The journals involved are:
- International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management
- International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems
- International Journal of Vehicle Safety
30 September 2014
Inderscience is media partner for Telematics for Usage Based Insurance 2015
Inderscience is a media partner for Telematics for Usage Based Insurance (18-19 February 2015, London, UK).
The journals involved are:
The journals involved are:
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from IEEES-7
Expanded versions of papers presented at the Seventh International Exergy, Energy and Environment Symposium (27-30 April 2015, Valenciennes, France) will be published by the following journals:
Call for papers: "Developments in Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Global Warming.
Important Dates
Anthropogenic carbon emissions, even if they may have to be tolerated in the short term for economic reasons, certainly cannot be maintained forever. There is a limit to the carbon content in the atmosphere that can be sustained in the longer term without destructive consequences to the environment and human well-being.
Many experts agree that this critical carbon content has already been achieved or will be achieved in the near term. Accordingly, as pointed out in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report, atmospheric carbon emissions need to be significantly limited in the near future and thus more low-carbon technologies, potentially including carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), will be urgently required.
This special issue is a forum for sharing expertise on CCUS. We warmly invite manuscripts with a focus on the subjects described below. CCUS experts are encouraged to share their research results, insights and conclusions on prospects and challenges associated with expanding CCUS in the future low-carbon global economy. Ideally, the studies should shed light on the current CCUS challenges, thus aiding potential readers from governments, industries and research organisations.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the three Carbon Capture Meetings held in November, 2014 in London, Rotterdam and Warsaw, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the meetings to submit articles for this call. Both original research papers and literature reviews are welcome.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) innovative technologies
- CCUS demonstration project outcomes
- CCUS financial incentives schemes (carbon tax, subsidy, etc.)
- CCUS policy and societal issues
- CCUS research with applied focus
- Overall CCUS business feasibility
- Other topics with significant importance for CCUS
Important Dates
Submission of abstracts (up to one page via email to wojciech.budzianowski@gmail.com): 15 January, 2015
Notification to authors of abstracts acceptance/rejection: 15 February, 2015
Submission of manuscripts: 30 April, 2015
Notification to authors: 30 June, 2015
Final versions due: 1 October, 2015
29 September 2014
Inderscience is media partner for East Africa Energy Infrastructure Security 2015 Forum
Inderscience is a media partner for East Africa Energy Infrastructure Security 2015 Forum (4-5 February 2015, Nairobi, Kenya).
The journals involved are:
The journals involved are:
Invitation to submit for technology-enhanced learning awards
The editors of the International Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning cordially invite you to submit expressions of interest for the FP7-funded TELL US Awards. The competition is open to both small and large enterprises, innovators, students, teachers and professors from the 28 EU Member States, and entries must be products and/or services which already exist and which have been tested and deployed in a classroom. This is a great opportunity to compete for prizes which will help you to introduce your technical ideas into classrooms all over Europe. Visit the competition website for further information.
Call for papers: "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Challenges for Urban Centres"
For a special issue of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Review.
Rapid urbanisation requires managing resources and energy demands, addressing intensified inequalities, and mitigating the effects of climate change. Progressive urban design paradigms and the developing subfield, “Philosophy of the City,” offer insights into the nature of and solutions to such problems. The aim of this special issue is to examine theoretical and applied dimensions of urban issues. Topics of interest are open, but submissions should reveal new directions of agenda-setting research.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 20th International Interdisciplinary Conference on the Environment, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Rapid urbanisation requires managing resources and energy demands, addressing intensified inequalities, and mitigating the effects of climate change. Progressive urban design paradigms and the developing subfield, “Philosophy of the City,” offer insights into the nature of and solutions to such problems. The aim of this special issue is to examine theoretical and applied dimensions of urban issues. Topics of interest are open, but submissions should reveal new directions of agenda-setting research.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 20th International Interdisciplinary Conference on the Environment, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Competing planning movements and environmental considerations
- Environmental aspects of smart grids and cities
- Beyond LEED certification
- Material flows: management, measurements and assessment models
- Environmental and public health impacts of public space: improving mobility, highway removal and repurposing projects
- Shifting attitudes in sustainability and resilience thinking
- The question of stewardship in urban planning
- Ecological perspectives of planning without borders
- Community participation in environmental disaster relief and rebuilding
- The role of local government in resource allocation
- Environmental responsibility in emerging participatory budgeting movements
- Urban agriculture and food systems
- Masterplanning and environmental determinism
- Justice issues in resource distribution, pollution, waste management and transportation infrastructure
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 19 January, 2015
Call for papers for inaugural issue of Int. Journal of Business Intelligence and Systems Engineering
For the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Business Intelligence and Systems Engineering.
Organisations use business intelligence (BI) techniques to enhance decision making, improve or re-engineer business processes, cut costs and identify new business opportunities. Typically, BI mainly refers to computer-based techniques used to identify, extract and analyse business data to support superior business decision making.
BI includes sets of applications to collect, store and analyse raw data to enable managers to make sound decisions in a business enterprise. BI is a growing discipline that includes several activities related to decision making such as querying, data mining, online analytical processing, forecasting, benchmarking and predictive analytics, to name a few. It is an umbrella term that refers to the technologies that support better management of an enterprise through informed decision making.
BI is not just reporting. It offers to managers an analytical, predictive view of an organisation using its enterprise architecture platform, allowing the organisation to compete and survive in the modern business environment. It’s only recently that organisations have started to include BI as an integral part of their mission and devise BI strategies at the enterprise-wide level. As a result, there is great demand for research focused on the use and application of BI techniques that goes beyond the traditional reporting and modelling tools.
This journal addresses the latest research in the area of BI to benefit the researchers and managers alike by publishing any efforts to
BI includes sets of applications to collect, store and analyse raw data to enable managers to make sound decisions in a business enterprise. BI is a growing discipline that includes several activities related to decision making such as querying, data mining, online analytical processing, forecasting, benchmarking and predictive analytics, to name a few. It is an umbrella term that refers to the technologies that support better management of an enterprise through informed decision making.
BI is not just reporting. It offers to managers an analytical, predictive view of an organisation using its enterprise architecture platform, allowing the organisation to compete and survive in the modern business environment. It’s only recently that organisations have started to include BI as an integral part of their mission and devise BI strategies at the enterprise-wide level. As a result, there is great demand for research focused on the use and application of BI techniques that goes beyond the traditional reporting and modelling tools.
This journal addresses the latest research in the area of BI to benefit the researchers and managers alike by publishing any efforts to
- illustrate the new trends in BI applications that go far beyond traditional decision support applications;
- support better decision making that involves more than reporting or sets of tools to glean data from corporate databases to include business analytics;
- impact on business and strategy.
The papers in this journal aim to represent the latest research ideas in the area of BI to provide performance metrics, tools and techniques for the management of enterprises.
We welcome theoretical and empirical papers, and interesting case studies that are within the scope of the journal.
We welcome theoretical and empirical papers, and interesting case studies that are within the scope of the journal.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Important Dates
Submission due date of full paper: 30 November, 2014
Feedback from referees: 15 January, 2015
Submission due date of revised paper: 15 February, 2015
Notification of acceptance: 15 March, 2015
Submission of final revised paper: 1 April, 2015
- Data warehousing/mining, database processing/schema
- Data and knowledge visualisation, knowledge discovery and management systems
- Intelligent decision support, business intelligence architecture
- Lean/active/dynamic systems
- Information retrieval, human-computer interaction
- Enterprise/organisational information strategy, enterprise performance management
- Information quality, security, privacy
- Soft/hybrid computing, agent architectures/systems
- Organisational operation management and strategy
- Uncertainty management, insufficient information decisions
- Production planning, scheduling
- Supply chain management
- Artificial intelligence applications to business decision making, such as neural networks, genetic algorithms, fuzzy systems and swarm intelligence
- Online analytical processing, predictive analysis, text mining
- Applications: biomedical systems, intelligent services, cloud computing, etc.
Important Dates
Submission due date of full paper: 30 November, 2014
Feedback from referees: 15 January, 2015
Submission due date of revised paper: 15 February, 2015
Notification of acceptance: 15 March, 2015
Submission of final revised paper: 1 April, 2015
Remote healthcare for an aging population
An aging population and an increased incidence of debilitating illnesses such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease means there is pressure on technology to offer assistance with healthcare – monitoring and treatment. Research published in the International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing
Andrew Thomas formerly of Birmingham City University, UK and colleagues there and at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, the Technical University of Catalonia,Barcelona, Spain, Ritsumeikan University, in Kusatsu and Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Japan, suggest there is a need to develop pervasive technologies that monitor patients at home, where medically viable so as to reduce the pressure on general practitioners and other healthcare workers and their limited resources. “Those ‘smart care spaces’ require use of sensors and intelligent computer systems to support the needs of the cared-for, carers and medical personnel,” the team reports.
The judicious use of technology and the development of a smart care spaces will hopefully lead to great improvements in the quality-of-life through comfort and adequate medical-monitoring of patients with a range of serious, chronic and degenerative conditions where current practice does not cope well or where pressure on carers can be alleviated. New technologies might also hint at new approaches to treatments for any number of diseases here correlations between healthcare practices informed by the technology points to putative improvements in medication regimen, exercise, as well as environmental changes for improving the patient’s life with the disease.
The team has reviewed systems using sensors and health monitors and suggests that even simple sensors, such as radio tags, “shadow” cameras, and electricity usage monitors, that monitor night-time activities or detect when a patient has had a fall, might be highly cost effective. A fall may lead to injury that requires hospitalization whereas evidence of insomnia might lead to other symptoms during the day where an intervention might improve the situation. There are many technologies, including pulse monitors and heart monitors, gyroscopics to detect falls, that could be connected to a smart phone that would send alerts to carers of an imminent problem with a patient’s well being too.
A holistic approach to the design of a smart care space and the implementation of the available technology could provide the greatest benefits, the researchers suggest, rather than ad hoc use of simple monitors or other devices in isolation. “It is apparent that much of the technology required to create smart care spaces already exists, but further research is required to integrate them into a functional whole,” the team concludes.
Thomas, A.M., Moore, P., Evans, C., Shah, H., Sharma, M., Mount, S., Xhafa, F., Pham, H.V., Barolli, L., Patel, A., Wilcox, A.J., Chapman, C. and Chima, P. (2014) ‘Smart care spaces: pervasive sensing technologies for at-home care’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp.268–282.
Remote healthcare for an aging population is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1qNz4Nv
Andrew Thomas formerly of Birmingham City University, UK and colleagues there and at the University of Wolverhampton, UK, the Technical University of Catalonia,Barcelona, Spain, Ritsumeikan University, in Kusatsu and Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Japan, suggest there is a need to develop pervasive technologies that monitor patients at home, where medically viable so as to reduce the pressure on general practitioners and other healthcare workers and their limited resources. “Those ‘smart care spaces’ require use of sensors and intelligent computer systems to support the needs of the cared-for, carers and medical personnel,” the team reports.
The judicious use of technology and the development of a smart care spaces will hopefully lead to great improvements in the quality-of-life through comfort and adequate medical-monitoring of patients with a range of serious, chronic and degenerative conditions where current practice does not cope well or where pressure on carers can be alleviated. New technologies might also hint at new approaches to treatments for any number of diseases here correlations between healthcare practices informed by the technology points to putative improvements in medication regimen, exercise, as well as environmental changes for improving the patient’s life with the disease.
The team has reviewed systems using sensors and health monitors and suggests that even simple sensors, such as radio tags, “shadow” cameras, and electricity usage monitors, that monitor night-time activities or detect when a patient has had a fall, might be highly cost effective. A fall may lead to injury that requires hospitalization whereas evidence of insomnia might lead to other symptoms during the day where an intervention might improve the situation. There are many technologies, including pulse monitors and heart monitors, gyroscopics to detect falls, that could be connected to a smart phone that would send alerts to carers of an imminent problem with a patient’s well being too.
