bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Use of New Media in Intercultural Communication Classes
Authors: Shearman Sachiyo Morinaga , Eguchi Mariko
Published: March 2018

Since the term intercultural communication was first used by Edward T. Hall in 1959, more than half a century has passed, and the context of intercultural communication has gone through dramatic changes. With the advent of the internet and the digital media technologies, instructors can offer students computer-mediated intercultural communication using a variety of new media such as video-conferencing and instant messaging. Drawing from contact theory, learning cycle theory, and new media theory, the authors examine the use of computer-mediated intercultural communication, report various ways that new media are used in classrooms based on an online survey, discuss its benefit and limitations, and review a best practice example, a case of “Global Understanding Course” coordinated by East Carolina University and Global Partners in Education. The authors believe that integrating the use of new media in intercultural communication education helps prepare students for the global society.
Facebook and the Interaction of Culture and Conflict
Authors: Steele Godfrey A.
Published: March 2018

The intersection of culture and conflict is relatively understudied in communication, focusing on mass-self communication and power relations and new media scholarship. Conflict and the cultural dimensions in media coverage are well documented, but with less attention to new media cultural settings, often limited to use as one-way broadcasting media or as audiencing participants in social media marketing. Potentially more interactive communication exists within a closed community, especially because Facebook has defining cultural, psychological, and psychosocial characteristics. Conflict message interactions facilitate studying the intersection of culture and conflict within a new media setting. This chapter focuses on conflict within the cultural context of Facebook closed communities, theorizes about this relationship, and tests its application.
The Influence of Groupthink on Culture and Conflict in Twitter
Authors: Steele Godfrey A. , Zephyrine Niekitta
Published: March 2018

Groupthink puts pressure on individuals to conform to social norms, but anonymity has been found to reduce or lessen such influence. Apart from anonymity, the significance of the topic and self-censorship may or may not contribute to the influence of groupthink. Groupthink has been studied in the context of social media using various approaches, but to date it remains unclear how much and to what extent it influences the conflict among users within this cultural context. This chapter describes approaches to studying the influence of groupthink on the users of an open social media platform (e.g., Twitter) and proposes a methodology for conducting a study. Using data from a selected hashtag, it reports on the application of theory to research, considers the role and influence of groupthink, and discusses the implications of the findings for reconceptualizing approaches to the study of new media.
Insight Into Big Data Analytics
Authors: Ahamad Mohd Vasim , Haque Misbahul , Imran Mohd
Published: March 2018

In the present digital era, more data are generated and collected than ever before. But, this huge amount of data is of no use until it is converted into some useful information. This huge amount of data, coming from a number of sources in various data formats and having more complexity, is called big data. To convert the big data into meaningful information, the authors use different analytical approaches. Information extracted, after applying big data analytics methods over big data, can be used in business decision making, fraud detection, healthcare services, education sector, machine learning, extreme personalization, etc. This chapter presents the basics of big data and big data analytics. Big data analysts face many challenges in storing, managing, and analyzing big data. This chapter provides details of challenges in all mentioned dimensions. Furthermore, recent trends of big data analytics and future directions for big data researchers are also described.
Machine Learning Models for Forecasting of Individual Stocks Price Patterns
Authors: Sisodia Dilip Singh , Jadhav Sagar
Published: March 2018

Stock investors always consider potential future prices before investing in any stock for making a profit. A large number of studies are found on the prediction of stock market indices. However, the focus on individual stock closing price predictions well ahead of time is limited. In this chapter, a comparative study of machine-learning-based models is used for the prediction of the closing price of a particular stock. The proposed models are designed using back propagation neural networks (BPNN), support vector regression (SVR) with SMOReg, and linear regression (LR) for the prediction of the closing price of individual stocks. A total of 37 technical indicators (features) derived from historical closing prices of stocks are considered for predicting the future price of stock in a time window of five days. The experiment is performed on stocks listed on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSS), India. The model is trained and tested using feature values extracted from the past five-year closing price of stocks of different sectors including aviation, pharma, banking, entertainment, and IT.
A Relative Performance of Dissimilarity Measures for Matching Relational Web Access Patterns Between User Sessions
Authors: Sisodia Dilip Singh
Published: March 2018

