agreed to receive the breathing training under HRV monitoring during the first outpatient visit of this study. Before each of the following three outpatient visits, they were required to fill a self-report questionnaire regarding their breathing practices after going home. After the outpatient visits, they were taught how to practice breathing through an HRV device and asked to practice it after going home. Later, based on the results from the HRV data analyses and the pre-tests and post-tests of the “Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI)”, the “Taiwanese version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire”, the influence of the breathing training in the bio, psycho, and social aspects were evaluated. The data collected through the self-report questionnaires of the patients of both groups were used to explore the possible interfering factors among the bio, psycho, and social changes. It is expected that this study will support the “bio-psycho-social model” proposed by Engel, meaning that bio, psycho, and social supports are closely related, and that breathing training helps to transform palliative care patients’ psychological feelings of anxiety and depression, to facilitate their positive interactions with others, and to improve the quality medical care for them.

Keywords: Palliative care, breathing training, bio-psycho-social Model, heart rate variability.

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Authors: W. Rowan, Y. O’Connor, L. Lynch, C. Heavin

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Situation Awareness can offer the potential for conscious dynamic reflection. In an era of online health data sharing, it is becoming increasingly important that users of health social networks (HSNs) have the information necessary to make informed decisions as part of the registration process and in the provision of eConsent. This research aims to leverage an adapted Situation Awareness (SA) model to explore users’ decision making processes in the provision of eConsent. A HSN platform was used to investigate these behaviours. A mixed methods approach was taken. This involved the observation of registration behaviours followed by a questionnaire and focus group/s. Early results suggest that users are apt to automatically accept eConsent, and only later consider the long-term implications of sharing their personal health information. Further steps are required to continue developing knowledge and understanding of this important eConsent process. The next step in this research will be to develop a set of guidelines for the improved presentation of eConsent on the HSN platform.

Keywords: eConsent, health social network, mixed methods, situation awareness.

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Authors: Sangeeta Tripathi, Muna Al Shahri

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This research article presents the changing role and status of women in Oman. Transformation of women’s status started with the regime of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said in 1970. It is always desired by the Sultan to enable women in all the ways for the balance growth of the country. Forbidding full face veil for women in public offices is one of the best efforts for their empowerment. Women education is also increasing rapidly. They are getting friendly with new information communication technology and using different social media applications such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook for interaction and economic growth. Though there are some traditional and tribal boundaries, women are infused with courage and enjoying fair treatment and equal opportunities in different career positions. The study will try to explore changing mindset of young Omani women towards these traditional tribal boundaries, cultural heritage, business and career: ‘How are young Omani women making balance between work and social prestige?’, ‘How are they preserving their cultural values, embracing new technologies and approaching social network to enhance their economic power.’ This paper will discover their hurdles while using internet for their new entrepreneur. It will also examine the prospects of online business in Oman. The mixed research methodology is applied to find out the result.

Keywords: Advertising, business, entrepreneurship, Social Media, tribal barrier, traditional barriers.

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Authors: Yuyun, Fritz Akhmad Nuzir, Bart Julien Dewancker

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Check-in locations on social media provide information about an individual’s location. The millions of units of data generated from these sites provide knowledge for human activity. In this research, we used a geolocation service and users’ texts posted on Twitter social media to analyze human mobility. Our research will answer the questions; what are the movement patterns of a citizen? And, how far do people travel in the city? We explore the people trajectory of 201,118 check-ins and 22,318 users over a period of one month in Makassar city, Indonesia. To accommodate individual mobility, the authors only analyze the users with check-in activity greater than 30 times. We used sampling method with a systematic sampling approach to assign the research sample. The study found that the individual movement shows a high degree of regularity and intensity in certain places. The other finding found that the average distance an urban inhabitant can travel per day is as far as 9.6 km.

Keywords: Mobility, check-in, distance, Twitter.

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Authors: Indiramma M., K. R. Anandakumar

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Trust management and Reputation models are becoming integral part of Internet based applications such as CSCW, E-commerce and Grid Computing. Also the trust dimension is a significant social structure and key to social relations within a collaborative community. Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is a difficult task in the context of distributed environment (information across different geographical locations) and multidisciplinary decisions are involved such as Virtual Organization (VO). To aid team decision making in VO, Decision Support System and social network analysis approaches are integrated. In such situations social learning helps an organization in terms of relationship, team formation, partner selection etc. In this paper we focus on trust learning. Trust learning is an important activity in terms of information exchange, negotiation, collaboration and trust assessment for cooperation among virtual team members. In this paper we have proposed a reinforcement learning which enhances the trust decision making capability of interacting agents during collaboration in problem solving activity. Trust computational model with learning that we present is adapted for best alternate selection of new project in the organization. We verify our model in a multi-agent simulation where the agents in the community learn to identify trustworthy members, inconsistent behavior and conflicting behavior of agents.