A holistic approach to the design of a smart care space and the implementation of the available technology could provide the greatest benefits, the researchers suggest, rather than ad hoc use of simple monitors or other devices in isolation. “It is apparent that much of the technology required to create smart care spaces already exists, but further research is required to integrate them into a functional whole,” the team concludes.
Thomas, A.M., Moore, P., Evans, C., Shah, H., Sharma, M., Mount, S., Xhafa, F., Pham, H.V., Barolli, L., Patel, A., Wilcox, A.J., Chapman, C. and Chima, P. (2014) ‘Smart care spaces: pervasive sensing technologies for at-home care’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp.268–282.
Remote healthcare for an aging population is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1qNz4Nv
26 September 2014
Inderscience is media partner for International SAP Conference on Product Lifecycle Management
Inderscience is a media partner for the International SAP Conference on Product Lifecycle Management (17-18 November 2014, Düsseldorf, Germany).
The journal involved is the International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management.
The journal involved is the International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management.
25 September 2014
Saving energy in social housing
Landlords should be helping their social-housing tenants improve the energy efficiency of their homes, according to research published in the International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development. Given that warmth is commonly the greatest need for such tenant, habit the greatest barrier and money the greatest motivator improvements to heating systems and advice on how to use them most efficiently and effectively are needed.
Gesche M. Huebner of University College London, Energy Institute and colleagues at the University of Greenwich, have taken a broad approach to understanding domestic energy consumption and to identifying difficulties in energy reduction. The focused on several factors, including barriers and motivators for changing behaviour, comfort and comfort actions and knowledge about the heating system. Interviews with and questionnaires completed by social housing tenants in England provided them with important data about energy behaviour.
“Our data showed that tenants were to a large degree already engaged in energy-saving actions,” the team reports. “Warmth was the most important aspect of comfort for the majority of tenants but about half of both comfort actions and actions against cold were not energy-intensive.” They also found that force of “habit” was the most important barrier to changing wasteful behaviour to more sustainable domestic practices and that money rather than trying to be green was found, perhaps not surprisingly given the economic circumstances of the interviewees, as the greatest motivator.
The team found that one of the biggest problems was a lack of instruction on how to use the heating system in a dwelling most effectively. Often, people make assumptions about temperature variations and how thermostats work. Also, there is much deceived wisdom surrounding the idea that maintaining hot water at a high temperature somehow uses less energy than allowing it to cool and reheating it on demand and other such matters.
“Our results imply that social housing landlords have the responsibility to provide better instructions on the most efficient home operation,” the team concludes. “They could play a large role in changing tenants’ habits, for example when implementing physical changes to the dwelling.”
Huebner, G.M., Cooper, J., Moon, A., Maras, P. and Jones, K. (2014) ‘Barriers towards reducing domestic energy consumption – findings of a study among social housing tenants’, Int. J. Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.425–448.
Saving energy in social housing is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1rgyTR4
Gesche M. Huebner of University College London, Energy Institute and colleagues at the University of Greenwich, have taken a broad approach to understanding domestic energy consumption and to identifying difficulties in energy reduction. The focused on several factors, including barriers and motivators for changing behaviour, comfort and comfort actions and knowledge about the heating system. Interviews with and questionnaires completed by social housing tenants in England provided them with important data about energy behaviour.
“Our data showed that tenants were to a large degree already engaged in energy-saving actions,” the team reports. “Warmth was the most important aspect of comfort for the majority of tenants but about half of both comfort actions and actions against cold were not energy-intensive.” They also found that force of “habit” was the most important barrier to changing wasteful behaviour to more sustainable domestic practices and that money rather than trying to be green was found, perhaps not surprisingly given the economic circumstances of the interviewees, as the greatest motivator.
The team found that one of the biggest problems was a lack of instruction on how to use the heating system in a dwelling most effectively. Often, people make assumptions about temperature variations and how thermostats work. Also, there is much deceived wisdom surrounding the idea that maintaining hot water at a high temperature somehow uses less energy than allowing it to cool and reheating it on demand and other such matters.
“Our results imply that social housing landlords have the responsibility to provide better instructions on the most efficient home operation,” the team concludes. “They could play a large role in changing tenants’ habits, for example when implementing physical changes to the dwelling.”
Huebner, G.M., Cooper, J., Moon, A., Maras, P. and Jones, K. (2014) ‘Barriers towards reducing domestic energy consumption – findings of a study among social housing tenants’, Int. J. Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.425–448.
Saving energy in social housing is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1rgyTR4
Call for papers: "Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy Formulation and Implementation"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Corporate Strategy and Social Responsibility.
For this special issue, we invite research expanding the understanding of the formulation or implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, including theoretical and empirical studies (both quantitative and qualitative).
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- How is CSR related to leadership and the characteristics of top executives?
- What are the antecedents and consequences of responsible decision making?
- How can CSR be embedded in strategy formulation and implementation (product, corporate, R&D, human resource management)?
- How is organisational performance affected by strategic CSR?
- What is the relationship between CSR, firm reputation and firm performance?
- What is the relationship between government regulation, strategy and CSR?
- How does the relationship between government regulation, strategy and CSR vary by country?
- How does culture affect CSR and strategy?
- What is the relationship between corporate governance and CSR?
- What is the relationship between technology and CSR?
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 15 January, 2015
Notification to authors: 15 April, 2015
Final versions due: 15 August, 2015
Special issue published: "Managing Social Networks: How Can Ubiquitous Technologies and Social Media Foster the Marriage Between Innovation and Youth Entrepreneurship?"
International Journal of Technology Management 66(4) 2014
- Extending the DART model for social media
- Instant messaging adoption in China: implications for young entrepreneurs
- New business model creation through the triple helix of young entrepreneurs, SNSs, and smart devices
- Social shopping communities as an emerging business model of youth entrepreneurship: exploring the effects of website characteristics
- An analysis of a model for the diffusion of engineering innovations under multi-firm competition
- Social media platforms and technology education: Facebook on the way to graduate school
Newly announced journal: International Journal of Competitiveness
The International Journal of Competitiveness researches the broad scope of competitiveness policies and practices across regions of the world. With emphasis on mechanisms of economic development, creation of prosperity and long-term sustainable development, IJC aspires to represent both theoretical and applied frameworks of research, at both macro and micro levels. The journal stems from the work conducted by Professor Michael Porter at the Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness and the best practices emerging from the Microeconomics of Competitiveness framework.
Inderscience Publishers journal content to move to new hosting platform
We are pleased to announce that all of our journal content accessed by subscribers and pay-per-view readers will be moving across to the Literatum Platform at Atypon, following their acquisition of our former hosting partner Metapress, who dealt with our online subscriptions.
We would like to assure our customers and readers that we will do our utmost to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform in 2015, and that readers will benefit from the improved features and services that this change will enable us to offer in the future.
Click here for the official press release on the transfer.
We would like to assure our customers and readers that we will do our utmost to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform in 2015, and that readers will benefit from the improved features and services that this change will enable us to offer in the future.
Click here for the official press release on the transfer.
24 September 2014
The bottom line on sustainability
Climate change, pollution, dwindling natural resources, diminishing fresh water supplies…the list of problems we face as a species in the twenty-first century continues to grow. Many of the environmental problems are sadly our own doing and yet therein lies the solution. We must halt the devastation, reverse the problems. Now, sustainability associate Kaushik Sridhar of the Net Balance Management Group in Sydney, Australia, suggests that enough is enough. Writing in the International Journal of Business Excellence, he suggests that we must turn to sustainability so that we can have enough for all, forever.
Sridhar points out that we must overcome out tendency to waste resources and to expend time and energy on futile attempts to resolve problems associated with whatever is the crisis du jour, natural resource depletion, habitat degradation, climate change, over-population. Instead, his research suggests that these problems can only be resolved by society as a whole transitioning quickly and immediately to a sustainable lifestyle paradigm, one in which we live entirely within our means ecologically and economically from now on out. He asserts that given the scale and potential harm of global changes that will arise inevitably if we do not change our wasteful ways to a sustainable stance, any alternative course of action will, at best, only briefly postpone societal collapse.
Despite superficial efforts to make commerce “greener” to adopt so-called alternative energy sources and to recycle household and other waste, we are currently in an essentially business-as-usual paradigm one that has perhaps existed since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but that may stretch back to the prehistoric era when we first napped chunks of flint and started burning trees.
“In recent years, the topic of sustainability has become a high material issue across the globe, and is seen as a way of not only enhancing the overall business practice (from an ethical perspective) but also as a practical method of having a positive impact on the community and the overall environment,” explains Sridhar. However, paying lip service to sustainability is surely not enough however well intentioned and how well it improves corporate relations with the public. There are three perspectives we must recognize urgently:
We must see the implications of our current environmental and social trends
We must make the intellectual effort to think through systemically how our whole system needs to change for things to come right
We must initiate actions to contribute to the needed change.
Extrapolating current trends leads us to ecological collapse and the unraveling of society, suggests Sridhar, no amount of denial will postpone the inevitable. “Changing the direction of our whole society is the overarching need of our time. If we succeed, future generations will thank us – profoundly,” he says.
Sridhar, K. (2014) ‘Sustainability – ‘enough for all forever’’, Int. J. Business Excellence, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.454–472.
The bottom line on sustainability is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1B8pmvg
Sridhar points out that we must overcome out tendency to waste resources and to expend time and energy on futile attempts to resolve problems associated with whatever is the crisis du jour, natural resource depletion, habitat degradation, climate change, over-population. Instead, his research suggests that these problems can only be resolved by society as a whole transitioning quickly and immediately to a sustainable lifestyle paradigm, one in which we live entirely within our means ecologically and economically from now on out. He asserts that given the scale and potential harm of global changes that will arise inevitably if we do not change our wasteful ways to a sustainable stance, any alternative course of action will, at best, only briefly postpone societal collapse.
Despite superficial efforts to make commerce “greener” to adopt so-called alternative energy sources and to recycle household and other waste, we are currently in an essentially business-as-usual paradigm one that has perhaps existed since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, but that may stretch back to the prehistoric era when we first napped chunks of flint and started burning trees.
“In recent years, the topic of sustainability has become a high material issue across the globe, and is seen as a way of not only enhancing the overall business practice (from an ethical perspective) but also as a practical method of having a positive impact on the community and the overall environment,” explains Sridhar. However, paying lip service to sustainability is surely not enough however well intentioned and how well it improves corporate relations with the public. There are three perspectives we must recognize urgently:
We must see the implications of our current environmental and social trends
We must make the intellectual effort to think through systemically how our whole system needs to change for things to come right
We must initiate actions to contribute to the needed change.
Extrapolating current trends leads us to ecological collapse and the unraveling of society, suggests Sridhar, no amount of denial will postpone the inevitable. “Changing the direction of our whole society is the overarching need of our time. If we succeed, future generations will thank us – profoundly,” he says.
Sridhar, K. (2014) ‘Sustainability – ‘enough for all forever’’, Int. J. Business Excellence, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.454–472.
The bottom line on sustainability is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1B8pmvg
Int. J. of Innovation in Education to publish expanded papers from Sektionstagung Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik in der DGfE 2014
Expanded versions of papers presented at the Sektionstagung Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik in der DGfE 2014 (24-26 September, 2014, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany) will be published by the International Journal of Innovation in Education.