Customized web services are offered to users by grouping them according to their access patterns. Clustering techniques are very useful in grouping users and analyzing web access patterns. Clustering can be an object clustering performed on feature vectors or relational clustering performed on relational data. The relational clustering is preferred over object clustering for web users' sessions because of high dimensionality and sparsity of web users' data. However, relational clustering of web users depends on underlying dissimilarity measures used. Therefore, correct dissimilarity measure for matching relational web access patterns between user sessions is very important. In this chapter, the various dissimilarity measures used in relational clustering of web users' data are discussed. The concept of an augmented user session is also discussed to derive different augmented session dissimilarity measures. The discussed session dissimilarity measures are used with relational fuzzy clustering algorithms. The comparative performance binary session similarity and augmented session similarity measures are evaluated using intra-cluster and inter-cluster distance-based cluster quality ratio. The results suggested the augmented session dissimilarity measures in general, and intuitive augmented session (dis)similarity measure, in particular, performed better than the other measures.
Overview of Concept Drifts Detection Methodology in Data Stream
Authors: Sayed Shabina , Ansari Shoeb Ahemd , Poonia Rakesh
Published: March 2018

Real-time online applications and mobile data generate huge volume of data. There is a need to process this data into compact data structures and extract meaningful information. A number of approaches have been proposed in literature to overcome the issues of data stream mining. This chapter summarizes various issues and application techniques. The chapter is a guideline for research to identify the research issues and select the most appropriate method in order to detect and process novel class.
Performance Analysis of Mail Clients on Low Cost Computer With ELGamal and RSA Using SNORT
Authors: Kattamuri Sreerama Murthy , Kakulapati Vijayalakshmi , S. Pallam Setty
Published: March 2018

An intrusion detection system (IDS) focuses on determining malicious tasks by verifying network traffic and informing the network administrator for restricting the user or source or source IP address from accessing the network. SNORT is an open source intrusion detection system (IDS) and SNORT also acts as an intrusion prevention system (IPS) for monitoring and prevention of security attacks on networks. The authors applied encryption for text files by using cryptographic algorithms like Elgamal and RSA. This chapter tested the performance of mail clients in low cost, low power computer Raspberry Pi, and verified that SNORT is efficient for both algorithms. Within low cost, low power computer, they observed that as the size of the file increases, the run time is constant for compressed data; whereas in plain text, it changed significantly.
The Cultural Dimension of Peace Operations
Authors: Petrovic Jadranka
Published: March 2018

This chapter is concerned with the socio-legal connotations of cultural property vis-à-vis peacekeeping. The chapter enquires whether, and how, can peacekeepers (acting on behalf of the international community) protect cultural property. The chapter provides a critical analysis on the way in which the concepts of cultural property and peacekeeping interact at both normative and implementation level. The central question under examination is whether peacekeeping missions are/should be under obligation to protect cultural property. The chapter argues for the need to include cultural property in the mandate of peace operations. The feasibility of such inclusion is preconditioned by the states' political will in the UN Security Council. The successful integration of the cultural perspective into a peace operation is ultimately dependent on the extent of education, training, understanding, tolerance, cooperation, and coordination between many diverse elements of any mission and, at the same time, and importantly, between the mission and the local population.
The Roman Republic in Greece
Authors: Frydenborg Brian E.
Published: March 2018

Modern theorists, developers, and practitioners of peace/stability operations should look to relevant historical examples for guidance. Despite the many centuries separating the ancient Roman Republic from today, its experiences with similar operations (perhaps “proto-peace/stability operations”) are demonstrably deeply relevant to current discussions. The Republic's structural, historical, moral, and geopolitical context and similarities to the United States and other major practitioners of today's relevant operations will be discussed, as will the concept of Roman peace. A model of international relations analysis that takes into account friendship, trust, and morality (soft power) in addition to military “realist” aspects (hard power) will be shown to be the best prism through which to analyze this material, and an in-depth examination of Rome's five major interventions in mainland Greece from 200-146 BCE will be presented with analyses of their successes and failures. The conclusion will look at the striking similarities to and relevance for modern peace/stability operations.
Enzymes and Dairy Products
Authors: Maitan-Alfenas Gabriela Piccolo , Casarotti Sabrina Neves
Published: March 2018

The use of enzymes in food production, including dairy products, is below expected due the high costs associated with their production and purification. Microbial enzymes have great potential for industrial applications since they can be produced via large-scale fermentation and they are easily expressed by cloning in well-known cultivated microorganisms. The combination of different procedures such as over-expression techniques and the use of low costs induction sources has resulted in the production of enzymes to be used in high added-value dairy products. The addition of glucose oxidase to probiotic yogurts has been indicated as an alternative to the maintenance of probiotic functionality. Bile salt hydrolase contributes to prevention of hypercholesterolemia which is interesting to produce new functional dairy products. This chapter discusses enzyme sources and their relevance in dairy products, the production of enzymes using cloning and super-expression techniques, as well as enzymes related to functional dairy products.
Genomics Technologies for Enhanced Understanding of Robustness of LAB Starter Cultures
Authors: Dijkstra Annereinou R. , Bron Peter A.
Published: March 2018

