Special issue published: "Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid: Key Challenges and the Way Ahead"

International Journal of Business and Emerging Markets 6(4) 2014

• Defining a base of the pyramid strategy
• Implications of transaction cost on the consumer choice heuristics: a grounded theory analysis at the Indian bottom of the pyramid
• An exploratory study of counterfeit purchases among rural bottom of pyramid customers in India
• Winning poor consumers in Africa: best-practices from mobile network operators
• Creative consumers in impoverished situations
• Prioritisation of barriers to rural markets: integrating fuzzy logic and AHP

Call for papers: "Advances in Shipping, Maritime Transport and Logistics"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics.

Maritime transport is composed of maritime shipping and port dimensions. Areas of focus include establishing a vision for the future of maritime transport; identifying the innovative technologies, business models and policies that will drive change; overcoming barriers to innovation; and establishing governance structures at the global and national levels to foster the innovations that our societies need for a more sustainable and better performing future transport system.

This special issue aims at addressing these interesting research issues in the field of shipping, port and maritime logistics and 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:

• Government policy on gender and entrepreneurship
• Decision support systems in shipping
• Freight and commodity market modelling
• Maritime business and economics
• Maritime logistics and global supply chains
• Maritime policy and management
• Maritime safety and environmental protection
• Modelling shipping freight markets
• Offshore supply management
• Port competition
• Port management and organisation
• Security in maritime transportation
• Shipping and trade liberalisation
• Shipping investments and finances
• Short sea shipping

Important Dates
Submission deadline: 30 July, 2015

Special issue published: "Optimisation, Benchmarking, and Economic Modelling"

International Journal of Process Management and Benchmarking 4(4) 2014

Includes expanded versions of papers presented at the 40th Anniversary Workshop of the Finnish Operational Research Society (FORS40).

• Municipal waste management optimisation using a firefly algorithm-driven simulation-optimisation approach
• Short-term financial forecasting using ANN adaptive predictors in cascade
• The PEAST algorithm - the key to optimising workforce management and professional sports league schedules
• Financial and environmental efficiency evaluation of the Greek banking sector
• On academic faculty evaluation systems - more than just simple benchmarking
• Leontief input-output model with trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and Gauss-Seidel algorithm
• On the dependence of the growth rate on the elasticity of substitution in a network 

Call for papers: "Gender Issues in Entrepreneurship"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

For many years the opinion has been that male activity predominates in entrepreneurship. However, over time, women are gradually becoming a very important part of the world of entrepreneurs. Today, women represent more than one third of all people involved in entrepreneurial activity. In recent years they have attracted increasing attention and separate study among researchers.

There are two main reasons why this “kind” of entrepreneur needs to be studied separately: a) female entrepreneurs have been recognised as an important untapped source of economic growth, considering that they create new jobs for themselves and others, and provide different solutions to management, organisation and business problems and obstacles as well as to the exploitation of business opportunities; b) female entrepreneurs have been largely neglected both in society in general and in the social sciences, in light of the fact that mainstream research, policies and programmes tend to be “men streamed”.

Even with all the obstacles faced when starting and managing their businesses, more and more women today are establishing their own businesses. Although there is a trend towards increase in female entrepreneurship, this increase could be even greater if we can eliminate various barriers of different natures, thus enabling the potential of women to come to full expression.

This special issue will focus on gender issues in entrepreneurship and/or small business perspectives. Both micro- and macro-level studies are invited, and both quantitative and qualitative approaches are welcome. We also encourage authors to come forward with emerging and groundbreaking topics to diversify and widen gender-based research.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Government policy on gender and entrepreneurship
• Gender and motivational factors
• Gender and innovation activities
• Gender and risk management
• Gender and financing sources of entrepreneurial ventures
• Gender and business performance
• Gender and entrepreneurial intentions
• Gender and entrepreneurship education
• Gender and economic growth
• Gendered understanding of corporate entrepreneurship
• Gendered understanding of social entrepreneurship
• Gender, ethics and social responsibility
• Institutional support on gender and entrepreneurship
• Gender and entrepreneurship in developing and transition countries
• Inspiring stories

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 15 June, 2015

Int. J. of Metaheuristics to publish expanded papers from 11th Metaheuristics International Conference

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 11th Metaheuristics International Conference (7-10 June, 2015, Agadir, Morocco) will be published by the International Journal of Metaheuristics.

More information on the event is available here.

Special issue published: "The Future of Islamic Banking"

International Journal of Financial Services Management 7(3/4) 2014

• Derivatives in Islamic finance: the need and mechanisms available
• Islamic banks and conventional banks within the recent global financial crisis: empirical evidence from the GCC region
• Technical efficiency of single versus dual banking sectors: a comparative analysis of India and Pakistan
• Market structure and concentration in Islamic and conventional banking
• Two-step Murabaha in stock exchange as an alternative to commodity Murabaha for liquidity management
• Analysis of challenges and opportunities in Islamic banking

Call for papers: "Islamic Entrepreneurship and Business"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Business and Globalisation.

Dana (2009; 2010) sparked interest in religion as an explanatory variable for entrepreneurship and business. Islam as a religion has given great attention to entrepreneurship and business. This can be seen in the verses of the Holy Qur’an and teachings of Mouhammed as a prophet.

Muslims as entrepreneurs have been progressively seeking to set up businesses that are consistent with Islamic principles of living, known as Shariah law, respectively establishing companies whose activities are halal (lawful), not haram (unlawful). Even though, according to Islamic principles, some business elements and activities – such as interest payments, alcohol, gambling, producing and processing pork, pornography and some types of entertainment – are not allowed, today there are a lot of Muslims that are successful entrepreneurs.

Islam as a religion invites all Muslims to be active and hardworking, which are characteristics of entrepreneurs and business owners. Islam encourages prosperity through the correct usage of the resources given by God. Entrepreneurship and business in Islam is usually based on these principles: entrepreneurship and business is an integral part of this religion; success is not only measured by the end result but also by the means of achieving them; Islam encourages people to venture into business; business activity is part of ibadah or “good deed”; guiding principles of entrepreneurship and business are based strictly on the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s Hadith (teachings) and ethics and social responsibility are based on the exemplary conduct of Muhammad (S.A.W.).