Special issue published: "Swarm Intelligence in Power Engineering"
International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation 6(4) 2014
- Reactive power compensation in distribution networks using cuckoo search algorithm
- Bees swarm optimisation using multiple strategies for association rule mining
- Modified random localisation-based DE for static economic power dispatch with generator constraints
- Optimum communication infrastructure design for power grids synchronisation in smart grids
- Multi-phase search optimisation algorithm for constrained optimal power flow problem
- A novel optimal capacitor placement algorithm using Nelder-Mead PSO
Newly announced journal: International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation
The International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation proposes and fosters discussion on the mechanics of masonry structures, with emphasis on a variety of topics including theoretical investigations, numerical approaches and technical applications in new works, repair practice and built heritage preservation. This perspective acknowledges the complexity of the masonry research sector, bridging between theory and application, with a readership spanning across from academia to industry.
Special issue published: "Sustainability Approaches in Waste and Resources Management"
International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development 13(4) 2014
- Simulation computer to evaluate scenarios of solid waste - an approach using systems dynamics
- Evaluation of construction waste in Xanxerê: possibilities for a more sustainable end
- Solid waste management project in the building industry: analysing existing proposals
- Using biomass for power generation: case study of a timber industry Aripuanã-MT
- The economy of sustainable tourism
- Data mining techniques for water ecotoxicity classification for application on water resources management
- Barriers towards reducing domestic energy consumption - findings of a study among social housing tenants
23 September 2014
Call for papers: "Advances in Logistics and Operation Management"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Advanced Operations Management.
The mission of logistics and operations management is to produce the appropriate goods or services in the right quality and quantity, and to distribute them to the right place at the right time. Logistics and operations management is critical to the success of an engineering company and is often referred to today as the supply chain management process, which encompasses all operations from the extraction of raw material through to manufacture and to the recycling of products at the end of their lifespans.
This special issue aims at addressing these interesting research issues in the field of logistics and operation management.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Advanced Logistics and Transport (ICALT’2015), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 30 July, 2015
The mission of logistics and operations management is to produce the appropriate goods or services in the right quality and quantity, and to distribute them to the right place at the right time. Logistics and operations management is critical to the success of an engineering company and is often referred to today as the supply chain management process, which encompasses all operations from the extraction of raw material through to manufacture and to the recycling of products at the end of their lifespans.
This special issue aims at addressing these interesting research issues in the field of logistics and operation management.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Advanced Logistics and Transport (ICALT’2015), but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Global operations management, lean/agile operations
- Procurement and supply
- Service operations and performance
- Supply chain management development
- Product development
- Production and delivery synchronisation
- Facilities planning and management
- Performance management
- Lean and six sigma
- Modelling and simulation
- Quality control and management
- Strategic alliances
- Production and material flows
- Knowledge, service, demand and R&D management
- Scheduling, sequencing, vehicle routing
- Inventory management and co-ordination
- Multi-objective optimisation; TQM and six sigma practices
- Business process outsourcing
- Aggregate planning, ERP, JIT
- Performance measurement
- Cultural, environmental and implementation issues
- Logistics service performance, supply chain management
- Product planning, lot sizing, MPS, MRP
- Repetitive manufacturing and service operations
- Project and technology management, network management
- Comparison of operations management in different countries
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 30 July, 2015
Special issue published: "Exploring Socio-Economic Dimensions of Business Strategies: Interdisciplinary Approaches"
International Journal of Trade and Global Markets 7(3) 2014
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 2013 SIBR-Thammasat Conference on Interdisciplinary Business and Economic Research.
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 2013 SIBR-Thammasat Conference on Interdisciplinary Business and Economic Research.
- Consumer's brand preference over cyber brand and extension brand
- The effect of CSR disclosure to firm value with earning management as moderating variable: case study of non-financing firms listed at Indonesia Stock Exchange
- Impact of un-ethical IT behaviours to cloudy businesses
- Effect of obedience pressure, ethical concern and perception responsibility at creation budget slack by management accountant
- International television formats and national variations: the case of IDOL in Vietnam
- Tax avoidance behaviour towards the cost of debt
- Verifying China's exchange rate regime: it is a discretionary crawling peg to the US dollar!
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it
How do we perceive the jobs other people do? Are there “dirty” or morally tainted jobs and how do we reconcile the fact that many of the people doing such job provide an invaluable and often essential service regardless of our perceptions of the jobs as physically, socially or ethically tainted?
By definition a job might have what sociologists refer to as a “physical taint” if it involves waste products or death, occupations such as refuse collection, janitor, pest exterminator, butcher and abattoir worker, veterinary technician, mortuary worker, funeral director. It might be considered tainted if the person regularly comes into contact with noxious substance or dangerous situations, thus miners, soldiers, farm laborers, firefighters also do “dirty” jobs.
Social taint is used to label jobs in which the people doing the jobs come into regular contact with other people or groups that are themselves stigmatized in some way, so police detectives, criminal lawyers, social workers. Other jobs with social taint might include those jobs that require a level of servility in the relationship with the employer butler, maid, chauffeur, waiting staff, for example.
Finally, there are various ancient jobs that come with a perceived moral taint where the occupation is considered in some way “sinful” or dubious, sex workers, pornographers, casino managers, pawnbrokers and loan sharks might fall into this category. Occupations that involve deceptive, confrontational, intrusive or other actions that breach the norms of civility are also morally tainted and could include bailiffs and debt collectors, tabloid reporters, private investigators, spies and perhaps even tax collectors.
The whole concept of a given occupation being somehow tainted, or dirty, is a wholly artificial social construct, of course. Although the morality, or rather immorality, of certain ancient and modern occupations is deeply entrenched in our collective psyche and in some instances transcends cultural boundaries in our perception. It is very difficult to picture a culture throughout history where prostitution has not been stigmatized and gamblers and non-gamblers alike have never had positive views on bookmakers.
Nevertheless, Nikola Djurkovic of Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, and Darcy McCormack of the Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, both in Victoria, Australia and their colleague Charlotte Rayner of the University of Portsmouth, UK, have carried out an analysis of a wide range of occupations where the “tainted” aspects of the job represents only a small part of the job as a whole. They point out that such “variegated” jobs have not been widely studied by sociologists and business studies researchers, but a better understanding of how many different “tainted” jobs might be perceived in a more positive way – as providing useful and often essential services – could improve society’s approach to employment as a whole. Such studies as theirs open up discussion and provide a way to remove the stigma associated with many occupations and give those who carry out such “tainted” tasks a greater respect for the roles they play in society regardless of how their occupations might make the moral compass of some individuals twitch erratically.
Rayner, C., Djurkovic, N. and McCormack, D. (2014) ‘Who are you calling ‘dirty’? Actors’ and observers’ perceptions of dirty work and implications for taint management’, Int. J. Work Organisation and Emotion, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp.209–222.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1uBPr3q
By definition a job might have what sociologists refer to as a “physical taint” if it involves waste products or death, occupations such as refuse collection, janitor, pest exterminator, butcher and abattoir worker, veterinary technician, mortuary worker, funeral director. It might be considered tainted if the person regularly comes into contact with noxious substance or dangerous situations, thus miners, soldiers, farm laborers, firefighters also do “dirty” jobs.
Social taint is used to label jobs in which the people doing the jobs come into regular contact with other people or groups that are themselves stigmatized in some way, so police detectives, criminal lawyers, social workers. Other jobs with social taint might include those jobs that require a level of servility in the relationship with the employer butler, maid, chauffeur, waiting staff, for example.
Finally, there are various ancient jobs that come with a perceived moral taint where the occupation is considered in some way “sinful” or dubious, sex workers, pornographers, casino managers, pawnbrokers and loan sharks might fall into this category. Occupations that involve deceptive, confrontational, intrusive or other actions that breach the norms of civility are also morally tainted and could include bailiffs and debt collectors, tabloid reporters, private investigators, spies and perhaps even tax collectors.
The whole concept of a given occupation being somehow tainted, or dirty, is a wholly artificial social construct, of course. Although the morality, or rather immorality, of certain ancient and modern occupations is deeply entrenched in our collective psyche and in some instances transcends cultural boundaries in our perception. It is very difficult to picture a culture throughout history where prostitution has not been stigmatized and gamblers and non-gamblers alike have never had positive views on bookmakers.
Nevertheless, Nikola Djurkovic of Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, and Darcy McCormack of the Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, both in Victoria, Australia and their colleague Charlotte Rayner of the University of Portsmouth, UK, have carried out an analysis of a wide range of occupations where the “tainted” aspects of the job represents only a small part of the job as a whole. They point out that such “variegated” jobs have not been widely studied by sociologists and business studies researchers, but a better understanding of how many different “tainted” jobs might be perceived in a more positive way – as providing useful and often essential services – could improve society’s approach to employment as a whole. Such studies as theirs open up discussion and provide a way to remove the stigma associated with many occupations and give those who carry out such “tainted” tasks a greater respect for the roles they play in society regardless of how their occupations might make the moral compass of some individuals twitch erratically.
Rayner, C., Djurkovic, N. and McCormack, D. (2014) ‘Who are you calling ‘dirty’? Actors’ and observers’ perceptions of dirty work and implications for taint management’, Int. J. Work Organisation and Emotion, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp.209–222.
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1uBPr3q
Geo-ranking the Internet
From Latvia to North Korea – Internet resilience ranked
The Internet is a critical component of modern communication for billions of people and businesses. But, how resilient is it to sabotage, accidents and political abuse? Writing in the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations this month, researchers in Germany explain how geography is one of the most prominent factors in how well the Internet might cope with such issues particularly in terms of misuse for political ends. Specifically, in their research paper, Annika Baumann and Benjamin Fabian of the Institute of Information Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, describe a new metric for assessing resilience at a national level.
The internet is commonly defined as a global system of computer networks interconnected via the standard internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) with servers routing data through approximately 70 000 autonomous systems. Business and commercial users quickly become aware of problems at the individual site level when their favorite web destination is taken offline by a malicious denial of service (DoS) attack or other problem; this can be mission critical if the target is an email provider or cloud computing service. On the wider scale there have been issues of personal and private data, including usernames, passwords, and credit card details being released into the public domain unwittingly or more often than not by hackers. Additionally, whole regions can succumb to problems when there are problems with the Domain Name Systems (DNS) that convert a web address into the corresponding IP address as well as malware and net bots. Then there are the outages caused by natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, for instance.
The structure of the Internet, initially developed as a military tool and designed on a distributed network basis to avoid global problems, is yet to fail completely. One must assume that for the whole Internet to fail, there would have to be significant problems across the globe that would be shaking civilization at a much deeper level than even war. As such, it is on the local and national level of problems that Baumann and Fabian focus.
“We aim to develop a metric that measures the geographical internet resilience based on a country level,” the team reports. “This metric encompasses several geographic, technological, as well as control-based, indices, combining them into a single, rank-based score that estimates the internet resilience of a particular country compared to others.” The team adds, that, “Such a comparison could serve as an indicator for regions at risk, which could support international politics, internet businesses or freedom activists in improving internet resilience and censorship resistance by focusing their activities.”
The team pulls together nine factors it considers critical to internet resilience at the national level:
1 Absolute number of autonomous systems per country
2 Number of autonomous systems per a square kilometer per country
3 Ratio of the number of autonomous systems to the number of inhabitants per country
4 Number of autonomous systems in relation to the population density of a country
5 Absolute number of IP addresses per country
6 Ratio of the number of ASs per number of IP address per country
7 Number of IP addresses per capita per country
8 Risk score of becoming a target for cyber attacks
9 World press freedom index for that country
“A combination of these metrics will balance the geographical characteristics in such a way that only those countries will be on the top of the final lists which are superior in all areas,” the team asserts. The team has now used their resilience metric to rank various nations. The most resilient countries are in order of decreasing strength: Latvia, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Austria, New Zealand, Ukraine, Slovenia, USA, Sweden. At the bottom of their list are the following nations: Reunion, Turkmenistan, Cape Verde, Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Yemen, Senegal, North Korea.