During production and application, starter culture strains encounter several stresses. To ensure an adequate contribution to the fermentation process, starter culture strains should remain viable, justifying the increasing industrial efforts to unravel robustness characteristics of LAB starter culture strains. Nowadays, large numbers of genome sequences are publicly available, which enables the employment of several genomics technologies to increase our understanding of robustness. This aids the improvement of currently applied LAB starter culture strains and supports the industrial application of novel strains with specific desirable traits but currently inadequate robustness characteristics. This chapter explores genomics technologies for enhanced understanding of robustness of LAB starter cultures.
Probiotic Microorganisms and Encapsulation Method Approaches
Authors: Yıkmış Seydi , Aksu Harun , Alpaslan Mehmet , Şimşek Osman
Published: March 2018

Nowadays, interest in probiotics, which are useful and necessary for healthy life, is rapidly increasing, and studies on the beneficial effects of probiotics on human health continue intensely. Every year, increasing efforts to prevent cancer, which has been anticipated, has increased the interest in probiotics and therefore synbiotics. Encapsulation methods are one of the most important protection methods currently used to ensure the viability of probiotics and their effectiveness. Especially milk and dairy products are used for many purposes such as increasing the shelf life, increasing the nutritional value, providing digestibility, shortening the ripening period, improving taste and aroma substances. The use of the microencapsulation technique alone can improve probiotic vitality. Combining microencapsulation with various food processing technologies is thought to help improve the vitality of probiotics in production and storage. In this chapter, probiotic microorganisms and encapsulation applications are explored.
The Effects of Probiotic Cultures on Quality Characteristics of Ice Cream
Authors: Akın Nihat , Öztürk Hale İnci
Published: March 2018

The manufacturing design and probiotic strain that are used in ice cream production affect sensorial, nutritional, and physicochemical properties of ice cream. Therefore, it is possible to produce better quality products or to develop existing methods by considering the effects of probiotic cultures on these properties of ice cream. The International Dairy Federation has recommended that probiotic products contain at least 107 CFU/g of viable probiotic strain before consumption, so that the therapeutic value of a probiotic product can be associated with the viability of these bacteria. The nutritional value of probiotic ice cream is related not only to the dietary components it contains, but also to the maintaining of the viability and the activity of the probiotic bacteria. This chapter provides information on the viability of probiotic strains during ice cream processing and storage. Furthermore, the effects of probiotic cultures on sensory and physicochemical properties of ice cream are also discussed.
Statistical and Data Mining Techniques for Understanding Water Quality Profiles in a Mining-Affected River Basin
Authors: Simmonds Jose , Gómez Juan A. , Ledezma Agapito
Published: March 2018

This article contains a multivariate analysis (MV), data mining (DM) techniques and water quality index (WQI) metrics which were applied to a water quality dataset from three water quality monitoring stations in the Petaquilla River Basin, Panama, to understand the environmental stress on the river and to assess the feasibility for drinking. Principal Components and Factor Analysis (PCA/FA), indicated that the factors which changed the quality of the water for the two seasons differed. During the low flow season, water quality showed to be influenced by turbidity (NTU) and total suspended solids (TSS). For the high flow season, main changes on water quality were characterized by an inverse relation of NTU and TSS with electrical conductivity (EC) and chlorides (Cl), followed by sources of agricultural pollution. To complement the MV analysis, DM techniques like cluster analysis (CA) and classification (CLA) was applied and to assess the quality of the water for drinking, a WQI.
A Process for Increasing the Samples of Coffee Rust Through Machine Learning Methods
Authors: Rodríguez Jhonn Pablo , Corrales David Camilo , Corrales Juan Carlos
Published: March 2018

This article describes how coffee rust has become a serious concern for many coffee farmers and manufacturers. The American Phytopathological Society discusses its importance saying this: “…the most economically important coffee disease in the world…” while “…in monetary value, coffee is the most important agricultural product in international trade…” The early detection has inspired researchers to apply supervised learning algorithms on predicting the disease appearance. However, the main issue of the related works is the small number of samples of the dependent variable: Incidence Percentage of Rust, since the datasets do not have a reliable representation of the disease, which will generate inaccurate predictions in the models. This article provides a process about coffee rust to select appropriate machine learning methods to increase rust samples.
Factors Influencing Passenger Choice in a Multiple Airport System
Authors: Pan Jing Yu , Truong Dothang
Published: March 2018

The purpose of this article is to examine factors that influence passengers' decision in selecting an airport in a multiple airport system (MAS). This article focuses on a MAS in China consisting of two airports that directly compete with each other in serving domestic and international passengers in the same area. A survey was conducted in the Beijing area to collect the data, and a logistic regression was used to test the effects of these factors on the passenger choice. The results indicate that airfare is the most significant determinant of Beijing passengers' airport choice, followed by flight delay.
An Analysis of Unmanned Aircraft Registration Effectiveness
Authors: Pentz Ronald , Tang He (Herman)
Published: March 2018