Keywords: Collaborative Decision making, Trust, Multi Agent System (MAS), Bayesian Network, Reinforcement Learning.

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Authors: Ahaskar Pandey, Gaurav Mukherjee, Sushil Kumar

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The ever growing sentiment of environmentalism across the globe has made many people think on the green lines. But most of such ideas halt short of implementation because of the short term economic viability issues with the concept of going green. In this paper we have tried to amalgamate the green concept with social entrepreneurship for solving a variety of issues faced by the society today. In addition the paper also tries to ensure that the short term economic viability does not act as a deterrent. The paper comes up three sustainable models of social entrepreneurship which tackle a wide assortment of issues such as nutrition problem, land problems, pollution problems and employment problems. The models described fall under the following heads: - Spirulina cultivation: The model addresses nutrition, land and employment issues. It deals with cultivation of a blue green alga called Spirulina which can be used as a very nutritious food. Also, the implementation of this model would bring forth employment to the poor people of the area. - Biocomposites: The model comes up with various avenues in which biocomposites can be used in an economically sustainable manner. This model deals with the environmental concerns and addresses the depletion of natural resources. - Packaging material from empty fruit bunches (EFB) of oil palm: This one deals with air and land pollution. It is intended to be a substitute for packaging materials made from Styrofoam and plastics which are non-biodegradable. It takes care of the biodegradability and land pollution issues. It also reduces air pollution as the empty fruit bunches are not incinerated. All the three models are sustainable and do not deplete the natural resources any further. This paper explains each of the models in detail and deals with the operational/manufacturing procedures and cost analysis while also throwing light on the benefits derived and sustainability aspects.

Keywords: Biodegradable, Pollution, Social entrepreneurship, Sustainability.

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Authors: Yolanda Ramírez, Ángel Tejada, Agustín Baidez

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This paper shows the general perceptions of Spanish university stakeholders in relation to the university’s annual reports and the adequacy and potential of intellectual capital reporting. To this end, a questionnaire was designed and sent to every member of the Social Councils of Spanish public universities. It was thought that these participants would provide a good example of the attitude of university stakeholders since they represent the different social groups connected with universities. From the results of this study we are in the position of confirming the need for universities to offer information on intellectual capital in their accounting information model.

Keywords: Intellectual capital, disclosure, stakeholders, universities, annual report.

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Authors: Akbar Seraly, Kazbek Primbetov, Gulmira Abdiraiymova, Gulnapis Abdikerova

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the article analyzes the development prospects of education system in Kazakhstan. Education is among key sources of culture and social mobility. Modern education must become civic which means availability of high quality education to all people irrespective of their racial, ethnic, religious, social, gender and any other differences. Socially focused nature of modernization of Kazakhstan-s society is predicated upon formation of a civic education model in the future. Kazakhstan-s education system undergoes intensive reforms first of all intended to achieve international education standards and integration into the global educational and information space.

Keywords: Education system, Kazakhstan , Modernization

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Authors: Ashish Saini, A.K. Saxena

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In competitive electricity markets all over the world, an adoption of suitable transmission pricing model is a problem as transmission segment still operates as a monopoly. Transmission pricing is an important tool to promote investment for various transmission services in order to provide economic, secure and reliable electricity to bulk and retail customers. The nodal pricing based on SRMC (Short Run Marginal Cost) is found extremely useful by researchers for sending correct economic signals. The marginal prices must be determined as a part of solution to optimization problem i.e. to maximize the social welfare. The need to maximize the social welfare subject to number of system operational constraints is a major challenge from computation and societal point of views. The purpose of this paper is to present a nodal transmission pricing model based on SRMC by developing new mathematical expressions of real and reactive power marginal prices using GA-Fuzzy based optimal power flow framework. The impacts of selecting different social welfare functions on power marginal prices are analyzed and verified with results reported in literature. Network revenues for two different power systems are determined using expressions derived for real and reactive power marginal prices in this paper.

Keywords: Deregulation, electricity markets, nodal pricing, social welfare function, short run marginal cost.

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Authors: R.L. Sanders, L. McKeown

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An international cooperation between educators in Australia and the US has led to a reconceptualization of the teaching of a library science course at Appalachian State University. The pedagogy of Action Learning coupled with a 3D virtual learning environment immerses students in a social constructivist learning space that incorporates and supports interaction and reflection. The intent of this study was to build a bridge between theory and practice by providing students with a tool set that promoted personal and social reflection, and created and scaffolded a community of practice. Besides, action learning is an educational process whereby the fifty graduate students experienced their own actions and experience to improve performance.