Given economics, social, political and technical considerations it is, the teams suggest, not surprising that European nations fill the top spaces, while African nations and others with poorly developed economies rank very poorly for internet resilience. They suggest that an important question must now be answered by further research: What factors play the key role in the development of the network structure on a country level?
Baumann, A. and Fabian, B. (2013) `Towards measuring the geographic and political resilience of the internet´, Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.365-384.
Geo-ranking the Internet is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1r2YBIM
The Internet is a critical component of modern communication for billions of people and businesses. But, how resilient is it to sabotage, accidents and political abuse? Writing in the International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations this month, researchers in Germany explain how geography is one of the most prominent factors in how well the Internet might cope with such issues particularly in terms of misuse for political ends. Specifically, in their research paper, Annika Baumann and Benjamin Fabian of the Institute of Information Systems at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, describe a new metric for assessing resilience at a national level.
The internet is commonly defined as a global system of computer networks interconnected via the standard internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) with servers routing data through approximately 70 000 autonomous systems. Business and commercial users quickly become aware of problems at the individual site level when their favorite web destination is taken offline by a malicious denial of service (DoS) attack or other problem; this can be mission critical if the target is an email provider or cloud computing service. On the wider scale there have been issues of personal and private data, including usernames, passwords, and credit card details being released into the public domain unwittingly or more often than not by hackers. Additionally, whole regions can succumb to problems when there are problems with the Domain Name Systems (DNS) that convert a web address into the corresponding IP address as well as malware and net bots. Then there are the outages caused by natural disasters, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, for instance.
The structure of the Internet, initially developed as a military tool and designed on a distributed network basis to avoid global problems, is yet to fail completely. One must assume that for the whole Internet to fail, there would have to be significant problems across the globe that would be shaking civilization at a much deeper level than even war. As such, it is on the local and national level of problems that Baumann and Fabian focus.
“We aim to develop a metric that measures the geographical internet resilience based on a country level,” the team reports. “This metric encompasses several geographic, technological, as well as control-based, indices, combining them into a single, rank-based score that estimates the internet resilience of a particular country compared to others.” The team adds, that, “Such a comparison could serve as an indicator for regions at risk, which could support international politics, internet businesses or freedom activists in improving internet resilience and censorship resistance by focusing their activities.”
The team pulls together nine factors it considers critical to internet resilience at the national level:
1 Absolute number of autonomous systems per country
2 Number of autonomous systems per a square kilometer per country
3 Ratio of the number of autonomous systems to the number of inhabitants per country
4 Number of autonomous systems in relation to the population density of a country
5 Absolute number of IP addresses per country
6 Ratio of the number of ASs per number of IP address per country
7 Number of IP addresses per capita per country
8 Risk score of becoming a target for cyber attacks
9 World press freedom index for that country
“A combination of these metrics will balance the geographical characteristics in such a way that only those countries will be on the top of the final lists which are superior in all areas,” the team asserts. The team has now used their resilience metric to rank various nations. The most resilient countries are in order of decreasing strength: Latvia, Switzerland, Romania, Poland, Austria, New Zealand, Ukraine, Slovenia, USA, Sweden. At the bottom of their list are the following nations: Reunion, Turkmenistan, Cape Verde, Chad, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Guinea-Bissau, Eritrea, Yemen, Senegal, North Korea.
Given economics, social, political and technical considerations it is, the teams suggest, not surprising that European nations fill the top spaces, while African nations and others with poorly developed economies rank very poorly for internet resilience. They suggest that an important question must now be answered by further research: What factors play the key role in the development of the network structure on a country level?
Baumann, A. and Fabian, B. (2013) `Towards measuring the geographic and political resilience of the internet´, Int. J. Networking and Virtual Organisations, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp.365-384.
Geo-ranking the Internet is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1r2YBIM
22 September 2014
Special issue published: "User Interfaces and Interaction Models in Context Based Computing"
International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing 16(4) 2014
- A RESTFull interface for scalable agents based cloud services
- Internet of things: why we are not there yet
- Exploration of head gesture control for hearing instruments
- Dynamic safe regions for moving range queries in mobile navigation
- An overview of energy savings potentials through mobile forwarding proxy framework
- Smart care spaces: pervasive sensing technologies for at-home care
First issue: International Journal of Collaborative Intelligence (free sample issue available)
There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.
Special issue published: "What Makes a Product Development Process Lean?" (includes free Open Access article)
International Journal of Product Development 19(5/6) 2014
- Effects of product platform development: fostering lean product development and production (
Free full-text access)
- Efficient front-loading through knowledge integration
- A case study to evaluate lean product development practices in the global automotive industry
- Mechanisms for communication and knowledge sharing for set-based concurrent engineering
- Teaching set-based concurrent engineering to practitioners through gaming
- Lean engineering performance analysis
- Systematic waste elimination in lean product development using generic activities
- A3 reports for knowledge codification, transfer and creation in research and development organisations
Newly announced journal: International Journal of Healthcare Policy
The International Journal of Healthcare Policy serves as a forum for interdisciplinary discussion of leading issues in healthcare law, medicine and health policy. Emphasis is placed on issues such as legislative and regulatory environments, and plans and actions that are undertaken by organisations and agencies to achieve specific healthcare goals within society. This perspective is reflective of the broad range of efforts to advance the public's health.
Technological healthcare
Making light work of the workload for overworked healthcare workers
Modern hospitals are staffed by overworked and overstressed healthcare workers, according to a research paper published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology. As such, new technology must be implemented to reduce the number of treatment errors that arise because of this.
Uta Herter of the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany, suggests that circumstances conspire to lead to reduced efficiency and put the quality of patient care at risk in busy hospitals with a large number of patients and a limited number of trained staff to treat them. An information technology approach to improving hospital processes could help reduce the number of incorrect pharmaceutical prescriptions given, the cases of surgical operations performed on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient, loss of foreign bodies inside patients and other scenarios. The same technology might also address the apparently simpler problems of late or missed consultations or nursing attendance on a patient.
With appropriate and regular training, Herter suggests that the advantages and benefits of IT solutions in hospitals such as the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and healthcare management and dispensing software and electronic health records (EHR) can be made clear. This would lead to greater compliance with such improved systems among healthcare workers and auxiliary staff who may otherwise be reluctant to swap traditional approaches for technological methods.
Herter has reviewed the various technologies that are available to hospitals, including the well-known business intelligence software known as QlikView, which might can used in a healthcare environment.
“Innovations regarding new IT technologies need to be promoted; their transferability to the medical field must be proven,” explains Herter. “Only in this way is it possible to implement the implication of facilitation and support of the implementation of new and innovative IT-based concepts, like QlikView, RFID technology and EHRs, in hospitals, improve the healthcare services and thus contribute to the most important good for every individual – health.
Herter, U. (2014) ‘Medical treatment errors in hospitals: information technology-based concepts to limit their occurrence’, Int. J. Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp.317–340.
Technological healthcare is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1ocIIJL
Modern hospitals are staffed by overworked and overstressed healthcare workers, according to a research paper published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology. As such, new technology must be implemented to reduce the number of treatment errors that arise because of this.
Uta Herter of the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany, suggests that circumstances conspire to lead to reduced efficiency and put the quality of patient care at risk in busy hospitals with a large number of patients and a limited number of trained staff to treat them. An information technology approach to improving hospital processes could help reduce the number of incorrect pharmaceutical prescriptions given, the cases of surgical operations performed on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient, loss of foreign bodies inside patients and other scenarios. The same technology might also address the apparently simpler problems of late or missed consultations or nursing attendance on a patient.
With appropriate and regular training, Herter suggests that the advantages and benefits of IT solutions in hospitals such as the use of RFID (radio frequency identification) tags and healthcare management and dispensing software and electronic health records (EHR) can be made clear. This would lead to greater compliance with such improved systems among healthcare workers and auxiliary staff who may otherwise be reluctant to swap traditional approaches for technological methods.
Herter has reviewed the various technologies that are available to hospitals, including the well-known business intelligence software known as QlikView, which might can used in a healthcare environment.
“Innovations regarding new IT technologies need to be promoted; their transferability to the medical field must be proven,” explains Herter. “Only in this way is it possible to implement the implication of facilitation and support of the implementation of new and innovative IT-based concepts, like QlikView, RFID technology and EHRs, in hospitals, improve the healthcare services and thus contribute to the most important good for every individual – health.
Herter, U. (2014) ‘Medical treatment errors in hospitals: information technology-based concepts to limit their occurrence’, Int. J. Biomedical Engineering and Technology, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp.317–340.
Technological healthcare is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1ocIIJL
18 September 2014
Int. J. of Sustainable Aviation to publish expanded papers from ISSA-I
Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Symposium on Sustainable Aviation (31 May-3 June 2015, Istanbul, Turkey) will be published by the International Journal of Sustainable Aviation.
17 September 2014
Call for papers: "The Socio-Economics of Networks: Theory and Applications"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics.
Important Dates
We invite high-quality original research papers for this special issue. Both theoretical and applied papers dealing with networks in social sciences are welcome. Papers exploring the role of networks using statistical, econometric and computational techniques are highly encouraged. However, a number of speculative papers will also be considered.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Applied micro and macro econometrics with networks
- Economic policies within network environments
- Markets and networks
- Agent-based modelling within networks
- Monte Carlo simulation for networks
- Game theory with networks
- Network design, optimisation methods and estimation
- Socio-economic network dynamics
- Software development and implementation for network analysis
- Geographical network and computation
- Bayesian networks
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 24 November, 2014
Notification to authors: 20 January, 2015
Final versions due: 5 March, 2015
Notification to authors: 20 January, 2015
Final versions due: 5 March, 2015
Int. J. of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology to publish expanded papers from ICAMM 2015
Expanded versions of papers presented at the Indo-Brazil Bilateral International Conference on Advanced Materials and Manufacturing (27-28 March 2015, Cape Institute of Technology, Tamilnadu State, India) will be published by the International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology.
Special issue published: "Key Topics in Health Informatics"
International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology 15(4) 2014
- Technology solutions in chronic disease management: the role of 'Social Media'
- A new approach to design safe and reliable electrical stimulator
- Medical treatment errors in hospitals: information technology-based concepts to limit their occurrence
- Biomechanics of hip joint: a review
- Action fuzzy rule based classifier for analysis of dermatology databases
- Technological solutions in chronic disease management for monitoring diabetes
16 September 2014
Call for papers: "Experiential and Sensorial Marketing in Hospitality and Tourism"
For a special issue of the Int. J. of Digital Culture and Electronic Tourism.
“Kotler was the first to use and define the term “atmospherics” as the intentional control and structuring of environmental cues, several other researchers had manipulated elements in the environment” […] For Bitner (1990), atmospheric planning can make the difference between a business success or failure. […] Terms atmospherics, shelf space studies, environmental psychology, and servicescapes all have been used in the literature.” (Turley and Milliman, 2000)
Experiential and sensorial marketing concerns not only stores (the subject of several previous studies), but also can concern services, particularly in the case of hospitality and tourism. Services companies, especially in the hospitality and tourism sector, have to be aware of their experiential and sensorial strategy.
This special issue is aimed at researchers who wish to contribute to the growing – but still scant – literature on experiential and sensorial marketing in hospitality and tourism. It provides an excellent opportunity to publish relevant papers which focus on theoretical and applied research that will enhance our understanding of the subject.
Submitted papers can be conceptual, literature reviews or empirical, qualitative or quantitative studies.
