Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing are now available here for free:

• Effects of consumer personal characteristics and psychological factors on nostalgia marketing
• Facebook usage intensity and compulsive buying tendency: the mediating role of envy, self-esteem, and self-promotion and the moderating role of depression
• A conjoint analysis of customers' preferences for e-banking channels
• Perceived diagnostics of virtual try-on technologies and attitudes toward men's suits
• Which are online shopping determinants? Analysing ease and convenience to use, prior shopping experience, online benefits, social influence in India
• How to satisfy him and her, and get loyalty in mobile commerce shopping application

Inderscience journals increasing issue frequency in 2022

Inderscience is pleased to announce that the following journals are increasing their issue frequency from 2022:

International Journal of Continuing Engineering Education and Life-Long Learning
Increasing from 4 to 6 issues per year

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital
Increasing from 4 to 6 issues per year

International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation
Increasing from 4 to 6 issues per year

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

International Journal of Trade and Global Markets
Increasing from 6 to 8 issues per year

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics are now available here for free:

• Guidance-based improved depth upsampling with better initial estimate
• Taylor rate-distortion trade-off and adaptive block search for HEVC encoding
• Mathematical variable detection in scientific document images
• Extended COCOMO: robust and interpretable neuro-fuzzy modelling
• HADEM-MACS: a hybrid approach for detection and extraction of objects in movement by multimedia autonomous computer systems
• Incremental approach for multi-modal face expression recognition system using deep neural networks

Research pick: A little trouble in big data - "General analytics limitations with coronavirus healthcare big data"

Statistics based on so-called “big data” may not always be as reliable as we might hope, according to a study published in the International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management. The research analysed a manageable subset of time-stamped dynamic information from the internet pertinent to COVID-19 infections. Study author Kenneth David Strang of W3-Research in Saint Thomas in US Virgin Islands writes that the results were “surprising” and revealed some limitations to conventional statistical techniques. Strang’s work suggests that using general analytics tools for healthcare big data may not be reliable.

Strang points out that while the study is pertinent to our understanding and approach to big data in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it has broader implications for how big data is analysed using statistical tools and whether there needs to be a paradigm shift in our approach and seemingly conflicting ideas that big data can be handled just as we do any other scientific data or whether such scientific evidence warrants a different approach entirely simply by virtue of the scale of that evidence manifest in big data.

“More research will certainly be needed to verify these reliability problems with healthcare big data since only the coronavirus case study was used here,” says Strang. He points out that the nature of big data and a researcher’s access to such vast repositories and the processing power needed to analyse them may offer inherent limitations and how much new information and insight can be readily extracted. Moreover, it is difficult to run checks to prove that any such analysis is valid simply because of the scale of the data and those limitations. Strang offers a hypothetical approach that might allow such validation by using a control data set for a given experiment that is not itself “big” data.

It is almost an aside of the study’s findings regarding our approach to big data that Strang was able to demonstrate that there were some “fascinating potential relationships between foreign property ownership in Australia near the two biggest cities, with links to China, and thereby, potential vulnerabilities to future pandemic outbreaks.”

Strang, K.D. (2021) ‘General analytics limitations with coronavirus healthcare big data’, Int. J. Healthcare Technology and Management, Vol. 18, Nos. 3/4, pp.153–167.

Special issue published: "Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Computing And Networking in the Internet of Things"

International Journal of Cloud Computing 10(4) 2021

• Translation of code mixed language to monolingual languages using rule-based approach
• Enhancing the operations for integrity check on virtual instance forensic logs using cuckoo filter trees
• A biometric-based secure, energy efficient, lightweight authentication protocol for wireless body area networks
• ICU medical alarm system using IoT
• An integrated principal component and reduced multivariate data analysis technique for detecting DDoS attacks in big data federated clouds
• Smart scheduling on cloud for traffic signal to emergency vehicle using IoT
• Hybrid privacy preserving clustering for big data while ensuring security

New Editor for International Journal of Reliability and Safety

Associate Prof. Yiliu Liu from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Reliability and Safety.