The aim of this special issue is to explore entrepreneurship and business from the perspective of Islamic principles, which are usually based on collaboration, teamwork, generosity and altruism. Both micro- and macro-level studies are invited. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches are also welcome. We also encourage writers to come forward with emerging and groundbreaking topics to diversify and widen research from the perspective of Islam.

References

Dana, L-P. (2009), Religion as an explanatory variable for entrepreneurship, The international journal of entrepreneurship and innovation, 10 (2),87-99

Dana, L-P., Ed. (2010), Entrepreneurship and religion, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Islam and innovation activities
• Islam and risk management
• Islam and financing sources of entrepreneurial ventures
• Islam and business performance
• Entrepreneurial intentions of muslims
• Islam and gender issues in entrepreneurship and business
• Islamic entrepreneurship and business education
• Islamic entrepreneurship and business and economic growth
• Islam and social entrepreneurship
• Islam, ethics and social responsibility
• Inspiring stories

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 15 April, 2015

Inderscience is media partner for ICI Meeting 2014

Inderscience is a media partner for the ICI Meeting 2014 (14-16 December 2014, Tel Aviv, Israel).

The journal involved is the International Journal of Electronic Healthcare.

Special issue published: "Comparing the Geological Disposal of Carbon Dioxide and Radioactive Waste"

International Journal of Global Energy Issues 37(1/2/3/4) 2014

• Comparative assessment of ultimate disposal facilities for carbon dioxide and radioactive waste: overview and synthesis
• Safety/risk assessment methodologies of deep geological facilities: results from a cross-national comparison
• Comparison of monitoring programmes of ultimate disposal facilities for radioactive waste and carbon dioxide
• Comparison of cost estimates of final disposal facilities for carbon dioxide and high-level radioactive waste
• Public perception of ultimate disposal facilities for radioactive waste and carbon dioxide: results from a cross-national comparison
• Comparing policy, regulations and institutions for geological disposal of radioactive waste and carbon dioxide

Call for papers: "Vehicle Active Safety for Intelligent Transportation Systems"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Vehicle Safety.

This special issue is dedicated to research pertaining to active vehicle safety in intelligent transportation systems. The emphasis is placed on the methods and techniques that enable vehicles to detect potential hazards, plan safe motions and drive with enhanced stability utilising the available sensing and communication capabilities provided by intelligent transportation systems.

 

Papers dealing with theoretical and experimental advances in this promising area are invited, particularly addressing current challenges. Emerging issues on the research frontier, industrial applications and state-of-the-art literature surveys are encouraged.

 

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Stability control of automotive vehicles
• Dynamics control of electronic and new energy vehicles
• Adaptive cruise control
• Autonomous driving and guidance
• Environment sensing, modelling and estimation
• Obstacle avoidance systems
• Vehicle motion planning with static/dynamic obstacles
• Vehicle coordination based on V2V communication

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 January, 2015

Notification to authors: 31 March, 2015

Final versions due: 31 May, 2015

New Editor for the International Journal of Aviation Management

Dr. Patti J. Clark has been appointed to take over the International Journal of Aviation Management. Dr. Clark is from the College of Aeronautics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide in the USA.

Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from IEEE Int. Conference on Computational Science and Engineering

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 17th IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering (19-21 December 2014, Chengdu, China) will be published by the following journals:

• International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering
• International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking

Special issue published: "Sustainable Development and Finance: Perspectives in Latin American"

Latin American Journal of Management for Sustainable Development 1(2/3) 2014

• The role of government social responsibility initiatives in creating national competitiveness: comparing the Latin American and European experiences
• Communicating sustainability under increasing public budget constraints
• A comparative analysis of the development of renewable energy in Brazil and Germany
• Aircraft selection with DEA's triple index: an approach for sustainability
• Bank efficiency in Brazil: the importance for economic sustainability
• Latin America sustainable building finance knowledge sharing
• The relationship between earnings quality and the probability of efficient investment decisions in Latin America

Int. J. of Information and Communication Technology to publish expanded papers from Int. Conference on Modeling, Optimization and Soft Computing

Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Modeling, Optimization and Soft Computing (30 November 2014, Bhubaneswar, India) will be published by the International Journal of Information and Communication Technology.

Call for papers: "Decision Making and Risk Management in Shipping"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Decision Sciences, Risk and Management.

Decision making and risk management is a research area well explored by academics and scholars from different disciplines. A significant part of the research focuses on operational and financial risks, as well as on risks at the strategic level. The importance of these specific research areas stems from the continuously increasing level of uncertainty in today’s operations for organisations. Globalisation has led to organisational structures, such as the extended enterprise model, where companies are dependent on supplier and customer relationships located globally. Such structures create significant challenges to daily operations, thus decisions at the strategic, tactical and operational levels related to investments and financial performance become critical.

The maritime industry in particular is associated with a number of risks related to decisions at the strategic, tactical and operational levels. Maritime organisations are faced with challenges related to investment and operational decisions that have an impact on the financial performance and viability of the company. Operational risks are associated with issues of routing, piracy, ports, suppliers, forecasting, etc., which are heavily dependent on the decision making process that takes place within the organisations.

This special issue aims to collect recent original contributions related to decision making and risk-related issues across the different sectors of the maritime industry, and to bring together both applied and theoretical research. It will carry revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 2015 International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME) 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:

• Risk management
• Investment strategies
• Human resource management in shipping
• Network design modelling
• Routing optimisation
• Safety and security
• Supply chain risk
• Piracy
• Oil and gas operational risks
• Geopolitical risks
• Financial risk assessment
• Cruise industry
• Market risks
• Shipyard operations

Important Dates
Submission deadline: 30 September, 2015

Special issue published: "Towards Knowledge-Rich Organisations"

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management 7(1) 2014

Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management 2012.

• Toward the definition of domain concepts and knowledge through the application of the user story mapping method
• Concurrent versioning principles for collaboration: towards PLM for hardware and software data management
• Dynamic customisation, validation and integration of product data models using semantic web tools
• Knowledge management and reuse in collaborative product development - a semantic relationship management-based approach
• Expressing formal rules within ontology-based models using SWRL: an application to the nuclear industry
• An extension of the core product model for the maturity management of the digital mock up: use of graph and knowledge to describe mechanical parts

New Editor for the International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering

Professor Michael Winikoff, from the University of Otago, New Zealand, has been appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering.