References
Baker, J. Parasuraman A., Grewal, D. and Voss, G. (2002), "The influence of multiple store environment cues on perceived merchandise value and patronage intentions", Journal of Marketing, Vol.66, April, pp. 120 - 141.
Berry, L.L (1999), Discovering the soul of service, New York Free Press.
Bigné J.E, Mattila A.S., Andreu L. (2008), The impact of experiential consumption cognitions and emotions on behavioural intentions, Journal of Services Marketing, 22, 4, 303-315.
Bitner, M.J. (1990), "Evaluating Service Encounters: The effects of physical surroundings and employee responses", Journal of Marketing, Vol.54, April, pp.69-82.
Bitner, M.J. (1992), "Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees,Journal of Marketing, Vol.56, April, pp.57-71.
Booms, B.H. and Bitner, M.J. (1981), Marketing Strategies and Organization Structures for Service Firms, in Donelly J./George W.R. (Hrsg.), Marketing of Services, Chicago 1981.
Brunner-Sperdin A., Peters M., Strobi A. (2012), It is all about the emotional state: Managing tourists' experiences, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31, 1, 23-30.
Eileen, A. Wall and Leonard, L. Berry (2007), "The Combined Effects of the Physical Environment and Employee Behavior on Customer Perception of Restaurant Service Quality", Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, pp.48, 59.
Goodwin, C. and Gremler, D. (1996), "Friendship over the counter: how social aspects of service encounters influence consumer service loyalty", Advances in Service Marketing and Management, Vol.5, pp. 247-282
Grönroos, C. (1990), "Relationship Approach to Marketing in Service Contexts: The Marketing and Organizational Behavior Interface", Journal of Business Research, Vol.20, N°1, pp. 3-11.
Kotler, P. (1974), "Atmospherics as a marketing tool", Journal of Retailing, Vol.49, N°.4, pp.48-64.
Ladhari R. (2009), Service quality, emotional satisfaction and behavioural intentions: A study in the hotel industry, Managing Service Quality, 19, 3, 308-331.
Musriha. (2012), "Effect of servicescape and employee communication quality on customer loyalty of mandiri bank in Surabaya", Academic Research International, Vol.2, n°1, 229-239
Nguyen, N. and Leblanc, G. (2002), "Contact personnel, physical environment and the perceived corporate image of intangible services by new clients", International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol.13, N°1, pp.242-262.
Skandrani H., Ben Dahmane Mouelhi N. et Malek F. (2011), Effect of store atmospherics on employees' reactions, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 39, 1, 51 - 67.
Temessek A., Ben Dahmane Mouelhi N. (2013), Social and physical aspects of the service encouter : effects on trust and customer loyalty to the service provider, 6th Conference of the EuroMed Academy of Business Estoril, Lisbonne, Portugal, 23 - 24, Septembre.
Turley, L.W and Milliman, R.E. (2000),"Atmospherics effects on shopping behavior: a review of the experimental evidence", Journal of Business Research, Vol.49, pp. 193 - 211.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
“Kotler was the first to use and define the term “atmospherics” as the intentional control and structuring of environmental cues, several other researchers had manipulated elements in the environment” […] For Bitner (1990), atmospheric planning can make the difference between a business success or failure. […] Terms atmospherics, shelf space studies, environmental psychology, and servicescapes all have been used in the literature.” (Turley and Milliman, 2000)
Experiential and sensorial marketing concerns not only stores (the subject of several previous studies), but also can concern services, particularly in the case of hospitality and tourism. Services companies, especially in the hospitality and tourism sector, have to be aware of their experiential and sensorial strategy.
This special issue is aimed at researchers who wish to contribute to the growing – but still scant – literature on experiential and sensorial marketing in hospitality and tourism. It provides an excellent opportunity to publish relevant papers which focus on theoretical and applied research that will enhance our understanding of the subject.
Submitted papers can be conceptual, literature reviews or empirical, qualitative or quantitative studies.
References
Baker, J. Parasuraman A., Grewal, D. and Voss, G. (2002), "The influence of multiple store environment cues on perceived merchandise value and patronage intentions", Journal of Marketing, Vol.66, April, pp. 120 - 141.
Berry, L.L (1999), Discovering the soul of service, New York Free Press.
Bigné J.E, Mattila A.S., Andreu L. (2008), The impact of experiential consumption cognitions and emotions on behavioural intentions, Journal of Services Marketing, 22, 4, 303-315.
Bitner, M.J. (1990), "Evaluating Service Encounters: The effects of physical surroundings and employee responses", Journal of Marketing, Vol.54, April, pp.69-82.
Bitner, M.J. (1992), "Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees,Journal of Marketing, Vol.56, April, pp.57-71.
Booms, B.H. and Bitner, M.J. (1981), Marketing Strategies and Organization Structures for Service Firms, in Donelly J./George W.R. (Hrsg.), Marketing of Services, Chicago 1981.
Brunner-Sperdin A., Peters M., Strobi A. (2012), It is all about the emotional state: Managing tourists' experiences, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31, 1, 23-30.
Eileen, A. Wall and Leonard, L. Berry (2007), "The Combined Effects of the Physical Environment and Employee Behavior on Customer Perception of Restaurant Service Quality", Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, pp.48, 59.
Goodwin, C. and Gremler, D. (1996), "Friendship over the counter: how social aspects of service encounters influence consumer service loyalty", Advances in Service Marketing and Management, Vol.5, pp. 247-282
Grönroos, C. (1990), "Relationship Approach to Marketing in Service Contexts: The Marketing and Organizational Behavior Interface", Journal of Business Research, Vol.20, N°1, pp. 3-11.
Kotler, P. (1974), "Atmospherics as a marketing tool", Journal of Retailing, Vol.49, N°.4, pp.48-64.
Ladhari R. (2009), Service quality, emotional satisfaction and behavioural intentions: A study in the hotel industry, Managing Service Quality, 19, 3, 308-331.
Musriha. (2012), "Effect of servicescape and employee communication quality on customer loyalty of mandiri bank in Surabaya", Academic Research International, Vol.2, n°1, 229-239
Nguyen, N. and Leblanc, G. (2002), "Contact personnel, physical environment and the perceived corporate image of intangible services by new clients", International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol.13, N°1, pp.242-262.
Skandrani H., Ben Dahmane Mouelhi N. et Malek F. (2011), Effect of store atmospherics on employees' reactions, International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 39, 1, 51 - 67.
Temessek A., Ben Dahmane Mouelhi N. (2013), Social and physical aspects of the service encouter : effects on trust and customer loyalty to the service provider, 6th Conference of the EuroMed Academy of Business Estoril, Lisbonne, Portugal, 23 - 24, Septembre.
Turley, L.W and Milliman, R.E. (2000),"Atmospherics effects on shopping behavior: a review of the experimental evidence", Journal of Business Research, Vol.49, pp. 193 - 211.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Sensorial marketing in hospitality and tourism
- Experiential marketing in hospitality and tourism
- Environmental factors (design, architectural and social factors, etc.) in hospitality and tourism
- Ambient factors (music, odour, colours, etc.) in hospitality and tourism
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 30 July, 2015
Notification to authors: 30 September, 2015
Final versions due: 30 November, 2015
Submission of manuscripts: 30 July, 2015
Notification to authors: 30 September, 2015
Final versions due: 30 November, 2015
Emotion detector
Face recognition software measures various parameters in a mug shot, such as the distance between the person’s eyes, the height from lip to top of their nose and various other metrics and then compares it with photos of people in the database that have been tagged with a given name. Now, research published in the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics looks to take that one step further in recognizing the emotion portrayed by a face.
Dev Drume Agrawal, Shiv Ram Dubey and Anand Singh Jalal of the GLA University, in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India, suggest that the recognition of emotions by future artificial intelligences, in the form of computers or robots, will provide a missing link between the human and machine environments without which appropriate interactions between the two domains may never be entirely successful. The team has taken a three-phase approach to a software emotion detector. The first involves developing an algorithm that can precisely identify and define the features of the human face. The second then analyses the particular positions and shapes of the face. The third phase then associates those features with a person’s emotional state to decide whether they are happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful or disgusted. Preliminary tests gave a 94 percent success rate the team reports.
While Mehrabian’s 1960s notion that half of human communication is non-verbal has been debunked several times, there remains the fact that facial expressions and body language do convey a lot of information about a person’s thoughts and emotional state. Such information, if it could be interpreted by a computer would allow us to enhance human-computer interactions. Imagine, whimsically, that one’s laptop or smart phone could change the background image or shuffle your music based on whether you had a happy or sad expression. In a more serious setting, the recognition of anger, pent-up aggression, or fear at airport screening might allow suspicious individuals to be channeled sooner rather than later to the security office while those with nothing to hide would be funneled through to the usual physical checks with less delay.
“Our experimental results suggest that the introduced method is able to support more accurate classification of emotion classification from images of faces,” the team says. They add that additional refinements to the classification algorithms will improve their emotion detector still further.
Agrawal, D.D., Dubey, S.R. and Jalal, A.S. (2014) ‘Emotion recognition from facial expressions based on multi-level classification’, Int. J. Computational Vision and Robotics, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.365–389.
Emotion detector is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1t74RPa
Dev Drume Agrawal, Shiv Ram Dubey and Anand Singh Jalal of the GLA University, in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India, suggest that the recognition of emotions by future artificial intelligences, in the form of computers or robots, will provide a missing link between the human and machine environments without which appropriate interactions between the two domains may never be entirely successful. The team has taken a three-phase approach to a software emotion detector. The first involves developing an algorithm that can precisely identify and define the features of the human face. The second then analyses the particular positions and shapes of the face. The third phase then associates those features with a person’s emotional state to decide whether they are happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful or disgusted. Preliminary tests gave a 94 percent success rate the team reports.
While Mehrabian’s 1960s notion that half of human communication is non-verbal has been debunked several times, there remains the fact that facial expressions and body language do convey a lot of information about a person’s thoughts and emotional state. Such information, if it could be interpreted by a computer would allow us to enhance human-computer interactions. Imagine, whimsically, that one’s laptop or smart phone could change the background image or shuffle your music based on whether you had a happy or sad expression. In a more serious setting, the recognition of anger, pent-up aggression, or fear at airport screening might allow suspicious individuals to be channeled sooner rather than later to the security office while those with nothing to hide would be funneled through to the usual physical checks with less delay.
“Our experimental results suggest that the introduced method is able to support more accurate classification of emotion classification from images of faces,” the team says. They add that additional refinements to the classification algorithms will improve their emotion detector still further.
Agrawal, D.D., Dubey, S.R. and Jalal, A.S. (2014) ‘Emotion recognition from facial expressions based on multi-level classification’, Int. J. Computational Vision and Robotics, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.365–389.
Emotion detector is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1t74RPa
Special issue published: "The Role and Changes in National Commercial Diplomacy in the Time of the (Current) Economic Crisis"
International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy 2(3) 2014
- Croatian commercial diplomacy - stepping stone toward economic recovery?
- Economic diplomacy of Slovakia in times of current economic crisis
- Commercial diplomacy as an instrument for enhancing economic recovery: the case of Serbia
- Economic diplomacy during the economic crisis
- The new Croatian commercial diplomacy
- Slovak economic diplomacy - practitioner's perspective in the times of change
- Innovation of international business support: a research agenda for commercial diplomacy
Call for papers: "Global Logistics in Emerging Economies"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics.
The rise of emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is changing the structure of global trade, and therefore reinterprets the view of global supply chain management. As regional economic powerhouses with large populations, resource bases and markets, they play important roles in every segment of the global supply chain. In their efforts to ensure sustainable development, not only emerging markets, but also developed countries are facing big challenges that come from fundamental problems associated with their traditional economic and political systems.