Keywords: action learning, action research, reflection, metacognition, virtual worlds

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Authors: Ayelet Gur

Abstract:

Background: In recent years we are witnessing a welcome trend in which more children/persons with disabilities are living at home with their families and within their communities. This trend is related to various policy innovations as the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities that reflect a shift from the medical-institutional model to a human rights approach. We also witness the emergence of family centered approaches that perceive the family and not just the individual with the disability as a worthy target of policy planning, implementation and evaluation efforts. The current investigation aims to explore economic, psychological and social factors among households of families of children or adults with intellectual disabilities in Israel and to present policy recommendation. Methods: A national sample of 301 households was recruited through the education and employment settings of persons with intellectual disability. The main caregiver of the person with the disability (a parent) was interviewed. Measurements included the income and expense surveys; assets and debts questionnaire; the questionnaire on resources and stress; the social involvement questionnaire and Personal Wellbeing Index. Results: Findings indicate significant gaps in financial circumstances between households of families of children with intellectual disabilities and households of the general Israeli society. Households of families of children with intellectual disabilities report lower income and higher expenditures and loans than the general society. They experience difficulties in saving and coping with unexpected expenses. Caregivers (the parents) experience high stress, low social participation, low financial support from family, friend and non-governmental organizations and decreased well-being. They are highly dependent on social security allowances which constituted 40% of the household's income. Conclusions: Households' dependency on social security allowances may seem contradictory to the encouragement of persons with intellectual disabilities to favor independent living in light of the human rights approach to disability. New policy should aim at reducing caregivers' stress and enhance their social participation and support, with special emphasis on families of lower socio-economic status. Finally, there is a need to continue monitoring the economic and psycho-social needs of households of families of children with intellectual disabilities and other developmental disabilities.

Keywords: Disability policy, family policy, intellectual and developmental disabilities, Israel, households study, parents of children with disabilities.

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Authors: Ammal M. Metwally, Dalia M. Elmosalami, Walaa A. Fouad, Abla G. Khalifa, Lobna A. El Etreby, Mohamed AbdelRahman

Abstract:

People with hepatitis C are likely to experience psychological distress related to adjustment issues following diagnosis. Objective: The study was conducted to determine the psycho-social stressors accompanying Hepatitis C virus (HCV) chronic infection. The study focused on immediate and later on reactions to being diagnosed as infected HCV patients. Effect of HCV on disruption of patients’ relationships in term of family relationship and friendship, employment and financial status was assessed. The magnitude and causes of the social stigma and its relation to awareness about illness, level of education were also assessed. Methods: During this study the subjective experiences of people having HCV was explored through a designed questionnaire targeted 540 cases; 359 males and 181 females from ten out of 21 National Treatment Reference Centers of National Hepatology and Tropical Medicine Research Institutes of Ministry of Health (MOH) hospitals. The study was conducted along a period of six months from September 2011 to March 2012. Results: The study revealed that the financial problems are the commonest problems faced by 75.5% of the cases. More than 70% of the cases suffered from immediate sadness versus 67.4% suffered from worry. Social stigma was reported by 13 % of HCV +patients, the majority of which were females. Conclusions: Exploring the psychosocial consequences of HCV infection can act as pressing motivators for behavior change needed for limiting HCV endemicity in Egypt.

Keywords: Egypt, HCV infection, psychosocial adjustment, stigma.

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Authors: Zarita Zainuddin, Mohammed Mahmod Shuaib, Ibtesam M. Abu-Sulyman

Abstract:

The social force model which belongs to the microscopic pedestrian studies has been considered as the supremacy by many researchers and due to the main feature of reproducing the self-organized phenomena resulted from pedestrian dynamic. The Preferred Force which is a measurement of pedestrian-s motivation to adapt his actual velocity to his desired velocity is an essential term on which the model was set up. This Force has gone through stages of development: first of all, Helbing and Molnar (1995) have modeled the original force for the normal situation. Second, Helbing and his co-workers (2000) have incorporated the panic situation into this force by incorporating the panic parameter to account for the panic situations. Third, Lakoba and Kaup (2005) have provided the pedestrians some kind of intelligence by incorporating aspects of the decision-making capability. In this paper, the authors analyze the most important incorporations into the model regarding the preferred force. They make comparisons between the different factors of these incorporations. Furthermore, to enhance the decision-making ability of the pedestrians, they introduce additional features such as the familiarity factor to the preferred force to let it appear more representative of what actually happens in reality.

Keywords: Pedestrian movement, social force model, preferredforce, familiarity.

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