Special issue: "Solidarity"

International Journal of Business and Globalisation 13(4) 2014

• Role of knowledge management in promoting research and development in business organisations
• Internationalisation of film production: a historical review of movie making in Taiwan and Hong Kong
• Scaling the impact of social entrepreneurship from production and operations management perspective - a study of eight organisations in the health and education sector in India
• A study of interrelationship between individual level change factors with individual and organisational level benefits, in the context of firms from an emerging economy
• Enterprising behaviour in an integrating competence framework
• Approaches to microenterprise development: comparison of case studies from Maharashtra
• Types of governance, financial policy and the financial performance of micro-family-owned businesses in Canada
• Holistic support for micro-enterprise development: a case study of MITTRA

First issue: International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience (free sample issue available)

Supply chains and business operations are the backbone for development and growth of organisations and nations. Today's uncertain, turbulent environments expose supply chains and business operations to risks/disruptions that can significantly damage organisations and economies. The International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience presents the latest research/developments in supply chain/operations resilience strategies, highlighting theoretical research with practical applications. Besides being a theoretical platform for the academic community, IJSCOR helps practitioners bridge the gap between supply chain and operations resilience theory and its effective deployment and application.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

Special issue published: "Innovative Applications for the Cloud"

International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing 5(4) 2014

• Bookmarklet-triggered unified literature sharing services in the cloud
• Towards mashup optimisation with global constraints in the cloud
• A multilevel thrust filtration defending mechanism against DDoS attacks in cloud computing environment
• A LNS-based data placement strategy for data-intensive e-science applications
• Towards an adaptive QoS-driven monitoring of cloud SaaS

Regularly submitted papers

• Clock-controlled generators with large period output sequences
• Privacy-preserving attribute-based access control for grid computing

Call for papers: "Measuring Service Performance in the Tourism and Entertainment Industries"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Services Technology and Management.

The tourism and entertainment industries represent critical sectors in the global service industry. For instance, international tourist arrivals have shown a continuous growth – from 25 million in 1950 to 528 million in 1995 and 1.08 billion in 2013. In addition, the tourism industry today represents 1 in 11 jobs in the world. International tourism also accounts for 29% of the world’s exports of services (UNWTO, 2014). The entertainment industry also boasts key figures in global business. For instance, the global entertainment and media market generated a worldwide revenue of nearly $1.639 trillion in 2013 and is expected to reach more than $2.152 trillion in 2017 (Bond, 2013), combining product and service offerings. These staggering numbers emphasise the importance for both managers and academics to better understand how these two industries function. Of particular interest is the role played by service delivery in these contexts which share a high level of intangibles and emotional content (Klaassen et al., 1998).

Over the last two decades the entertainment and tourism services industry have undergone major transformations. Firms in these service industries have realised that, in order to stay competitive and survive, they have to pay serious attention to their performance measurement (both at the financial and customer level) as well as their return on investment. In fact, the measurement of service productivity represents a very challenging task as productivity increase in the service sector is often difficult to achieve due to the characteristics of services (i.e. intangibility, heterogeneity, simultaneity and perishability) (McLaughlin & Coffey, 1990). Therefore, this special issue has the objective of presenting research in the tourism and entertainment contexts with a special focus on service performance measurement and/or ROI.

The aim of the issue is to examine how the service performance/evaluation literature (economic/financial/satisfaction/loyalty) can be applied to the tourism and/or entertainment contexts and to better understand how these performance measurements may improve firms’ strategic management of service encounters.

Submissions are welcome on any analysis related to service performance and delivery both in the tourism and entertainment sectors. International submissions are encouraged as a global perspective on services is sought.

While research in all areas associated with service performance measurement in the context of tourism and entertainment is welcome, some examples of possible topics are listed below.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Loyalty measurement in services
• Service quality measurement
• Financial performance of services
• Economic analysis and performance
• Return on investment measurement in services
• Unique service characteristics
• Innovative methods to measure service performance
• Service delivery
• Cross-cultural and individual differences in service performance measurement

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 September, 2015

Special issue published: "Web-Based Communities and their Supportive Role"

International Journal of Web Based Communities 10(4) 2014

• The potential of online academic communities for teaching staff: findings from a pilot study of the SocialLearn platform
• The social web of things: enabling the interaction of people and things on social networks
• Development of a support group using a virtual space for cancer patients
• Risks and opportunities of integrating social networking sites in the Australian and Portuguese workplace/communities: an exploratory study
• The key is not to forget to be awesome: identifying narratives in an online community
• A research methodology for studying distributed communities of practice

Call for papers: "Innovation and Sports Marketing"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing.

The critical role played by innovation in business is ubiquitous through the extensive existing body of literature on the topic, which typically supports positive effects of product innovations on the performance of the firm (Calantone et al. 2010; Szymanski et al. 2007), revenue growth (De Faria and Mendonça 2011) or profitability (Cozza et al. 2012). However, differential effects of product and service innovations are often cited. If product innovations seem to have direct effects on the firm’s performance, service innovations could both directly and indirectly impact a company’s performance (Bettencourt and Brown 2013; Eggert et al, 2014).

Sports marketing is a field where innovations play a critical role both at the product and service levels. Whether sports companies develop a marketing strategy for a new product or professional sports franchises try to better connect with increasingly demanding fans, the sports business environment is becoming increasingly competitive and innovation-bounded. With the expansion of TV communication networks, sports franchise managers are fiercely competing for market shares or viewership, which translate into a greater need for product or service innovation. If the critical role played by innovations in sports marketing is widely accepted, academic research in this context is relatively limited. Therefore, this special issue has the objective of addressing this gap.

The aim of this issue is to examine how the innovation literature can be applied to the sports marketing context and to better understand how innovative initiatives may impact different stakeholders (broadcasters, consumers, sports properties, etc.).

Submissions are welcome on any analysis related to innovation both for the marketing of sports and marketing of innovations through sports. International submissions are encouraged as a global perspective on innovation in sports marketing is sought.

While all topics associated with innovation in sports marketing are welcome, issues which impact on business or individual consumers include the example topics listed below.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Technological innovation in sports broadcasts
• Product innovation
• Entertainment innovation
• Promotion of innovation through sports
• Impact of rule changes on sports business
• Branding of new sports/sporting events
• Innovators in sports
• Merchandising innovation
• Adoption of innovation in sports
• Cross-cultural differences in innovation adoption

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 September, 2015

Special issue published: "Advanced Logistics and Transport"

International Journal of Services and Operations Management 19(2) 2014

Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Advanced Logistics and Transport (ICALT) 2013.