Research pick: Phinding and philtering the phish - "Phishing website detection method based on CNAIR framework"

Most of us will have received a scam email that looks like it has come from our bank or an online store or other company or organization. They can look genuine but usually hidden within are malicious links that once clicked take you to a third-party server that either steals login details you enter or drops malware on your device. These are phishing emails. The deliberate misspelling of “fish” with a “ph” is related etymologically to the term “phreak” which is an abbreviated portmanteau from the 1960s meaning “phone freak” and alluding to a person who hacked phone systems for pleasure or personal gain.

Some phishing emails may have poor grammar and spelling are rarely perfect or the layout may be askew and not exactly what one would expect from a legitimate organization. Such phishing attacks are relatively easy to spot, but the close-to-perfect ones may well not be and protective systems on one’s device are then needed to avoid the user being duped into clicking a malicious link.

Writing in the International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity a team from China has developed a deep learning-based framework that might be used to detect phishing websites. Huanhuan Wang, Debin Cheng, and Hui Peng of the Fifth Electronic Research Institute of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Guangzhou, China, explain how their framework can extract descriptive and statistical features from a website and then determine whether these features are indicative of a phishing website. The detection of such sites could then be used in online security research and perhaps even be incorporated into browsers to protect unwary users from being phished.

The team has tested their system against two databases, one containing the website address (uniform resource locators, URLs) of 10000 legitimate and otherwise benign sites and 13000 URLs found in the PhishTank public dataset of sites that have previously been themselves hooked and identified as malicious. The team has demonstrated a detection accuracy of almost 99 percent, which they say is a significant improvement on earlier phish detection methods. The approach they have taken might also point to new areas of research in this area and the development and optimization of detection systems that can be incorporated into security systems for mobile and desktop devices.

Wang, H., Cheng, D. and Peng, H. (2021) ‘Phishing website detection method based on CNAIR framework’, Int. J. Information Privacy, Security and Integrity, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp.18–35.

Special issue published: "Advances in Engineering and Nanotechnology"

International Journal of Nanotechnology 18(11/12) 2021

• Application of optical techniques in sedimentation study of magnetorheological fluids
• Application of hybrid Taguchi-GRA-PCA and ANOVA in optimisation of deformation properties of sandwich structure
• Experimental investigations on direct absorption solar flat plate collector using Al2O3 nanofluid
• Influence of materials' hardness and operating parameters on the surface roughness during reciprocating sliding
• Environmental impact on the use of diesel waste plastic oil nano-additive blends in a DI diesel engine
• Performance improvement of variable compression ratio diesel engine using H2O2 as fuel additive
• On the shape based SPR of silver nanostructures
• Optimisation and statistical analysis of performance parameters for bio-oil production from eucalyptus leaves using fast pyrolysis
• Design of vertical fire tube boiler using IBR code and FEA analysis
• A simulation-based study on the disc brake temperature distribution for optimising hole geometry

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity are now available here for free:

• Connected car and CO2 emission overview: solutions, challenges and opportunities
• Security analysis for intelligent urban freight transport
• Survey: secure opportunistic routing protocols in wireless networks
• Differential cryptanalysis on DES cryptosystem up to eight rounds

Free open access article available: "Relevance of single channel signals for two-colour pyrometer process monitoring of laser powder bed fusion"

The following paper, "Relevance of single channel signals for two-colour pyrometer process monitoring of laser powder bed fusion" (International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems 14(2) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.

It can be downloaded via the full-text link available here.

Special issue published: "Progress in Sensing, Monitoring, Control and Digital Twin in Additive Manufacturing" (includes free Open Access article)

International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems 14(2) 2021

• Analysis of the effects of operator experience and learning in laser sintering
• Relevance of single channel signals for two-colour pyrometer process monitoring of laser powder bed fusion [OPEN ACCESS]
• Selective laser melting of titanium alloys: effect of processing parameters on microstructure and mechanical properties
• Physics-based simulation models for digital twin development in laser powder bed fusion
• Investigating mechanical properties of 3D printed parts manufactured in different orientations on multijet printer

Free open access article available: "Reorganisation success in bankruptcy: the role of entrepreneur experience, characteristics and commitment"

The following paper, "Reorganisation success in bankruptcy: the role of entrepreneur experience, characteristics and commitment" (International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing 13(5) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.