This article describes how small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are growing at a rapid pace. They are inexpensive and widely available for both hobbyist and commercial use. However, with this rapid growth, regulations are having a difficult time keeping pace to safely incorporate them into the United States National Airspace. Recent regulations requiring the registration of all sUAS have been overturned by the United States Courts of Appeals. This research provides a statistical analysis of the effectiveness of the registration regulation in the reduction of unauthorized and careless sUAS operation prior to being overturned by the courts. Statistical analysis including descriptive statistics and chi square hypothesis tests were used to analyze more than 3,000 reported unauthorized and careless events. The findings show a significant difference in events pre-registration and post registration.
An Experience of Integrated E-Learning in the Teaching of the Italian Language for Immigrated People
Authors: Palazzo Anna
Published: March 2018

The article discusses the planning and carrying out of a research project concerning the teaching of the Italian language for immigrated people. First of all, the dimensions of the phenomenon of immigration from non-EU countries in Italy and in Europe is reported (mostly from Northern and Central Africa and the East), and its evolution during last years is described, with a special attention to the change in the policy of reception and hospitality. Secondly, the theoretical framework for the virtual learning environment to be adopted to support the teaching of Italian language is highlighted. At last the planning of the teaching activity is analyzed and the features of the didactic process are discussed. The experience the author aims at carrying out can be considered a study case, but a comparison with more traditional experiences is made, and the implications for a good inclusion of the immigrants is analyzed.
A Study on the Feasibility of Promoting the Functions of Traditional Schools in Line With the Implementation of Smart Schools in Iran
Authors: Fatane Hasani Jafari , Zohreh Khoshneshin , Curatola Annamaria
Published: March 2018

This article describes how today's traditional Iranian schools need to be reorganized to comply with the requirements established in the knowledge and communication fields, based on modern societies, because they are part of an increasingly globalised and complex world. Since 2010, this has been important because the Iranian Government required schools to become “smart,” with particular attention given to the knowledge and the skills that come from using modern technology, such as computers and the internet. Because of this there has been a large research effort promoting and monitoring the approach of schools to ICT. In this article, the results of one of the researches carried out in Karaj (the second biggest city in Iran) are reported. This research investigated the availability of ICT structures through a survey on the point of view of teachers and headmasters. The random sampling method regarded 300 teachers and 20 headmasters to whom two sets of questionnaires were given in order to verify and collect their opinions on the different aspects of ICT implementation. The reliability of these questionnaires has been evaluated by Cronbach's alpha (0/87). The research findings have clearly shown that in Karaj the teachers' knowledge and skills of integrating information technology in everyday teaching are at intermediate level, while infrastructures and equipment considered essential for the implementation of smart schools are at a low level.
Coping Strategies of Primary School Students With Specific Learning Disabilities
Authors: Bagnato Karin
Published: March 2018

This article focuses on proving whether there are differences among children with or without learning disabilities when choosing coping strategies that may be functional to solve problematic situations. The participants were 32 children with learning disabilities and 32 children without learning disabilities aged between 8 and 11. Results show that children with learning disabilities have less often coping behaviour rather than their peers with typical development. This demonstrates the need to opt for educational actions as soon as possible fostering suitable strategies in order to face problematic situations.
LF-LDA
Authors: Zhang Yongjun , Wang Zijian , Yu Yongtao , Chen Bolun , Ma Jialin , Shi Liang
Published: March 2018

This article describes how text documents are a major data structure in the era of big data. With the explosive growth of data, the number of documents with multi-labels has increased dramatically. The popular multi-label classification technology, which is usually employed to handle multinomial text documents, is sensitive to the noise terms of text documents. Therefore, there still exists a huge room for multi-label classification of text documents. This article introduces a supervised topic model, named labeled LDA with function terms (LF-LDA), to filter out the noisy function terms from text documents, which can help to improve the performance of multi-label classification of text documents. The article also shows the derivation of the Gibbs Sampling formulas in detail, which can be generalized to other similar topic models. Based on the textual data set RCV1-v2, the article compared the proposed model with other two state-of-the-art multi-label classifiers, Tuned SVM and labeled LDA, on both Macro-F1 and Micro-F1 metrics. The result shows that LF-LDA outperforms them and has the lowest variance, which indicates the robustness of the LF-LDA classifier.
Dynamic Itemset Hiding Algorithm for Multiple Sensitive Support Thresholds
Authors: Öztürk Ahmet Cumhur , Ergenç Belgin
Published: March 2018