• Towards a framework for ontology-based information retrieval services
• Sustainability consideration within product lifecycle management through maturity models analysis 
• Research on mobile communication systems in last-mile logistics to create an end-to-end information flow
• A novel multi-criteria decision making approach for personalisation system
• A multi-scenario model for empty container repositioning with uncertain demand
• Seafaring staff scheduling
• Reverse logistics barriers in Polish enterprises 
• AmIs sustainability: evaluation framework based on fuzzy logic

Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from 16th IEEE Int. Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Scientific and Engineering Computing

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 16th IEEE International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Scientific and Engineering Computing (PDSEC 2015) (in conjunction with IEEE IPDPS 2015, 29th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, 25 - 29 May 2015, Hyderabad, India) will be published by the following journals:

• International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering
• International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking

Special issue published: "Concurrent Engineering in Product and Service Solutions"

International Journal of Agile Systems and Management 7(3/4) 2014

Includes expanded versions of papers presented at the 20th ISPE International Conference on Concurrent Engineering.

• Design for sustainability of product-service systems
• New methodology to explore the role of visualisation in aircraft design tasks
• A physics-based distributed collaborative design process for military aerospace vehicle development and technology assessment
• Cellular neural network-based thermal modelling for real-time robotic path planning
• Virtualisation and automation of curved shell plates' manufacturing plan design process for knowledge elicitation
• Ensuring data quality beyond change management in virtual enterprise
• Automated engineer-to-order systems - a task-oriented approach to enable traceability of design rationale
• Understanding the influence of customers on product innovation
• A proposal of body movement-based interaction towards remote collaboration for concurrent engineering
• An evaluation of forecasting methods for aircraft non-routine maintenance material demand

Inderscience journals to publish expanded papers from Int. Workshop on High Performance Data Intensive Computing 2015

Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Workshop on High Performance Data Intensive Computing (HPDIC'2015) (in conjunction with IEEE IPDPS 2015, 29th IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium, 25 - 29 May 2015, Hyderabad, India) will be published by the following journals:

• International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering
• International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking

Special issue published: "Innovative Entrepreneurial Endeavours Embedded in Culture"

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 23(1/2) 2014

• Transnationals in an English-speaking world
• The capitalisation of guanxi and Chinese entrepreneurship: an ethnographic study of petty entrepreneurs in Guangzhou, China
• From business networks to philanthropic networks: Chinese entrepreneurs and the SEE project
• Migrant entrepreneurship, economic activity and export performance: mapping the Danish trends
• Entrepreneurial intention benefitting from education, training and competence: Egypt and Iran
• Education coupled with international networking: benefits for exporting in Middle East and North Africa
• Entrepreneurs' innovation benefitting from their education and training and from national policy and culture: a global study
• Innovation embedded in entrepreneurs' networks in private and public spheres: a global study focusing on China and Denmark
• Firms' collaboration networks benefitting innovation: embeddedness in high- and low-trust culture, Denmark and Iran
• Growth-expectations among women entrepreneurs: embedded in networks and culture in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and in Belgium and France
• Gendering of firms' collaboration networks and innovation: a global study with a focus on China, Japan and South Korea
• People's confidence in innovation: a component of the entrepreneurial mindset, embedded in gender and culture, affecting entrepreneurial intention
• Cognitive effects on entrepreneurial intentions: a comparison of Chinese émigrés and their descendants with non-émigré Chinese

Universe, older than it looks

When astronomers (Bond 2013) first dated the star HD 140283, which lies a mere 190 lightyears from Earth in the constellation of Libra, they were puzzled. This rare, star appeared to be rather ancient and was quickly nicknamed the Methuselah star. It is a metal-poor sub-giant with an apparent magnitude of 7.223. The star had been known for a century or so as a high-velocity star, but its presence in our solar neighborhood and its composition were at odds with theory. Moreover, HD140283 wasn’t just an oddity from at the dawn of the Universe, formed short time after the Big Bang. Rather, it seems to be some 14.46 billion years old…which makes it older than the Universe itself, currently estimated to be 13.817 billion years old (estimated from the cosmic microwave background radiation).

Of course, it was ultimately revealed that the error margins on estimating the age of the Methuselah star were in fact much wider than the original research suggested, the astronomers add a margin of 800 million years. The error bars could have it a lot younger, which makes it among the earliest known stellar objects in the Universe, but certainly within the boundaries of time since the Big Bang. But, what of that upper limit on the age? Is there a possibility that this star could somehow be as old as the original measurements suggested but still lie “this side of the Big Bang?

Writing in the International Journal of Exergy, Birol Kilkis of Baskent University, in Ankara, Turkey, thinks so. In 2004, he introduced the Radiating Universe Model (RUM). This intriguing concept suggests that exergy, the energy that is available to do work and the first focus of thermodynamics theory in the 19th Century, will flow from the Big Bang to what Kilkis refers to a thermal sink of infinite size at absolute zero (0 Kelvin) far, far into the future. Using RUM, Kilkis calculated the age of the universe to be 14.885 ± 0.040 billion years, which is marginally older, in the grand scheme of things, than the microwave background estimate, but easily accommodates the original age of HD 140283.

Interestingly, Kilkis’ RUM theory gives a new dynamic value to the Hubble constant and suggests that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating since 4.4 billion years after the Big Bang, which may well accommodate the notion of dark energy. Moreover, this accelerating rate of increase is itself slowing, which in turn may be accounted for by dark matter. Dark energy and dark matter are, as have been discussed widely, controversial physical phenomena for which we have absolutely no explanation whatsoever, but we do have observational evidence that suggests they are real. In addition, RUM hints that Planck’s constant is not a pure constant at all but a cosmological variable, a point for which some supported was reported in 2013 by Seshavatharam and Lakshminarayana.

“The yet unasked-unanswered question is where the observable universe is expanding. If the expanding universe has a mass and volume, whatever its shape is, it must be expanding into another medium,” says Kilkis. That “medium” is of infinite size and lies at absolute zero, thus acting as a thermal sink for the universe, which is a thermally radiating source lying within the sink.

Bond, H.E., Nelan, E.P., VandenBerg, D.A., Schaefer, G.H. and Harmer, D. (2013) ‘HD 140283: a star in the solar neighborhood that formed shortly after the big bang’, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 1, 13 February, p.765.