It can be downloaded via the full-text link available here.

Research pick: Developing a liquid radio antenna - "Analysis of conical liquid antenna for wide range of frequencies"

Solid, metal antennae have been the standard in a wide range of technologies for decades, including a wide variety of radio communications and scanning such as radar. However, research into the concept of liquid antennae was discussed in the 1990s. A liquid antenna would comprise a lightweight and perhaps collapsible container that could be erected into the appropriate shape and filled with a suitable liquid. Water, saltwater, ionic liquids, and other substances have been investigated over the years.

New work in the International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems offers a novel design of a conical structure for a liquid antenna that can operate effectively across a wide frequency range. The antenna is compact and cost effective the team reports as well as offering a simple way to reconfigure it for different applications, something that is not easy with a solid metal antenna. Conical antennae are usually the form required for radio-frequency broadcast.

S. Roopa and E. Kiran Kumar of the Siddaganga Institute of Technology Tumakuru, in Karnataka, India, have demonstrated proof of principle for their new type of liquid antenna using pure water, seawater, and glycerin as the liquid component. The device can achieve voltage standing wave ratio of 1 to 2 over a frequency range of 300 to 850 megahertz, the team reports. They add that the gain achieved in experimental results was 2 dBi, which is comparable with their simulations in which the gain is around 1.9 dBi. The operating frequency is adjusted by changing the height of liquid within the cone.

The team concludes that their proposed antenna is simple, low cost, and covers a wide range of frequencies, which can be tuned easily. The radio emission from the antenna is omnidirectional and the fact that it is transparent gives it an additional attractive design feature for the development of wireless applications. In addition, the antenna is 30 to 40 percent shorter than its equivalent metal antenna.

Roopa, S. and Kiran Kumar, E. (2021) ‘Analysis of conical liquid antenna for wide range of frequencies’, Int. J. Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems, Vol. 4, Nos. 3/4, pp.197–204.

Special issue published: "Modern Research, Design and Implementation in High/Wide and Ultrawide Band Antennas and Propagation"

International Journal of Ultra Wideband Communications and Systems 4(3/4)

• Integrated multipath routing protocol for well-organised route selection in heterogeneous wireless networks
• Remote monitoring of indoor/outdoor movement in epidemiological situations utilising UWB transceivers
• Optimised floating point arithmetic-based QR decomposition for wireless communication systems
• Trust aware IoT enhanced B-tree node authentication for secured 5G wireless communication
• Design and analysis of capacitive RF MEMS switch with step structure and meander spring for cellular communication
• Enhanced energy and channel aware load balancing AOMDV protocol for efficient packet transmission in MANET
• An experimental analysis of image extract algorithm in UWB communication medium to make a smart pesticide sprayer for cassava agriculture crops
• FPGA implementation of polar codes for 5G eMBB control channels
• Detection and localisation of cars in indoor parking through UWB radar-based sensing system
• Cluster-based wireless sensor network for structural health monitoring system
• Analysis of conical liquid antenna for wide range of frequencies

Research pick: Understanding the hive mind - "User participation behaviour in crowdsourcing initiatives: influencing factors, related theories and incentive strategies"

Crowdsourcing is a method of problem solving that taps the intellectual potential and skills of a large number of people simultaneously, commonly by using the tools of social media and the internet. New research published in the International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing has investigated this phenomenon from the perspective of the various influencing factors and incentive strategies used to make crowdsourcing work the most effectively.

Xu Zhang, Zhanglin Peng, Qiang Zhang, Xiaonong Lu, and Hao Song of the School of Management at Hefei University of Technology in China, explain how crowdsourcing has been used in many different settings by companies, organizations, and innovators around the world. For instance, it has been used to guide the development of new products, it has been used in citizen science and data collection, to provide fodder for machine learning applications, the testing of new software (often referred to alpha and beta testing, it has even been used in political rallying and in the creative world to nudge performers and producers in a particular artistic direction or to specific places.