This article describes how association rule mining is used for extracting relations between items in transactional databases and is beneficial for decision-making. However, association rule mining can pose a threat to the privacy of the knowledge when the data is shared without hiding the confidential association rules of the data owner. One of the ways hiding an association rule from the database is to conceal the itemsets (co-occurring items) from which the sensitive association rules are generated. These sensitive itemsets are sanitized by the itemset hiding processes. Most of the existing solutions consider single support thresholds and assume that the databases are static, which is not true in real life. In this article, the authors propose a novel itemset hiding algorithm designed for the dynamic database environment and consider multiple itemset support thresholds. Performance comparisons of the algorithm is done with two dynamic algorithms on six different databases. Findings show that their dynamic algorithm is more efficient in terms of execution time and information loss and guarantees to hide all sensitive itemsets.
Hypercube-Based Crowding Differential Evolution with Neighborhood Mutation for Multimodal Optimization
Authors: Huang Haihuang , Jiang Liwei , Yu Xue , Xie Dongqing
Published: March 2018

In reality, multiple optimal solutions are often necessary to provide alternative options in different occasions. Thus, multimodal optimization is important as well as challenging to find multiple optimal solutions of a given objective function simultaneously. For solving multimodal optimization problems, various differential evolution (DE) algorithms with niching and neighborhood strategies have been developed. In this article, a hypercube-based crowding DE with neighborhood mutation is proposed for such problems as well. It is characterized by the use of hypercube-based neighborhoods instead of Euclidean-distance-based neighborhoods or other simpler neighborhoods. Moreover, a self-adaptive method is additionally adopted to control the radius vector of a hypercube so as to guarantee the neighborhood size always in a reasonable range. In this way, the algorithm will perform a more accurate search in the sub-regions with dense individuals, but perform a random search in the sub-regions with only sparse individuals. Experiments are conducted in comparison with an outstanding DE with neighborhood mutation, namely NCDE. The results show that the proposed algorithm is promising and computationally inexpensive.
Web Page Interface Optimization Based on Nature-Inspired Algorithms
Authors: Sakulin Sergey , Alfimtsev Alexander , Solovyev Dmitry , Sokolov Dmitry
Published: March 2018

This article describes how the conversion rate of a web page depends on the interface usability degree. Optimization of existing interfaces as the matter of improving their usability faces a number of difficulties. In the first place, the unified objective function selection method for such optimization is not set up; that is resulting in necessity of qualified experts' participation for its implementation. In the second place, the corresponding optimization problem will have a high dimension, which makes the classical optimization methods unsuitable for the problem solution. Nature-inspired algorithms have undeniable advantages in comparison with classical optimization algorithms for solving high-dimensional problems, such as for example the optimization of web interfaces by their usability criterion. In this article, new web page interface optimization methods based on nature-inspired algorithms are proposed. In particular, genetic algorithms (GAs), artificial bee colony algorithms (ABC), and charged system search algorithms (CSSs) were analyzed. The conducted experiments revealed the advantages of these algorithms for posed problem solutions and showed research prospects in this direction.
Tackling the ICT Infrastructure Gap for the Successful Implementation of E-Government Projects
Authors: Mensah Isaac Kofi
Published: March 2018

This article describes how the promised transformative reform agenda of e-government is challenged particularly due to the lack or non-availability of adequate ICT infrastructure and finances to successfully develop and implement e-government projects around the world. The One Belt One Road (B&R) strategy spearheaded by the Chinese Government has been identified as a potential funding source for e-government projects through ICT infrastructure investment. Adequate ICT infrastructure investment in member countries under the Belt and Road initiatives could reduce the huge ICT infrastructure gap hampering the execution of e-government programs. This article, therefore, recommends the formation of the Belt and Road ICT Infrastructure Investment Fund (B&R ICT Infrastructure Fund) under the OBOR strategy to allow member countries to source funds for the execution of e-government projects. This will not only drastically increase the completion/success rate of e-government projects but also translate into improved public service delivery and enhanced government interaction—engagement—with citizens and businesses.
Sharing Memories: Co-Designing Assistive Technology with Aphasic Adults and Support Staff
Authors: Rodil Kasper , Nielsen Emil Byskov , Nielsen Jonathan Bernstorff
Published: March 2018

This article describes how for people suffering from aphasia, everyday verbal and bodily interpersonal communication is challenging. To increase aphasics' ability to share memories, an assistive technology (the MemoryBook) was conceptualized based on explicit, observable and tacit knowledge gathered from the practices in which it was to be contextualized and through a close partnership between aphasics and their caretakers. The underlying design methodology for the MemoryBook is a participatory design manifested through the collaboration and creations by two aphasic residents and one member of the support staff. The idea of the MemoryBook is materialized, and inspired by a photo album, which uses photos and audio recordings to present memories digitally. The MemoryBook was evaluated and found to be a useful approach to a wicked problem of allowing aphasics to digitally capture and communicate memories without caretaker intervention.
Sentiment Classification-How to Quantify Public Emotions Using Twitter
Authors: Mahajan Prerna , Rana Anamika
Published: March 2018