Global logistics, aiming to integrate international production and distribution, is one of the factors that ties the different components of global supply chains together. Global corporations need to efficiently evaluate, configure and operate global logistics systems to remain competitive. It is therefore time for shipping and transport management researchers to consider emerging issues related to global logistics.
This special issue aims to collect recent original contributions related to the opportunities and challenges of global logistics, with a special emphasis on emerging economies. It will include revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 2015 Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) Conference, but we also strongly encourage researchers who are unable to participate in the conference to submit papers for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 31 May, 2015
The rise of emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa is changing the structure of global trade, and therefore reinterprets the view of global supply chain management. As regional economic powerhouses with large populations, resource bases and markets, they play important roles in every segment of the global supply chain. In their efforts to ensure sustainable development, not only emerging markets, but also developed countries are facing big challenges that come from fundamental problems associated with their traditional economic and political systems.
Global logistics, aiming to integrate international production and distribution, is one of the factors that ties the different components of global supply chains together. Global corporations need to efficiently evaluate, configure and operate global logistics systems to remain competitive. It is therefore time for shipping and transport management researchers to consider emerging issues related to global logistics.
This special issue aims to collect recent original contributions related to the opportunities and challenges of global logistics, with a special emphasis on emerging economies. It will include revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 2015 Global Supply Chain Management (GSCM) Conference, but we also strongly encourage researchers who are unable to participate in the conference to submit papers for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Internet-based global trade and logistics
- E-commerce-based global trade and logistics
- Green logistics and social responsibility
- Risk management of global logistics
- Resilience in global logistics
- Intermodal coordination in global logistics networks
- Market analysis for global logistics in emerging economies
- Global shipping and transport logistics networks
- Managing intermodal transport
- Strategic alliances and relationship management in global logistics
- Global logistics negotiations and contracts
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 31 May, 2015
15 September 2014
Special issue published: "Precision in Manufacturing"
International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems 7(2/3) 2014
- A methodology for process parameter selection in five axis laser cladding
- Workpiece surface integrity and productivity when cutting CFRP and GFRP composites using a CO2 laser
- Tolerance chart-based methodology for integrated CNC machining and in-line inspection planning
- Procedure for geometrical errors identification in machine tool
- Influence of dry plunge-milling conditions on surface integrity of magnesium alloys
- Fan/cone beam CT: visualisation and applications for non-clinical X-ray imaging
- Analytical forces model for micro-end-milling processes
- Mechanical design of an indexed metrology platform for verification of portable coordinate measuring machines
- Response delay and predictive estimation of specifications for assemblies
Special issue published: "Recent Studies on the Reliability of Microelectronic Materials and Devices"
International Journal of Materials and Structural Integrity 8(1/2/3) 2014
- Thermal fatigue life prediction of solder joints of plastic ball grid array packages
- Measurement of the local residual stress between fine metallic bumps in 3D flip chip structures
- Reflow of lead-free solder by microwave heating
- Microstructure and drop/shock reliability of Sn-Ag-Cu-In solder joints
- Evaluation of lead-free solder reliability under vibration at elevated temperature
- Shear strengths of CBGA/PBGA solder ball joints with lead-free solder pastes
- Effects of Pd layer thickness on mechanical properties and microstructures of Sn-3.0 Ag-0.5 Cu solder joints
- Effect of reflow temperature on the mechanical drop performance of Sn-Bi solder joint
- Multiple Al micro materials fabrication by utilising electromigration
- Interfacial heat transfer properties of the typical interconnection structures in IC packaging: a multiscale study
- Thermo-mechanical coupled modelling on fixed joint interface in machine tools
- Vibration analysis for roll system of KOCKS mill based on ADAMS
- Study on crosstalk fault model and testing for SoC inter-core interconnects
- Mechanical property of a graphene/silicon interface: an atomistic simulation research
- A research review on deep cryogenic treatment of steels
- A two-stage approach optimising PCB assembly on the sequential pick-and-place machine by a score-based slot selection method and a swarm intelligence approach
Call for papers: "Innovative Themes and Approaches in Vocational Education and Training (VET)"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Innovation in Education.
The discipline of vocational education and training (VET) is confronted with new challenges and approaches that can be seen in the international discussion of researchers and education practitioners.
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 31 December, 2014
Notification to authors: 28 February, 2015
Final versions due: 31 April, 2015
The discipline of vocational education and training (VET) is confronted with new challenges and approaches that can be seen in the international discussion of researchers and education practitioners.
The following headlines represent just a small sample of subthemes that can be identified:
- Problems with diversity in VET (especially dealing with students with learning needs, language problems or migration background)
- Inclusion in VET
- Tools for assessment and modelling of formal and informal competences in a life-long learning context (including new technology for assessment)
- Professionalism of teachers, trainers and pedagogical practitioners for new challenges
- Transfer problems between different institutions in VET (including transfer between academic and vocational education)
- Competence-based curricula and learning arrangements
- The German VET system within the European context as a role model?
- University didactic as a rising field for researchers in VET
This special issue will explore these complex and multi-faceted challenges. In particular, it is keen to examine various advantages, tensions, dilemmas and contradictions experienced by educators, teachers and students through innovative approaches. Authors are welcome to submit original papers on theoretical development and empirical research, case studies, discussion papers, conference reports, book reviews, commentaries and news dealing with innovative themes and approaches in all working fields of VET.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the Sektionstagung Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik in der DGfE 2014, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the Sektionstagung Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik in der DGfE 2014, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Strategies of innovation in VET (classroom, school, system levels)
- Case studies of innovation in VET (classroom, school, system levels)
- Theoretical understanding of the nature of innovation in VET
- The dilemmas and tensions of innovation in VET
- Policies associated with innovation in VET
- Leadership issues in achieving innovation in VET
- Innovative training and development issues in VET
- Technologies, techniques and tools for innovation in VET
- Emergence of new forms of education in VET
- Diversity in the current and future education landscape of VET
- The relationship between innovation in VET and other disciplines such as knowledge management, organisational learning and human resource management
- Innovation in VET through school/university-industry collaboration
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 31 December, 2014
Notification to authors: 28 February, 2015
Final versions due: 31 April, 2015
Special issue published: "Information Assurance and System Security in Cloud Computing"
International Journal of Cloud Computing 3(3) 2014
- Cloud computing: a review of security issues and solutions
- Privacy-preserving virtual machine checkpointing mechanism
- Geolocation-aware resource management in cloud computing-based cognitive radio networks
- Secure process migration in cloud for load balancing and energy efficiency
12 September 2014
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 17th GABER International Conference Dubai
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 17th International Conference of the Global Academy of Business & Economic Research (29-30 December 2015, Sheraton DIERA Dubai Hotel, Dubai) will be published by the following journals:
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from wine and agrifood management conference
Expanded versions of papers presented at the Contemporary Trends and Perspectives in Wine and Agrifood Management conference (16-17 January 2015, Lecce, Italy) will be published by the following journals:
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from ICECS 2015
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 2nd International Conference on Electronics & Communication Systems (26-27 February 2015, Karpagam College of Engineering, Tamil Nadu, India) will be published by the following journals:
Cutting the cloud computing carbon cost
Cloud computing involves displacing data storage and processing from the user’s computer on to remote servers. It can provide users with more storage space and computing power that they can then access from anywhere in the world rather than having to connect to a single desktop or other computer with its finite resources. However, some observers have raised concerns about the increased energy demands of sustaining distributed servers and having them up and running continuously, where an individual user’s laptop might be shut down when it is not in use or the resources utilization of the server is less than the lower threshold, for instance.
Now, writing in the International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence, researchers at the University of Oran in Algeria, have investigated how cloud computing systems might be optimized for energy use and to reduce their carbon footprint. Jouhra Dad and Ghalem Belalem in the Department of Computer Science at Oran explain how they have developed an algorithm to control the virtual machines running on computers in a cloud environment so that energy use of the core central processing units (CPUs) and memory capacity (RAM as opposed to hard disk storage space) can be reduced as far as possible with affecting performance overall.
“Energy consumption is considered as a major problem in computing systems containing servers, data centers and clouds,” the team says. “These resources continue to consume a large amount of energy and produce carbon dioxide emissions.” The team’s study reveals that virtualization of processes and live migration of VMs within the cloud service using their algorithm of selection and allocation allows different tools and applications to be consolidated to use less CPU and memory capacity. This in turn reduces energy demands on the servers by allowing several virtual machines to be run on a single remote compute accessible to the users without compromising performance.
To optimize the energy consumption of data centers, the proposed approach is divided into two phases. The first one is the selection of VMs using the modified minimization of migration algorithm which takes in consideration the CPU utilization and RAM capacity. The solution is based on upper and lower physical resources thresholds. The second phase is the allocation of the migrated VMs which uses the modified multidimensional knapsack problem. This algorithm must pack in as many items as possible into a bag without exceeding a weight limit and without being forced to leave behind essential items when travelling.
Dad, J. and Belalem, G. (2014) ‘Energy optimisation in cloud computing’, Int. J. Information Technology, Communications and Convergence, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.1–12.
Cutting the cloud computing carbon cost is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1lZ9iun
Now, writing in the International Journal of Information Technology, Communications and Convergence, researchers at the University of Oran in Algeria, have investigated how cloud computing systems might be optimized for energy use and to reduce their carbon footprint. Jouhra Dad and Ghalem Belalem in the Department of Computer Science at Oran explain how they have developed an algorithm to control the virtual machines running on computers in a cloud environment so that energy use of the core central processing units (CPUs) and memory capacity (RAM as opposed to hard disk storage space) can be reduced as far as possible with affecting performance overall.
“Energy consumption is considered as a major problem in computing systems containing servers, data centers and clouds,” the team says. “These resources continue to consume a large amount of energy and produce carbon dioxide emissions.” The team’s study reveals that virtualization of processes and live migration of VMs within the cloud service using their algorithm of selection and allocation allows different tools and applications to be consolidated to use less CPU and memory capacity. This in turn reduces energy demands on the servers by allowing several virtual machines to be run on a single remote compute accessible to the users without compromising performance.
To optimize the energy consumption of data centers, the proposed approach is divided into two phases. The first one is the selection of VMs using the modified minimization of migration algorithm which takes in consideration the CPU utilization and RAM capacity. The solution is based on upper and lower physical resources thresholds. The second phase is the allocation of the migrated VMs which uses the modified multidimensional knapsack problem. This algorithm must pack in as many items as possible into a bag without exceeding a weight limit and without being forced to leave behind essential items when travelling.
Dad, J. and Belalem, G. (2014) ‘Energy optimisation in cloud computing’, Int. J. Information Technology, Communications and Convergence, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp.1–12.
Cutting the cloud computing carbon cost is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1lZ9iun
11 September 2014
Call for papers: "Privacy, Security and Trust in Mobile and Wireless Systems"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Security and Networks.
Recently, mobile wireless devices such as wireless sensors, smart tags, smart pads, tablets, PDAs and smart phones, have become pervasive and have attracted significant interest from academia, industry and standard organisations. With the latest cloud computing technology, these mobile wireless devices will play an increasingly important role in computing and communication.
When these devices become pervasive, security, privacy and trust become critical components for the acceptance of applications built for and based on them. Moreover, several favourable characteristics of mobile and wireless devices, including portability, mobility and sensitivity, further increase the challenges of security and privacy in these systems.