The team writes how crowdsourcing was defined in 2006 by Jeff Howe as “the act of taking a task that is traditionally performed by an employee and outsourcing it to a large and undefined crowd of individuals through an open call.”

The team has reviewed the research literature in this field and found that there are numerous factors influencing the behaviour of individuals in the “crowd”, including enjoyment and fun, monetary reward, peer recognition, skill improvement, self-marketing, a sense of belonging, work autonomy, altruism, and task complexity.

Their work offers related behavioural theories to explain the relationship between those influencing factors and how the crowd behaves when presented with a particular problem to be solved. They highlight the incentive strategies that might be used, from the perspective of both the requester and also the available crowdsourcing platforms. Finally, they discuss the current directions being taken by research and highlight new avenues that might be taken to allow the field to mature.

Zhang, X., Peng, Z., Zhang, Q., Lu, X. and Song, H. (2021) ‘User participation behaviour in crowdsourcing initiatives: influencing factors, related theories and incentive strategies’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 38, Nos. 1/2/3, pp.30–44.

Free open access article available: "Architecture and framework for data acquisition in cloud robotics"

The following paper, "Architecture and framework for data acquisition in cloud robotics" (International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence 4(1) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.

It can be downloaded via the full-text link available here.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence are now available here for free:

• Situation-based reply candidate presentation method for mobile phone
• Correlation-based heuristics and evaluation of existing greedy heuristics for VM allocations in cloud datacentres
• Intelligent remote health monitoring system
• School dropout profiling and prediction approach using machine learning

Special issue published: "Convergence Of Soft Computing For Smart Cities"

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing 38(1/2/3) 2021

• Evaluation of functional maturity for a network information service - design and case analysis
• Lion plus firefly algorithm for ternary-based anomaly detection in semantic graphs in smart cities
• User participation behaviour in crowdsourcing initiatives: influencing factors, related theories and incentive strategies
• GSFI_SMOTE: a hybrid multiclass classifier for minority attack detection in internet of things network
• Optimisation of K-means algorithm based on sample density canopy
• Uncertainties evaluation and analysis using quantitative technique for a software project
• Recent advances in blockchain technology: a survey on applications and challenges
• Device and method for dynamic image display of financial transaction operation data
• A machine learning approach for celebrity profiling
• Computational trust evaluation algorithm for cloud models using fuzzy logic approach
• Development of image-guided puncture robot used in trigeminal neuralgia treatment
• A recommendation algorithm based on modified similarity and text content to optimise aggregate diversity
• An ICT-based solid waste management system for smart cities: a case of municipality in India
• SHA-AMD: sample-efficient hyper-tuned approach for detection and identification of Android malware family and category
• A CA-GRU-based model for air quality prediction
• An SDN-IoT-based secure simulation system for smart cities

New Editor for International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets

Prof. Vincent Charles from CENTRUM PUCP of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru has been appointed to take over editorship of the International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets.

Research pick: COVID’s effects on control room operators - "The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological fatigue of control room operators in oil, gas and petrochemical industry"

Critical workers across many different sectors and industries from healthcare and education to manufacturing and retail have faced tough times during the many months of the COVID-19 pandemic. New research in the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics, considers the plight of control room operators in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industry and the psychological fatigue many such workers have faced during the pandemic.

Budiyanto Soinangun, Ivan Novendri, Jaka Matsana, Fergyanto E. Gunawan, Muhammad Asrol, and A.A.N. Perwira Redi of the Industrial Engineering Department at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta, Indonesia, explain how within the petrochemical industry sites have to be kept running continuously and so rely on employees working shifts. However, the emergence of a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, in late 2019, and the pandemic that arose, meant measures such as social distancing, lockdowns, quarantines, and self-isolation had to be instigated in many parts of the world to slow the spread of the disease. There were significant problems as a result for many sectors, particularly those industries which must be “always-on”.

The team recognised that in such an industry the pandemic may well have serious psychological effects on its workers. As such, they undertook research to measure sleep quality and quantity, cognitive performance, and fatigue incidents among petrochemical workers and associated accidents.