This article describes how with the tremendous popularity in the usage of social media has led to the explosive growth in unstructured data available on various social networking sites. Sentiment analysis of textual data collected from such platforms has become an important research area. In this article, the sentiment classification approach which employs an emotion detection technique is presented. To identify the emotions this paper uses the NRC lexicon based approach for identifying polarity of emotions. A score is computed to quantify emotions obtained from NRC lexicon approach. The method proposed has been tested on twitter datasets of government policies and reforms, more about current NDA government initiatives in India. The polarity components apply and classify the tweets into eight predefined emotions. This article performs both quantitative and sentiment analysis processes with the objective of analyzing the opinion conveyed to each social content, assign a category (+ve, -ve & neutral) or numbered sentiment score. The assigned scores have been classified using six different machine classification algorithms. Good classification results are achieved with the data.
Standardized Value Stream Management Method to Visualize, Analyze and Optimize Cross-Enterprise Value Stream Data
Authors: Oberhausen Christof , Minoufekr Meysam , Plapper Peter
Published: March 2018

This article describes how on the way towards a reliable and efficient collaboration in global supply chain networks, organizations are seeking for suitable methods and tools to enhance product and information flows. Based on the evolving Lean Manufacturing methodology in combination with the increased exploitation of ICT, new and diverse Value Stream Management (VSM) approaches are currently used. Thus, a common VSM standard is sought to analyze and visualize valuable data and to synchronize capacities and flows. In this article, the authors present a review of existing VSM approaches, patents and software solutions. Furthermore, a classification comprising four categories that serve as a basis for the ongoing VSM standard development within ISO/TC 154 and a case study of an administrative value stream are shown.
Virtual Worlds and Well-Being
Authors: Downey Laura L. , Cohen Maxine S.
Published: March 2018

This article describes how a growing recognition and desire exists to leverage technology in new ways to achieve increased well-being. However, designing and evaluating technology for well-being support is complex. Using an exploratory formative approach, this study created and evaluated the meditative virtual world Sanctuarium to gain a richer understanding of engagement and the human experience of technology-supported meditation. Experienced meditators with no previous use of virtual worlds interacted with Sanctuarium to perform meditation. Meditators described a positive experience and rated it as successful and engaging. Phenomenological analysis provided a rich description of the meditation experience. Participants perceived Sanctuarium as a restorative environment and described the experience as unique but also facilitative, similar to guided meditation. Participants also identified Sanctuarium as a good tool for novices. The aim of this article is to promote more well-being through innovative design and use of technology. Virtual world technology is a prime candidate for this purpose.
Exploring Virtual Reality for the Assessment and Rehabilitation of Executive Functions
Authors: Pedroli Elisa , Serino Silvia , Pallavicini Federica , Cipresso Pietro , Riva Giuseppe
Published: March 2018

This article describes how a neuropsychological assessment and rehabilitation are typically carried out using paper-and-pencil tools. However, these protocols cannot effectively evaluate the subject's performance of daily activities. More recently, the increasing accessibility of new and powerful technology has presented new possibilities. Virtual reality is one of the most promising tools with the increasing ecologicity in the neuropsychological field. The availability of new portable instruments has increased the accessibility and usability of this technology. Using this frame, the changes that have occurred over time in the neuropsychological practice up to the most recent VR-based tools have been explored. In particular, the focus will be on executive functions as the most sensitive cognitive domain within the ecological validity of the tools. In accordance with the literature, the authors show the potential for the use of virtual reality in the assessment and rehabilitation of executive functions, highlighting the advantages, limitations, and potential future challenges.
A Hybrid Heuristic for QoS Aware Matching of User's Job and Virtual Machines in Cloud Environment
Authors: Jha Devki Nandan , Vidyarthi Deo Prakash
Published: March 2018

Cloud computing is a technological advancement that provides services in the form of utility on a pay-per-use basis. As the cloud market is expanding, numerous service providers are joining the cloud platform with their services. This creates an indecision amongst the users to choose an appropriate service provider especially when the cloud provider provisions diverse type of virtual machines. The problem becomes more challenging when the user has different jobs requiring specific quality of service. To address the aforementioned problem, this article applies a hybrid heuristic using College Admission Problem and Analytical Hierarchical Process for stable matching of the users' job with the cloud's virtual machines. The case study depicts the effectiveness of the proposed model.
A Collaborative Approach for Improvisation and Refinement of Requirement Prioritization Process
Authors: Gupta Ankita , Gupta Chetna
Published: March 2018