Despite recent advances, many research issues still require addressing in the design of secure, privacy-preserving, trusted architectures, protocols, algorithms, services and applications on mobile and wireless systems. For example, when mobile devices have more storage space, high bandwidth and super sensing capability, more sensitive information will be stored in the devices. Additionally, operating systems running on these devices are not as powerful and reliable as those on traditional computers. Both OS layer and higher-level layer protocols are expected to enhance the security and preserve the privacy of these devices.
With more mobile devices being used in social networks and traditional web-based systems, novel trust models are essential for new applications. New cryptographic algorithms, key distribution schemes and access control policies are also encouraged by considering the special characteristics of mobile and wireless devices. Other issues such as malware, cyber threat, intrusion detection, attack modelling, security analysis, identity management and anonymity techniques also need to be revisited in mobile and wireless systems.
This special issue aims to bring together works of technologists and researchers who share an interest in the area of security, privacy and trust in mobile and wireless systems, and to explore new venues of collaboration. Its main purpose is to promote discussions about research and relevant activities in the models and designs of secure, privacy-preserving, trusted architectures, protocols, algorithms, services and applications, as well as to analyse cyber threat in mobile and wireless systems. It also aims at increasing the synergy between academic and industry professionals working in this area. We seek papers that address theoretical, experimental research, and works-in-progress for security-, privacy- and trust-related issues in the context of mobile and wireless systems.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the MobiPST 2014 workshop held in conjunction with IEEE ICCCN 2014, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following in relation to security, privacy and trust:
Important Dates
Manuscript due: 10 November, 2014
Acceptance/rejection notification: 30 January, 2015
Final manuscript due: 28 March, 2015
Recently, mobile wireless devices such as wireless sensors, smart tags, smart pads, tablets, PDAs and smart phones, have become pervasive and have attracted significant interest from academia, industry and standard organisations. With the latest cloud computing technology, these mobile wireless devices will play an increasingly important role in computing and communication.
When these devices become pervasive, security, privacy and trust become critical components for the acceptance of applications built for and based on them. Moreover, several favourable characteristics of mobile and wireless devices, including portability, mobility and sensitivity, further increase the challenges of security and privacy in these systems.
Despite recent advances, many research issues still require addressing in the design of secure, privacy-preserving, trusted architectures, protocols, algorithms, services and applications on mobile and wireless systems. For example, when mobile devices have more storage space, high bandwidth and super sensing capability, more sensitive information will be stored in the devices. Additionally, operating systems running on these devices are not as powerful and reliable as those on traditional computers. Both OS layer and higher-level layer protocols are expected to enhance the security and preserve the privacy of these devices.
With more mobile devices being used in social networks and traditional web-based systems, novel trust models are essential for new applications. New cryptographic algorithms, key distribution schemes and access control policies are also encouraged by considering the special characteristics of mobile and wireless devices. Other issues such as malware, cyber threat, intrusion detection, attack modelling, security analysis, identity management and anonymity techniques also need to be revisited in mobile and wireless systems.
This special issue aims to bring together works of technologists and researchers who share an interest in the area of security, privacy and trust in mobile and wireless systems, and to explore new venues of collaboration. Its main purpose is to promote discussions about research and relevant activities in the models and designs of secure, privacy-preserving, trusted architectures, protocols, algorithms, services and applications, as well as to analyse cyber threat in mobile and wireless systems. It also aims at increasing the synergy between academic and industry professionals working in this area. We seek papers that address theoretical, experimental research, and works-in-progress for security-, privacy- and trust-related issues in the context of mobile and wireless systems.
The issue will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the MobiPST 2014 workshop held in conjunction with IEEE ICCCN 2014, but we also strongly encourage researchers unable to participate in the conference to submit articles for this call.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following in relation to security, privacy and trust:
- Wireless local area networks
- Wireless sensor networks
- Wireless mesh networks
- Wireless ad-hoc networks
- Vehicular networks
- Body-area networks
- Cellular networks (3G, 4G, etc.)
- WiMAX Networks
- Machine-to-machine (M2M) networks
- Software-defined networks (SDN)
- Social networks
- Smart grid
- RFID-based systems
- Mobile cloud
- Cyber-physical systems (CPS)
- Internet of things
- Location-based service systems
- Mobile healthcare systems
- Smart building systems
- Big data
Manuscript due: 10 November, 2014
Acceptance/rejection notification: 30 January, 2015
Final manuscript due: 28 March, 2015
Call for papers: "Application of Metaheuristics in the Field of Mechanical Engineering"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Metaheuristics.
This special issue aims to collect high-quality research articles with a solid background in both theoretical and practical aspects of developing and applying state-of-the-art heuristics/metaheuristics to the diverse set of problems in mechanical engineering. Today, computation costs have drastically reduced and a fast pace of development is witnessed in the field of heuristics/metaheuristics, which have come to rescue industries in terms of finding realistic solutions and reducing processing times significantly.
The challenges posed by industrial competitiveness, customer-driven markets, global economies and rapid development in product and process technology could certainly be resolved through the application of artificial intelligence and soft computing. This issue is a step towards integrating computer science, information technology and mechanical engineering to harness the unprecedented benefits of heuristics/metaheuristics.
Topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Application of heuristics/metaheuristics to the following:
- Manufacturing systems
- Manufacturing and machining parameter optimisation
- Production planning and control
- Engineering design
- Supply chain management
- Quality and reliability
- Thermal engineering
- CAD/CAM and robotics
- Multiple objective optimisations through metaheuristics
- Hybridisation of metaheuristics with classical techniques to solve mechanical engineering problems
- Heuristics (ant colony optimisation, artificial immune systems, genetic algorithms, particle swarm intelligence, simulated annealing, tabu search, etc.)
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 31 March, 2015
Notification to authors: 30 June, 2015
Final versions due: 31 August, 2015
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 16th GABER International Conference New York
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 16th International Conference of the Global Academy of Business & Economic Research (7-8 May 2015, Sheraton LaGuardia East Hotel, New York, USA) will be published by the following journals:
10 September 2014
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 15th GABER International Conference Orlando
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 15th International Conference of the Global Academy of Business & Economic Research (5-6 March 2015, Sheraton, Lake Buena Vista, Orlando, Florida, USA) will be published by the following journals:
Inderscience is media partner for Port Finance International Asia - Singapore 2014
Inderscience is a media partner for Port Finance International Asia - Singapore 2014 (8-9 December 2014, Suntec, Singapore).
The journals involved are:
The journals involved are:
- International Journal of Ocean Systems Management
- International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics
Call for papers: "Management and Complexity"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Business and Globalisation.
More and more managers find that organisational reality develops independently of their efforts. More planning and control doesn’t seem to be the answer to this. Since the beginning of this millennium a stream of thinking about this question has emerged (as yet in small academic circles), in which the findings of complexity sciences are used as an analogy for looking at organisations: the so-called ‘complex responsive processes perspective’.
From this perspective, organisations are not seen as systems but as ongoing local interactions between people, leading to global patterns without any plan or blueprint. The main question for managers becomes then not ‘What can I do make the organisation become what I want it to become?’ but ‘What am I doing and experiencing while this organisation is becoming what it becomes?’.
This special issue invites submissions from authors who have undergone this (more or less radical) change in their thinking and who want to share their experiences on a practical as well as theoretical level.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- What theory of action is implied by the complexity perspective on organisations?
- How can the role of a business consultant be reframed from a complexity perspective?
- The important role of writing in organisations
- Learning to become a manager while becoming a manager
- How can academic research in organisations be performed when there is no outside stance?
- What are the methodological implications of a complexity perspective on organisations?
- How unplanned change emerges while implementing a multi-project management system
Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 1 February, 2015
Notification to authors: 1 April, 2015
Final versions due: 1 June, 2015
Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 14th GABER International Conference India
Expanded versions of papers presented at the 14th International Conference of the Global Academy of Business & Economic Research (20-22 December 2014, Nagarjuna Nagar, Andhra Pradesh, India) will be published by the following journals:
9 September 2014
An evolutionary approach to epidemics
An evolutionary analysis of public health data during a major disease outbreak, such as bird flu, E coli contamination of food or the current outbreak of Ebola virus could help the emergency services plan their response and contain the disease more effectively. Details are reported in the International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications.
Dehai Liu of the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, in Dalian, Liaoning, China, and colleagues have used evolutionary game theory to examine the data associated with a major public health event – the emergence of a new pandemic virus. The team explains that the characteristics of disease outbreaks in the modern world have shifted since the advent of high-speed air travel. Moreover, increased population density and changes in economics have meant that the progress of an epidemic will not necessarily follow the course nor move at the speed of historical “plagues” even up to the global influenza outbreaks of the twentieth century.
Evolutionary game theory is a mathematical tool that allows researchers to simulate various scenarios and predict outcomes. It essentially applies Darwinian selection to the contests, strategies, and analytics that various “actors” in the scenario might be involved. The Chinese team has now applied this approach to understanding the spread of disease and demonstrated that there are four main outcomes one might see with a pandemic in today’s world all affected by the government response to the outbreak, the provision of healthcare, the isolation of patients and availability of treatments of the given disease.
Their approach tested on actual data from the 2009 outbreak of influenza A (H1N1) accords with a scenario involving active prevention and control, which led to limited casualties of the epidemic. The ongoing analysis of data associated with the current outbreak of Ebola might be exploited to ensure quarantine and control measures are put in place effectively to prevent widespread deaths from this lethal disease and likewise with future emergent pathogens.
Liu, D., Chen, J., Chai, R. and Wang, W. (2014) ‘Evolutionary analysis of important public health event-based multi-agent simulation model’, Int. J. Innovative Computing and Applications, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.33–43.
An evolutionary approach to epidemics is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1xE7nk2
Dehai Liu of the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, in Dalian, Liaoning, China, and colleagues have used evolutionary game theory to examine the data associated with a major public health event – the emergence of a new pandemic virus. The team explains that the characteristics of disease outbreaks in the modern world have shifted since the advent of high-speed air travel. Moreover, increased population density and changes in economics have meant that the progress of an epidemic will not necessarily follow the course nor move at the speed of historical “plagues” even up to the global influenza outbreaks of the twentieth century.
Evolutionary game theory is a mathematical tool that allows researchers to simulate various scenarios and predict outcomes. It essentially applies Darwinian selection to the contests, strategies, and analytics that various “actors” in the scenario might be involved. The Chinese team has now applied this approach to understanding the spread of disease and demonstrated that there are four main outcomes one might see with a pandemic in today’s world all affected by the government response to the outbreak, the provision of healthcare, the isolation of patients and availability of treatments of the given disease.
Their approach tested on actual data from the 2009 outbreak of influenza A (H1N1) accords with a scenario involving active prevention and control, which led to limited casualties of the epidemic. The ongoing analysis of data associated with the current outbreak of Ebola might be exploited to ensure quarantine and control measures are put in place effectively to prevent widespread deaths from this lethal disease and likewise with future emergent pathogens.
Liu, D., Chen, J., Chai, R. and Wang, W. (2014) ‘Evolutionary analysis of important public health event-based multi-agent simulation model’, Int. J. Innovative Computing and Applications, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.33–43.
An evolutionary approach to epidemics is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1xE7nk2
8 September 2014
Call for papers: "Automobile Powertrain Integration, Evaluation and Utilisation"
For a special issue of the International Journal of Powertrains.
Constant pressure to improve fuel economy with minimal added cost to the end user drives continuous research in all aspects of automobile powertrains. Cost-effective and efficient modern automotive powertrains are by definition highly integrated and optimised systems. Fuel economy gains can be achieved during every step of the vehicle design process, as well as with efficient utilisation in the field. A clear direction in powertrain design is to increase the number of control actuators to provide maximum operational flexibility, and hence yield fuel economy improvements when properly utilised.