Seshavatharam, U.V.S. and Lakshminarayana, S. (2013) ‘Is Planck’s constant – a cosmological variable?‘, International Journal of Astronomy, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.11-15

Kilkis, B.I. (2014) ‘An exergetic approach to the age of universe’, Int. J. Exergy, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.76–89.

Universe, older than it looks is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot

via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1uOv2XO

Inderscience is media partner for 3D Printing & Additive Manufacturing: Industrial Applications Global Summit 2014

Inderscience is a media partner for 3D Printing & Additive Manufacturing: Industrial Applications Global Summit 2014 (25-26 November 2014, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• International Journal of Design Engineering
• International Journal of Materials Engineering Innovation
• International Journal of Manufacturing Research
• International Journal of Precision Technology
• International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing

Special issue: "Advances in Logistics and Transport"

International Journal of Business Performance and Supply Chain Modelling 6(3/4) 2014

Includes expanded versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Advanced Logistics and Transport 2013.

• Performance of system based on two ontologies in order to supply personalised information
• Testing Bowersox and Daugherty topology in Egypt - an empirical study on the pharmaceutical industry
• Estimating the carbon footprint of a road freight firm, perspectives to mitigate these emissions
• Product lifecycle management approach to design a product and its optimised supply chain
• Eco-logistics: environmental and economic implications of alternative fuel vehicle routing problem
• Sustainability of Tunisia's road transport: is there an environmental Kuznets curve for negative externalities?
• Analysis from robust control under environment constraint: application for traffic model
• Advances in logistics performance in selected developing and developed countries
• Optimisation of e-commerce logistics distribution system: problem modelling and exact resolution
• Iterative simulation optimisation approach-based genetic algorithm for lot-sizing problem in make-to-order sector
• Transportation supply chain safety assessment based on Ro-Ro ferry shiphandling difficulty model approach

Call for papers: "ICT and Technoprenuership"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Management and Enterprise Development.

Technopreneurship is an ambitious programme which aims at creating a new type of successful entrepreneur in the domain of information and communication technology (ICT), as well as in the core technology area.

 

Business ideas related to ICT focusing particularly on the areas of health, education, finance, agriculture, public safety and key government services through the use of technology are welcome.

 

Researchers, start-ups, ITES professionals and academicians developing technology solutions for the improvement of the lifestyle of global citizens are encouraged to submit article to this special issue.

 

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Smart education/learning: Aims to enhance smart thinking and enjoyment of fun educational services through better information technology systems is the main objective. Furthermore, to enhance learning capability, social skills and learning evaluation processes are also essential, and should also be developed.
• Smart transportation: Focuses on developing technologies for intelligent transport systems (ITSs). Smart transportation systems apply electronic, communication, computer, control, sensing and detection technology in all kinds of transportation in order to improve safety, efficiency, service and traffic congestion through transmitting real-time information
• Smart health: Aims to make it easier to monitor health improvement with self-medication through mobile devices, and to interact and communicate your health condition with love ones through accurate and ubiquitous services.
• Multifunctional smart card: Design and development of a single card which is supported by both IC (contact-based) and RF (non-contact-based) interfaces and has excellent security. Development of various apps for multi-function smart cards which provide a high level of security and which can be continually updated as technologies progress.

 

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 15 June, 2015

Acceptance/rejection notification: 15 August, 2015

Final paper due: 15 October, 2015

Special issue published: "Perspectives of Smart Specialisation for Knowledge-Based Development"

International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development 5(3) 2014

• Smart growth, smart specialisations strategies and impact of the technological districts: the moderating effect of business, geographical and institutional factors
• Creative industries and knowledge economy development in Rome: the example of Pietralata District
• Innovating urban policymaking and planning mechanisms to deliver knowledge-based agendas: a methodological approach
• The innovation ecosystem as booster for the innovative entrepreneurship in the smart specialisation strategy
• The creative city matrix: a framework for urban knowledge ecosystems 
• Stakeholder e-involvement and participatory tourism planning: analysis of an Italian case study

Call for papers: "Impact of Reconfiguration on Collaborative Enterprise Performance"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise.

The objective of International journal of Collaborative Enterprise (IJCEnt) is to provide a platform for interaction between researchers and practitioners who are dealing with theory and applications. It is also to bring together a selection of new perspectives that focuses on resources in producing and delivering value, analyze the new strategies and the organisations that support the collaboration and reconfiguration. The IJCEnt invites papers for the special issue “Impact of Reconfiguration on Collaborative Enterprise Performance”, which aims to impart and share the recent research, development and applications dealing with collaborative enterprises.

Collaboration and cooperation are vital growth opportunities, but manufacturers, service providers and suppliers are uncertain of how to most effectively approach the rapidly evolving market. Enterprise collaboration is receiving increasingly more attention than ever before.

Reconfiguration can play a crucial role in collaborative enterprise. Reconfiguration introduces a means for system flexibility. This can be possible with the help of a modular approach and developing relationships among products, processes and resources. The data and information is also required to be made available to all stake holders of the enterprise. The concepts of commitments with penalties and subcontracting may also facilitate effective reconfigured collaborative enterprise. Thus, there is need to focus on the real challenges of rapid constraint evaluation for the designing and/or reconfiguration of present systems to cater for present/future collaborative enterprise.

It is also evident that enterprises value collaboration, choose between alternatives, integrate business processes, and participate in networking in both the local and global markets. This issue aims at disseminating the discussion and exchange of global experience in terms of models and means emphasizing how to design, run, control and optimise collaborative enterprises. A further objective is to share innovative approaches that are relevant to the sustainable development of the manufacturing sector in the global context.

Case studies and papers should provide in-depth insight into, but not limited to, the following areas in the context to collaborative enterprises:

• Why, when and how collaborative enterprises are reconfiguring their business processes?
• How they choose between alternatives?
• What should the pace of reconfiguration be?
• How do enterprises develop reconfiguration roadmaps?
• What the roadblocks and areas of concern, as well as the challenges?
• How can enterprises cope with the rapidly changing manufacturing environment?
• What are the models or concepts that will support temporary alliances of manufacturing enterprises?
• How do we measure or model the consequences of the reconfiguration process on the present and future demands of collaborative enterprise?