This article presents a systematic approach to prioritize requirements and estimate risk associated with each requirement. It first aims at providing short training to both developers and stakeholders to bridge the gap of understanding and comprehend requirements so that a refined priority value for each requirement can be obtained. Secondly, it presents a requirement risk and re-prioritization estimation model to make sure that a right decision has been taken by stakeholder and developers. The entire process has been supported with an example case study and by a survey that is conducted at IT companies. The response for the applicability of the proposed approach from the industry is appreciable and is promising as it will help in minimizing the disagreements between stakeholders and developers, thereby resulting in better collaboration. It will also help in minimizing the overall risk associated with development as only the most important functionality will be delivered in right sequence to the client thereby reducing the overall development time
Volume 11, Number 2
Authors: DeVito, Jr. Richard A.
Published: March 2018

March/April 2013
Helping nursing homes shelter-in-place
Authors: Pierce, Jr., MD, MPH J. Rush , West, RPh, CEM, TEM Theresa A.
Published: March 2018

No abstract
A simulator-based nuclear reactor emergency response training exercise
Authors: Waller, PhD Edward , Bereznai, PhD George , Shaw, BSc John , Chaput, MASc Joseph , Lafortune, PhD Jean-Francois
Published: March 2018

Training offsite emergency response personnel basic awareness of onsite control room operations during nuclear power plant emergency conditions was the primary objective of a week-long workshop conducted on a CANDU® virtual nuclear reactor simulator available at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Canada. The workshop was designed to examine both normal and abnormal reactor operating conditions, and to observe the conditions in the control room that may have impact on the subsequent offsite emergency response. The workshop was attended by participants from a number of countries encompassing diverse job functions related to nuclear emergency response. Objectives of the workshop were to provide opportunities for participants to act in the roles of control room personnel under different reactor operating scenarios, providing a unique experience for participants to interact with the simulator in realtime, and providing increased awareness of control room operations during accident conditions. The ability to “pause” the simulator during exercises allowed the instructors to evaluate and critique the performance of participants, and to provide context with respect to potential offsite emergency actions. Feedback from the participants highlighted (i) advantages of observing and participating “hands-on” with operational exercises, (ii) their general unfamiliarity with control room operational procedures and arrangements prior to the workshop, (iii) awareness of the vast quantity of detailed control room procedures for both normal and transient conditions, and (iv) appreciation of the increased workload for the operators in the control room during a transient from normal operations. Based upon participant feedback, it was determined that the objectives of the training had been met, and that future workshops should be conducted.
Amateur radio communications in a disaster preparedness simulation When all else fails . . . amateur radio
Authors: McCamey, PhD, SPHR, CEP, AStd Randy , Yeager, PhD, RN, AGNP Jennifer
Published: March 2018

During natural disasters, communications can be disrupted, which negatively impacts response time of first responders thus diminishing the level of care provided to disaster victims. In the fall of 2014, as part of a larger community-based participatory research study, the Tarleton Area Amateur Radio Club (TAARC) joined the Department of Nursing, Tarleton State University, and provided amateur radio communications during a disaster preparedness simulation. The simulation was conducted to determine the ability of the university to provide rapid response and render quality, acute healthcare to its neighbors during a natural disaster. The primary goals of the TAARC were to assess the ability to quickly establish radio communications, accurately relay messages, and establish rapport and affiliation between each facility commander and the amateur radio operators. It was determined that communication was key to provide quality care, and the inclusion of amateur radio operators in the simulation helped ensure rapid response times and rapid transport of critical victims.
Large contribution of fossil fuel derived secondary organic carbon to water soluble organic aerosols in winter haze in China
Authors: Zhang Yan-Lin , El-Haddad Imad , Huang Ru-Jin , Ho Kin-Fai , Cao Jun-Ji , Han Yongming , Zotter Peter , Bozzetti Carlo , Daellenbach Kaspar R. , Slowik Jay G. , Salazar Gary , Prévôt André S. H. , Szidat Sönke
Published: March 2018