The results show that many control room operators got less sleep during the pandemic and the sleep they experienced was of a lower quality than before COVID-19. The researchers also found that cognitive performance was lower as indicated by an almost 15% increase in the number of alarms triggered on average than prior to the pandemic. Companies that adapted to the so-called “new normal” of the pandemic world saw a gradual fall in the number of incidents and accidents over time, however, as they implemented new control and monitoring measures.

As to the psychological wellbeing of workers, there is a need to implement new measures for them too. Measures that monitor well-being as well as offering counselling with an expert independent third party would improve the situation for over-stressed workers suffering from poor sleep and mental health problems. In addition, companies should offer their workers access to physical exercise equipment, the team suggests.

Soinangun, B., Novendri, I., Matsana, J., Gunawan, F.E., Asrol, M. and Redi, A.A.N.P. (2021) ‘The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological fatigue of control room operators in oil, gas and petrochemical industry’, Int. J. Human Factors and Ergonomics, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.393–407.

Research pick: Mindfulness can help you work better in the cold and wet - "The effects of mindfulness and repeated cold exposure on cold tolerance and motor skill performance"

Mindfulness can be used by people who work in extremely cold and wet environments to tolerate low temperatures better and so carry out tasks that require motor skills more effectively, according to research published in the International Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics.

Commonly, sudden exposure to extreme cold, particularly in wet conditions or following submersion in water, can lead to a cold-shock response. This affects the person’s cardiovascular system, metabolism, and leads to changes in breathing and subsequently hypothermia, which is a serious risk to life. Finding ways to inhibit the cold-shock response could be a lifesaver and so methods for improving cold tolerance and endurance to exposure to cold water are important for workers who need to spend time in cold, wet environments or underwater.

Mindfulness can be described as the practice of deliberately focusing one’s attention on the present moment without evaluation. It is an important component of many spiritual and philosophical approaches to life allowing practitioners. It allows people to concentrate on a particular experience or task in a positive way avoiding the distractions of their natural emotional responses and thought processes that normally arise in a given situation and which can interfere with the experience or task in negative ways. Mindfulness is not just another word for meditation rather it is an approach to focus and concentration that can help people cope or work better in many situations. It can also allow them to enjoy and appreciate their life’s experiences in a clearer way than if they do not focus on the given situation. There is growing clinical evidence that mindfulness can have physical and mental health benefits.

Kaitlin Mugford Heather Barry, Michael King, and Heather Carnahan of Memorial University in St. John’s NL, Canada, and Gal Ziv of The Academic College at Wingate, Netanya, Israel, investigated whether listening to a mindful passage being read could improve a person’s motor performance and cold tolerance in a low-temperature environment. Cold exposure for the participants involved holding their hand in water at a temperature of 2 Celsius while they listened to a mindfulness passage being read. The control group did not have the reading.

After this training period, the team then tested each group of participants for their ability to ensure a cold exposure. They were also tested with a grooved pegboard and knot untying. Both groups performed similarly in the motor tests. However, members of the mindfulness group were able to tolerate exposure to cold much longer than the other participants.

Mugford, K., Barry, H., King, M., Ziv, G. and Carnahan, H. (2021) ‘The effects of mindfulness and repeated cold exposure on cold tolerance and motor skill performance’, Int. J. Human Factors and Ergonomics, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.408–420.

The following is the mindfulness passage read to one group of participants:

<pre>Please submerge your hand in the water. We will start with a few deep breaths as you experience your first exposure to this water. Breathe in through the nose… out through the mouth. Keep breathing deep into your abdomen. In. Out. Don’t divert your attention from the cold. Be mindful of the cold and accept it. Although it may feel uncomfortable or painful, just keep breathing. In through your nose and out through your mouth. Try to steady your breath. Focus on accepting the sensations that your body is experiencing. Know that what you are feeling is only temporary and it is okay to feel some discomfort. Allow these sensations to happen without reacting to them. Keep your attention on your breath and accept the sensations you are experiencing. Breathe in… and out. Think about the fact that because this is only temporary, you can do this. Remind yourself it is okay. </pre>