Important Dates

Submissions deadline: 25 October, 2015
Reviewer reports: 30 January, 2016
Revised paper submission: 30 March, 2016
Final manuscript submission: 30 April, 2016

Special issue published: "Sustainable Urban Mobility in Comparison"

International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management 14(3/4) 2014

Includes expanded versions of papers presented at GERPISA’s 17th international conference.

• Passenger transport mode share in cities: exploration of actual and future trends with a worldwide survey
• Drivers of carsharing diffusion in Germany: an actor-centred approach
• Understanding the mobility-transformative qualities of urban park and ride polices in the UK and the Netherlands
• A Pareto-efficient market-clearing mechanism for shared-mobility systems
• Carsharing with electric vehicles in the context of users' mobility needs - results from user-centred research from the BeMobility field trial (Berlin)
• Urban, sub-urban or rural: where is the best place for electric vehicles?
• Promoting next generation vehicles in Japan: the smart communities and their experimentations 
• Accelerating market diffusion of battery electric vehicles through alternative mobility concepts

Call for papers: "Challenge-oriented Research and Innovation: Concepts, Practices and Policies"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy.

The notion that research and innovation can contribute to the resolution of major (grand or global) societal challenges has become pervasive in contemporary research and innovation (R&I) policy at both European and national levels. This brings forth a number of challenges in research and innovation policy design and analysis: How are these new challenge-driven approaches included in the prevailing repertoire of research and innovation policy and what kind of impacts may they have on the practice of policy making? What are current challenge-driven research and innovation policies and how should their development be understood and analysed? In which policy-making cycles has the concept (re)emerged from whom and why? How are challenge-oriented policies operationalised? What special features do/should challenge-oriented policies and policy instruments conform with?

These issues need to be addressed through a reflexive and forward-looking approach, acknowledging that while the notion of societal, grand and global challenges now drives, inspires and justifies an increasing number of policy instruments, initiatives and priorities, neither the concept nor the organisational models of challenge-driven R&I policy are anywhere near a crystallised and stabilised state. Hence, the rhetoric and practice of challenge-driven R&I policies, on one hand, and the analytical frameworks to understand and sustain them, on the other, are in a process of co-evolvement, obfuscating any simple distinction between theory and practice, and between descriptive adequacy and normative intervention.

The aim of this special issue is twofold: (a) to deepen our understanding of the evolution of the concept of “grand challenges” in policy discourse, and (b) to identify and discuss implications for policy design, operationalisation and analysis.

We invite in particular papers which combine conceptual or theoretical contributions with empirical evidence or comparative analyses. Given that the “grand challenge” orientation is inherently linked with future strategies and policies, we also encourage papers which apply a forward-looking approach in their analysis and discussions. Papers may come from diverse fields (such as political science, social science, organisational science) and relate to different debates within and beyond the research and innovation policy community.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The meaning of the "grand challenges" concept and its relation with earlier policy developments
• The politics of the emergence of the concept in policy discourse
• Changes and implications for policy making and the operationalisation of policies
• Implications for policy design and analysis, i.e.
• in the form of assessments, for example, of current approaches as the "innovation system" approach for understanding developments,
• or in the form of key issues, dimensions and tensions examined with a forward-looking approach that may have an essential bearing on this particular type of challenge-driven R&I policy orientation

Important Dates

Submission deadline for full papers: 31 May, 2015
Notification of acceptance: 31 July, 2015
Submission deadline for final versions: 30 September, 2015

Special issue published: "Competitiveness Policies from the Emerging Blocks: a Checkpoint on the Reality of Development through Policy"

International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies 7(3) 2014

• Bangalore information technology cluster
• Determinants of banking competition in Morocco and evaluation of the structural reforms
• Competitiveness and innovation landscapes in the tropics: a comparison of Singapore and New Zealand during 1999-2008
• Microeconomic and macroeconomic determinants of competitiveness of East European countries in 2012
• Competitiveness policies for medical tourism clusters: government initiatives in Thailand
• FDI in retail sector India: structural reform more than a political reform

Call for papers: "e-Systems Development and Applications"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing.

Recent years have witnessed increasing interest and development in computerised systems and procedures which exploit electronic media in order to offer effective and sophisticated solutions to a wide range of real-world applications.

 

Innovation and research development in this rapidly evolving area of e-systems has typically been reported on as part of cognate fields such as information and communications technology, computer science, systems science, social science and engineering.

 

This special issue seeks original and high-quality contributions such as works in progress and experimental and theoretical research into e-systems and their applications.

 

The applications of e-system include, but are not limited to

• Online education: e-colleges and e-universities
• e-Assessment and plagiarism detection
• Autonomic middleware to support e-systems
• Business-oriented and consumer-oriented e-commerce
• Patient administration systems
• Clinical decision support systems

 

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• e-Learning (technology-enhanced learning)
• e-Government systems, autonomic computing and AI
• e-Business and management
• e-Health and e-medicine
• e-science and technology
• e-Security and e-forensics
• e-Entertainment and creative technologies
• e-Networking and wireless environments
• e-Systems engineering

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 13 February, 2015

Notification to authors: 8 May, 2015

Final versions due: 3 July, 2015

Call for papers: "Governance of State-owned Enterprises"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Corporate Governance.

Corporate governance of state-owned enterprises is a major challenge in many economies. But, until now, there has not been any international benchmark to help governments assess and improve the way they exercise ownership of these enterprises, which often constitute a significant share of the economy.

 

We welcome articles on this subject for this special issue, which aims to address the current lack of literature.

 

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• State-owned enterprises
• Governance

 

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 30 November, 2014

Special issue published: "Finance in Africa: Contemporary Issues and Evidence"

International Journal of Management Practice 7(4) 2014

• Are mutual fund managers in Nigeria worth their money?
• Earnings management and corporate governance: the Ghanaian experience
• Quality of financial statements, information asymmetry, perceived risk and access to finance by Ugandan SMEs
• Firms' performance and corporate social disclosures: cross-sectional evidence of Nigerian firms
• Modelling stock return volatility: comparative evidence from selected emerging African and Western developed markets
• Multifactor explanation of security returns in South Africa

Special Issue: "Recent Advances in Wireless Sensor Networks: Trust, Reputation, Security and Privacy"

International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems 7(3) 2014

• An efficient reputation-based system for wireless ad hoc networks
• New route discovery design for routing misbehaviour prevention in multi-hop wireless sensor networks
• Two security layers for hierarchical data aggregation in sensor networks
• An energy-aware design methodology based on kernel optimisations
• Learning, generalisation, and functional entropy in random automata networks

Int. J. of Computational Vision and Robotics to publish expanded papers from Int. Conf. on Computational Vision & Robotics

Expanded versions of papers presented at the International Conference on Computational Vision & Robotics (8 August 2015, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India) will be published by the International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics.