Increased control authority produces significant challenges during the integration and calibration of powertrain systems, and drives research into advanced control and calibration techniques that maximise efficiency while minimising time to market for new products. Additionally, the wide adoption of vehicle guidance systems and other forms of connectivity provide an outstanding opportunity to maximise in-use fuel economy through intelligent route planning and execution.
This special issue will focus on, but is not limited to, author contributions to automobile-related research at Clemson University; we also strongly encourage researchers affiliated with other institutions to submit articles for this call. Papers will emphasise progress in modelling, simulation, control and experimental analysis to improve the general understanding of powertrain design, integration, testing and end-user utilisation.
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, automobile powertrain design, integration, control and evaluation techniques:
- Transient emissions or fuel economy
- Engine and transmission control and/or calibration strategies
- Component sizing and layout consideration
- Supervisory control of powertrains
- Drive-cycle analysis and synthesis
- Efficient route planning
- Energy storage
- Alternative fuel utilisation
Important Dates
Submission deadline: 8 April, 2015
Special issue published: "Innovation, Creativity, and Social Entrepreneurship: Ingredients for Business Growth"
International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management 18(5/6) 2014
- Innovation empathy: a framework for customer-oriented lean innovation
- Incubation as co-creation: case study of proactive technology business development
- World class sustainable product innovation: a case study
- A morphological analysis-based creativity approach to identify and develop ideas for BMI: a case study of a high-tech manufacturing company
- Intrapreneurial sensemaking: the case of a reenvisioned school of professional studies
- Creating successful business model: lessons for social entrepreneurship
- The role of skills acquisition centres in entrepreneurial growth and job creation in Nigeria
- Creative industries and their role in the creative value chain - a comparative study of SMEs in Canada and Thailand
- University-based entrepreneurship ecosystems: a global study of six educational institutions
7 keys to entrepreneurial success in universities
There are seven keys to creating a successful university-based entrepreneurship ecosystem (U-BEE), according to research published in the aptly named International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management.
Mark Rice, Michael Fetters and Patricia Greene of the School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, have undertaken case studies of six universities, three in the USA and one each in Asia, Europe and South America in order to elucidate what common factors have led to sustainable and successful entrepreneurial activities in those institutions.
The team selected the six establishments on the basis of the longevity, breadth, and maturity of their entrepreneurship programs as well as, to a lesser extent, geographical factors, size and governance. The case studies focused on US-based Babson College, The University of Texas at Austin and University of Southern California, and Ecole de Management de Lyon, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and the National University of Singapore. From their analysis seven keys to success emerged:
1 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires senior leadership vision, engagement and sponsorship. 2 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires the commitment of strong faculty/administrative leadership of all the components of the ecosystem. 3 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE depends on achieving critical mass. 4 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires the development of an appropriate, robust and effective organizational infrastructure. 5 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires commitment to continuing innovation in the elements of the entrepreneurship ecosystem. 6 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires the commitment of substantial financial resources. 7 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires sustained university commitment over a long period of time.
“Over an extended period of time (a minimum of 20 years), the six U-BEEs in this study developed a comprehensive portfolio of ecosystem elements: courses and curriculum, outreach programs and research initiatives; and they accumulated human and financial resources to support development, improvement and delivery of these elements,” the team reports. They add that, “U-BEEs provide a comprehensive portfolio of programs and services that can enable entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial students to thrive.”
Rice, M.P., Fetters, M.L. and Greene, P.G. (2014) ‘University-based entrepreneurship ecosystems: a global study of six educational institutions’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Vol. 18, Nos. 5/6, pp.481-501
7 keys to entrepreneurial success in universities is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/WDVVDY
Mark Rice, Michael Fetters and Patricia Greene of the School of Business at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, have undertaken case studies of six universities, three in the USA and one each in Asia, Europe and South America in order to elucidate what common factors have led to sustainable and successful entrepreneurial activities in those institutions.
The team selected the six establishments on the basis of the longevity, breadth, and maturity of their entrepreneurship programs as well as, to a lesser extent, geographical factors, size and governance. The case studies focused on US-based Babson College, The University of Texas at Austin and University of Southern California, and Ecole de Management de Lyon, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey and the National University of Singapore. From their analysis seven keys to success emerged:
1 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires senior leadership vision, engagement and sponsorship. 2 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires the commitment of strong faculty/administrative leadership of all the components of the ecosystem. 3 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE depends on achieving critical mass. 4 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires the development of an appropriate, robust and effective organizational infrastructure. 5 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires commitment to continuing innovation in the elements of the entrepreneurship ecosystem. 6 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires the commitment of substantial financial resources. 7 – The development of a successful and sustainable U-BEE requires sustained university commitment over a long period of time.
“Over an extended period of time (a minimum of 20 years), the six U-BEEs in this study developed a comprehensive portfolio of ecosystem elements: courses and curriculum, outreach programs and research initiatives; and they accumulated human and financial resources to support development, improvement and delivery of these elements,” the team reports. They add that, “U-BEEs provide a comprehensive portfolio of programs and services that can enable entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial students to thrive.”
Rice, M.P., Fetters, M.L. and Greene, P.G. (2014) ‘University-based entrepreneurship ecosystems: a global study of six educational institutions’, Int. J. Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, Vol. 18, Nos. 5/6, pp.481-501
7 keys to entrepreneurial success in universities is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
via Science Spot http://ift.tt/WDVVDY
6 September 2014
September Research Picks
Group cycling
Group recreational cycling is an increasingly popularly tourist activity where a guide escorts a number of cyclists on a site-seeing trip or other tour. The guide is usually responsible for the comfort and safety of the cyclists and so a position-tracking system that also incorporates a health-monitoring system for the riders would be beneficial in this regard. Researchers in Taiwan have now developed an event-based wireless navigation and healthcare system group recreational cycling using an ad hoc network using a multi-hop protocol for the transmission of data from individual cycle monitors to the guide. The data inputs can thus keep track of all the cyclists in the group as well as providing a warning signal for heart health problems that arise during the activity.
Yu, K-M., Lee, C-C., Hsieh, H-N., Chang, H-W., Zhou, J.Y., Yu, C-Y., Liu, J-Y. and Lee, M-G. (2014) ‘A wireless navigation and healthcare system for group recreational cycling’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp.81–92.
Two-tier diagnostics for neuromuscular disease
The early diagnosis of neuromuscular disease, such as ALS (amyotropic lateral sclerosis), muscular dystrophy, polymyositis, endocrine myopathy, metabolic myopathy, neuropathy, poliomyelitis and myasthenia gravis is important for patient wellbeing, treatment and to allow family to cope with an emerging disability in terms of domestic arrangements and finances. Electromyography (EMG) is commonly used in detection and diagnosis. However, researchers in India point out that there are limitations to the use of this technique alone and they have developed a two-level system that can make a positive diagnosis sooner rather than later. Their intelligent diagnostic model uses the EMG parameters on one level and on a second performs an analysis of muscular, cognitive and psychological factors.
Pandey, B. and Mishra, R.B. (2014) ‘An intelligent model for two level diagnoses of neuromuscular diseases’, Int. J. Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp.199–226.
Smoothing nursing workflow
A new approach to healthcare and nursing workflow has been developed by researchers in Saudi Arabia. Their approach utilizes a computerized provider order entry system to reduce medication errors at the frontline and so improve patient safety. Their survey of nurses using the system in a Saudi Arabian hospital demonstrates efficacy and improved efficiency of workflow and was perceived by the nurses as helping them give improved healthcare. Provision of suitable training improved the perception among nurses of such a computerized system, the team reports.
Alsweed, F., Alshaikh, A., Ahmed, A., Yunus, F. and Househ, M. (2014) ‘Impact of computerized provider order entry system on nursing workflow, patient safety, and medication errors: perspectives from the front line’, Int. J. Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.287–300
Learning with Facebook
The advent of online social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter represents something of a paradigm shift in how we communicate and potentially how we educate and learn, especially given that hundreds of millions of people use such services every day. Now, researchers from Hong Kong have tested the potential for personal, social, academic and career development for higher education students. Their findings suggest that exploiting such sites, and Facebook in particular, could benefit both students and their educators in different ways as a rapid and engaging means of communicating and sharing information. Moreover, given the development of Facebook video conferencing, this site might steal a march on others in the educational arena for remote learning and distributed discussion.
Wong, K., Kwan, R., Leung, K. and Wang, F.L. (2014) ‘Facebook’s potential for personal, social, academic and career development for higher education students’, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp.203–220.
September Research Picks is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
Group recreational cycling is an increasingly popularly tourist activity where a guide escorts a number of cyclists on a site-seeing trip or other tour. The guide is usually responsible for the comfort and safety of the cyclists and so a position-tracking system that also incorporates a health-monitoring system for the riders would be beneficial in this regard. Researchers in Taiwan have now developed an event-based wireless navigation and healthcare system group recreational cycling using an ad hoc network using a multi-hop protocol for the transmission of data from individual cycle monitors to the guide. The data inputs can thus keep track of all the cyclists in the group as well as providing a warning signal for heart health problems that arise during the activity.
Yu, K-M., Lee, C-C., Hsieh, H-N., Chang, H-W., Zhou, J.Y., Yu, C-Y., Liu, J-Y. and Lee, M-G. (2014) ‘A wireless navigation and healthcare system for group recreational cycling’, Int. J. Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp.81–92.
Two-tier diagnostics for neuromuscular disease
The early diagnosis of neuromuscular disease, such as ALS (amyotropic lateral sclerosis), muscular dystrophy, polymyositis, endocrine myopathy, metabolic myopathy, neuropathy, poliomyelitis and myasthenia gravis is important for patient wellbeing, treatment and to allow family to cope with an emerging disability in terms of domestic arrangements and finances. Electromyography (EMG) is commonly used in detection and diagnosis. However, researchers in India point out that there are limitations to the use of this technique alone and they have developed a two-level system that can make a positive diagnosis sooner rather than later. Their intelligent diagnostic model uses the EMG parameters on one level and on a second performs an analysis of muscular, cognitive and psychological factors.
Pandey, B. and Mishra, R.B. (2014) ‘An intelligent model for two level diagnoses of neuromuscular diseases’, Int. J. Knowledge Engineering and Soft Data Paradigms, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp.199–226.
Smoothing nursing workflow
A new approach to healthcare and nursing workflow has been developed by researchers in Saudi Arabia. Their approach utilizes a computerized provider order entry system to reduce medication errors at the frontline and so improve patient safety. Their survey of nurses using the system in a Saudi Arabian hospital demonstrates efficacy and improved efficiency of workflow and was perceived by the nurses as helping them give improved healthcare. Provision of suitable training improved the perception among nurses of such a computerized system, the team reports.
Alsweed, F., Alshaikh, A., Ahmed, A., Yunus, F. and Househ, M. (2014) ‘Impact of computerized provider order entry system on nursing workflow, patient safety, and medication errors: perspectives from the front line’, Int. J. Electronic Healthcare, Vol. 7, No. 4, pp.287–300
Learning with Facebook
The advent of online social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter represents something of a paradigm shift in how we communicate and potentially how we educate and learn, especially given that hundreds of millions of people use such services every day. Now, researchers from Hong Kong have tested the potential for personal, social, academic and career development for higher education students. Their findings suggest that exploiting such sites, and Facebook in particular, could benefit both students and their educators in different ways as a rapid and engaging means of communicating and sharing information. Moreover, given the development of Facebook video conferencing, this site might steal a march on others in the educational arena for remote learning and distributed discussion.
Wong, K., Kwan, R., Leung, K. and Wang, F.L. (2014) ‘Facebook’s potential for personal, social, academic and career development for higher education students’, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp.203–220.
September Research Picks is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot
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