Abstract. Water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) is a large fraction of
organic aerosols (OA) globally and has significant impacts on climate and
human health. The sources of WSOC remain very uncertain in polluted regions.
Here we present a quantitative source apportionment of WSOC, isolated from
aerosols in China using radiocarbon (14C) and offline high-resolution
time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer measurements. Fossil emissions on
average accounted for 32–47 % of WSOC. Secondary organic carbon (SOC)
dominated both the non-fossil and fossil derived WSOC, highlighting the
importance of secondary formation to WSOC in severe winter haze episodes.
Contributions from fossil emissions to SOC were 61 ± 4 and
50 ± 9 % in Shanghai and Beijing, respectively, significantly
larger than those in Guangzhou (36 ± 9 %) and Xi'an
(26 ± 9 %). The most important primary sources were biomass burning
emissions, contributing 17–26 % of WSOC. The remaining primary sources
such as coal combustion, cooking and traffic were generally very small but
not negligible contributors, as coal combustion contribution could exceed
10 %. Taken together with earlier 14C source apportionment studies
in urban, rural, semi-urban and background regions in Asia, Europe and the USA,
we demonstrated a dominant contribution of non-fossil emissions (i.e.,
75 ± 11 %) to WSOC aerosols in the Northern Hemisphere; however, the
fossil fraction is substantially larger in aerosols from East Asia and the
eastern Asian pollution outflow, especially during winter, due to increasing coal
combustion. Inclusion of our findings can improve a modelling of effects of
WSOC aerosols on climate, atmospheric chemistry and public health.
A prototype method for diagnosing high ice water content probability using satellite imager data
Authors: Yost Christopher R. , Bedka Kristopher M. , Minnis Patrick , Nguyen Louis , Strapp J. Walter , Palikonda Rabindra , Khlopenkov Konstantin , Spangenberg Douglas , Smith Jr. William L. , Protat Alain , Delanoe Julien
Published: March 2018

Abstract. Recent studies have found that ingestion of high mass concentrations of ice particles in regions of deep convective storms, with radar reflectivity considered safe for aircraft penetration, can adversely impact aircraft engine performance. Previous aviation industry studies have used the term high ice water content (HIWC) to define such conditions. Three airborne field campaigns were conducted in 2014 and 2015 to better understand how HIWC is distributed in deep convection, both as a function of altitude and proximity to convective updraft regions, and to facilitate development of new methods for detecting HIWC conditions, in addition to many other research and regulatory goals. This paper describes a prototype method for detecting HIWC conditions using geostationary (GEO) satellite imager data coupled with in situ total water content (TWC) observations collected during the flight campaigns. Three satellite-derived parameters were determined to be most useful for determining HIWC probability: (1) the horizontal proximity of the aircraft to the nearest overshooting convective updraft or textured anvil cloud, (2) tropopause-relative infrared brightness temperature, and (3) daytime-only cloud optical depth. Statistical fits between collocated TWC and GEO satellite parameters were used to determine the membership functions for the fuzzy logic derivation of HIWC probability. The products were demonstrated using data from several campaign flights and validated using a subset of the satellite–aircraft collocation database. The daytime HIWC probability was found to agree quite well with TWC time trends and identified extreme TWC events with high probability. Discrimination of HIWC was more challenging at night with IR-only information. The products show the greatest capability for discriminating TWC  ≥  0.5 g m−3. Product validation remains challenging due to vertical TWC uncertainties and the typically coarse spatio-temporal resolution of the GEO data.
Uncertainty in the global oceanic CO2 uptake induced by wind forcing: quantification and spatial analysis
Authors: Roobaert Alizée , Laruelle Goulven G. , Landschützer Peter , Regnier Pierre
Published: March 2018

Abstract. The calculation of the air–water CO2 exchange (FCO2) in the ocean not only depends on the gradient in CO2 partial pressure at the air–water interface but also on the parameterization of the gas exchange transfer velocity (k) and the choice of wind product. Here, we present regional and global-scale quantifications of the uncertainty in FCO2 induced by several widely used k formulations and four wind speed data products (CCMP, ERA, NCEP1 and NCEP2). The analysis is performed at a 1°  ×  1° resolution using the sea surface pCO2 climatology generated by Landschützer et al. (2015a) for the 1991–2011 period, while the regional assessment relies on the segmentation proposed by the Regional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes (RECCAP) project. First, we use k formulations derived from the global 14C inventory relying on a quadratic relationship between k and wind speed (k = c ⋅ U102; Sweeney et al., 2007; Takahashi et al., 2009; Wanninkhof, 2014), where c is a calibration coefficient and U10 is the wind speed measured 10 m above the surface. Our results show that the range of global FCO2, calculated with these k relationships, diverge by 12 % when using CCMP, ERA or NCEP1. Due to differences in the regional wind patterns, regional discrepancies in FCO2 are more pronounced than global. These global and regional differences significantly increase when using NCEP2 or other k formulations which include earlier relationships (i.e., Wanninkhof, 1992; Wanninkhof et al., 2009) as well as numerous local and regional parameterizations derived experimentally. To minimize uncertainties associated with the choice of wind product, it is possible to recalculate the coefficient c globally (hereafter called c∗) for a given wind product and its spatio-temporal resolution, in order to match the last evaluation of the global k value. We thus performed these recalculations for each wind product at the resolution and time period of our study but the resulting global FCO2 estimates still diverge by 10 %. These results also reveal that the Equatorial Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean are the regions in which the choice of wind product will most strongly affect the estimation of the FCO2, even when using c∗.