New Editor for the International Journal of Intelligent Systems and Applications

Associate Professor Edmund M-K. Lai from Massey University has been appointed as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Intelligent Systems and Applications. He fills the vacancy left by Professor Johan Potgieter, forced to step down by new job commitments; Professor Potgieter will remain on the IJISTA Board.

Call for papers: "Advanced IT and Security Services in the Internet of Things Environment"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Services Technology and Management.

Unlike the current internet, IoT means a new network space in which all things around the world can be connected, including humans. It has the ability and intelligence to send/receive information with the benefit of multiple data processing.

In this environment, people can be provided with various convergence services through the intelligent collaborative process between physical things surrounding humans, with minimal spatial/temporal constraints. Autonomous convergence service can be provided, since the context of the user is recognised in the IoT environment. It is expected that the IoT market will grow to a value of 3,090 billion dollars by 2020, as it grows by 30% per year.

However, the possibility exists that various types of information can be easily exposed in the process of resource binding among the things required to compose the services in the current computing environment. In order to pre-emptively respond to these risks and provide a sustainable IoT environment and reliable services, it is necessary to study the advanced convergence of security services.

The main aim of this special issue is therefore to bring together researchers and practitioners working in related fields in advanced IT and security services in the IoT environment. The purpose of the issue is to present the latest research and propose strategies for the development direction of research into guiding advanced IT and security services in the IoT environment.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Usability of privacy and security systems in the IoT environment
• User risk perceptions and modelling for the IoT environment
• Policy management and enforcement for the IoT environment
• Security architectures for IoT systems and applications
• Knowledge-based approaches for evaluating the trustworthiness of devices and services in the IoT environment
• Modelling and evaluating quality in the IoT environment
• Situational awareness through context modelling in the IoT environment
• Intelligent decision making using knowledge-based reasoning
• Adaptive architectures and application scenarios for the IoT environment

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 10 April, 2015

Inderscience is media partner for Forensics Europe Expo 2015

Inderscience is a media partner for Forensics Europe Expo 2015 (21-22 April 2015, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• International Journal of Biometrics
• International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics
• International Journal of Forensic Engineering
• International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry

Special issue published: "New Cultural Catalysts in Evolving Environments: Political Change, Cultural Dynamics and Competitiveness of Firms"

European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management 3(2) 2014

Includes expanded versions of articles presented at the XI IACCM Annual Conference on ‘Political change, cultural dynamics and competitiveness of firms’.

• Analysing gender and diversity management issues across cultures from multiple perspectives: a Thai-German case
• Exploring national diversity and identity regulation: managerial discourses and material practices in a transnational company
• Cross-cultural analysis of comfort with foreign cultures in multinational firms
• A cultural hybridisation approach to reinterpreting the integration-diversity dichotomy: the case of Guggenheim's master branding Bilbao
• Effects of brand and quality management on consumers' purchasing willingness of indigenous handicrafts in Taiwan

Call for papers: "Optimisation in Ecology, Economics, Environment and Sustainable Ecosystems"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Bio-Inspired Computation.

This special issue solicits research papers that address recent advances and current challenges in optimisation methods and techniques associated with economic systems, ecological and environmental modelling, and analysis of sustainable ecosystems.

The issue seeks to publish novel research and reflect the most recent advances and the latest contributions of optimisation in the subject areas below, covering deterministic, fuzzy and stochastic optimisation, optimal control, multi-criteria decision making, and innovative optimisation algorithms and techniques.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Optimisation methods and techniques
• Fuzzy and stochastic optimisation
• Multiple criteria decision making
• Optimal control
• Optimisation in ecology
• Decision making in the energy markets
• Optimisation of renewable resources
• Optimisation in sustainable ecosystems
• Optimisation and management of ecological resources
• Energy optimisation
• Optimisation in economics
• Optimal investments and strategies
• Risk management
• Sustainable growth
• Optimal green taxation

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 30 June, 2015
Notification of acceptance: 30 October, 2015
Revised version due: 31 December, 2015

Special issue published: "Cameronese Research on Accounting"

African Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance 3(1) 2014

• Accounting information and the rationality of bank credits within the Cameroon context
• Standardisation of international accounting: harmonisation between OHADA and IASB (IFRS) reference frameworks
• Structure of the start-up capital and continuity of companies in Cameroon 
• Assessment of the relevance of accounting mutations: an analysis from financial statements in Cameroon

Inderscience is media partner for Counter Terror Expo 2015

Inderscience is a media partner for Counter Terror Expo 2015 (21-22 April 2015, London, UK).

The journals involved are:

• International Journal of Critical Infrastructures
• International Journal of Emergency Management
• International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems
• International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management

Call for papers: "Innovation, Economic Change and Policies: An Out-of-Equilibrium Perspective"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics.

This special issue is in honour of Prof. Mario Amendola on the occasion of his retirement as professor of economics at Sapienza University of Rome, where he taught and researched for more than forty years.

Prof. Amedola’s contribution to out-of-equilibrium economics has been broadly recognised as a fundamental contribution to the recent development of neo-Austrian economic theory. Prof. Amendola, by focusing his attention on economic growth and the dynamics of structural change, provided unconventional policy conclusions and indications, thus opening up a challenging stream of research which involved numerous students and young researchers over the years.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Out-of-equilibrium analysis
• Innovation
• Structural change
• Computational analysis

Important Dates

Deadline for the submission of manuscripts: 30 April, 2015

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Bibliometrics in Business and Management

The International Journal of Bibliometrics in Business and Management focuses on bibliometric analysis. By analysing published papers in specific academic fields involving all business and management areas, it addresses issues such as publications by year and research themes; contributions by authors, institutions and regions; keywords used; and citations and co-citations. Areas covered include general management, human resource management, strategic management, organisational behaviour, organisation theory, knowledge management, crisis management, family business, business ethics, marketing, accounting, finance, etc., applied to all disciplines, industries and countries.

Special issue published: "Advances in Data Mining and Machine Learning"

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications 13(3) 2014

• An efficient algorithm for mining sequential generator pattern using prefix trees and hash tables
• A decision making model using soft set and rough set on fuzzy approximation spaces
• SED-Stream: discriminative dimension selection for evolution-based clustering of high dimensional data streams
• Hybrid feature extraction for facial emotion recognition
• An efficient approach for significant time intervals of frequent itemsets

Socialising with the web of things

Are you Facebook friends with your microwave oven, is your car? Does your washing machine have a blog read by the tumble drier? Ever thought of following your lighting circuit on Twitter, would it make sense to have the electric curtain controllers do so? Well, such whimsical ideas are perhaps a little far-fetched at first glance. There are some precedents. One might follow a movie and TV streaming site on Twitter and use a connection tool to automatically control what output you record for later viewing on the TV but only if a web review site you also follow gives it a five-star review perhaps. You might even have a link between the items you flag as good or bad that then filter into Facebook updates, as many people do with the music they listen to on Spotify. The combinations seem limitless.

More mundane applications involving the lighting and heating in your home exist that allow you to have the thermostat switch on the heating before you come home either when you send it a text but also perhaps when a weather update from twitter forecasts snow. The Internet of Things is with us already as more and more domestic and other devices are hooked up to the internet and so their sensors and readouts become accessible via a web browser or to other software and apps on your smart phone become the norm for controlling a wide range of gadgets.

The next step is the development of a “social internet of things” that allows people and their gadgets to be more coherently connected. Writing in the International Journal of Web Based Communities, computer scientists Bruno Cabral, Cibele Vasconcelos and Cássio Prazeres of the Federal University of Bahia, in Brazil, recognize that we now use online social networks as a surrogate and as a supplement to many of the activities we once were able only to do offline without digital assistance. As the internet of things evolves, there is the potential to bring together this world and to use it to enhance and make more efficient our use of refrigerators, microwave ovens, TVs, cars, cell phones and other devices to improve quality of life.

Prazeres and colleagues suggest that in some circumstances and for many applications, the people will not even be needed, our gadgets will interact through the infrastructures of social networks without our input. One would hope, of course, that automatic thermostats listening to the weather forecast on twitter and checking up on your business trip schedule would not override the logic of not turning on the air conditioning in an empty house. Online tools such as IFTTT, which stands for “IF this, THEN that”, allows users to connect web applications, their smart phone, online social networks and a range of cloud services and some networked devices, such as the aforementioned lighting and heating.

The team has taken this several steps further in developing an architecture for what they refer to as a “social web of things”, which provides the potential means for us to interact with our devices in a naturalistic manner, not dissimilar to our online social networking interactions with people. This anthromorphizing of connected appliances gives us an instantly comprehensible interface, so that one might message the house thermometers to get the temperature and then tell the thermostats to switch on the heating on our command. But, the same architecture could then be extended to remove the intermediate, us, from the equation and so give us domestic bliss with minimal intervention on our part.

Cabral, B., Vasconcelos, C. and Prazeres, C.V.S. (2014) ‘The social web of things: enabling the interaction of people and things on social networks’, Int. J. Web-Based Communities, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp.426–444.

Socialising with the web of things is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot

via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1sty4T8

Call for papers: "Social Networking for Enhanced Interaction"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Innovation in Education.
Today’s advanced social networking technologies such as blogs, wikis, twitter, etc. have enabled users to create online communities, exchange information and distribute resources more effectively and efficiently than ever. This presents exciting opportunities to enhance interaction for educational purposes.

With the ease and instantaneousness of social networking, users can engage in more meaningful interaction, more in-depth reflections and more critical thinking. As the new technologies offer great educational potential, it is important to consider their pedagogical implications and explore innovative strategies to promote interaction.

It is also equally important to address possible issues and pitfalls associated with these technologies, as the velocity of social networking media can attract harmful interactions such as cyberbullying. In order to create a safe interactive learning environment, it is essential to be aware of these negative effects of social networking and develop ways to prevent and minimise the risks.

This special issue aims at exploring innovative strategies to promote interaction through social networking and also at raising awareness of possible issues associated with it.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Innovative strategies to enhance interaction through social networking
• Creative instructional design for social networking technologies
• Case studies of social network-based interaction
• Design and development of social networking technologies
• Issues and potential risks in social network-based learning environments
• Solutions to problems associated with social networking

Important Dates
Submission of manuscripts: 30 April, 2016
Notification to authors: 30 June, 2016
Final versions due: 31 August, 2016

Special issue published: "Nanoelectronics II"

International Journal of Nanotechnology 11(12) 2014

• Random-work-function-induced characteristic fluctuation in 16-nm-gate bulk and SOI FinFETs
• Modelling and characterisation of flat-band roll-off behaviours in LaOx capped high-K/metal-gate NMOSFET with 28 nm CMOS technology
• Fabrication of highly ordered nanohoneycomb (ZnO/Pt) arrays
• In situ indium-induced crystallisation of low temperature nano-poly silicon (LTNPS) thin film on ITO glass substrate
• Growth and characteristic of high orientation indium nitride films grown on (100) silicon substrate
• Study on nanoparticles embedded multilayer gate dielectric MOS non-volatile memory devices
• Effect of Au nanoparticles added in nanocrystalline TiO2 film on the photoelectrode of dye-sensitised solar cells
• Molecular dynamics simulation of the nano-ejection system with various interfacial wettabilities
• Fabrication of large diameter TiO2 nanotube for bone morphogenetic protein-2 delivery
• Effects of fluorine implantation on polysilicon with high-k Er2O3 dielectrics
• Volatile organic solvents sensing using silicon nanowires array fabricated by spontaneous electrochemical reaction
• Formation of Ni-driven nano-sized structures on Ag/Ge(111)-√3 × √3 surface: STM study
• The effect of ethyl cellulose on TiO2 pastes for DSSCs application
• Characterisation of self-ordered porous anodic alumina by X-ray diffraction line profile analysis
• Cancer stem-like cells photothermolysed by gold nanorod-mediated near-infrared laser irradiation
• The analysis of magnetic controlled DC sputtering AZO films

Two life hacks to boost business

Two simple life hacks that might apply to all kinds of situations, business, social life, even family life, emerge from a new study published in the International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering.

The first is:

“Use face-to-face where possible instead of email and in long-distance collaboration use technologies such as desktop video conferencing”

The second is:

“Make each email count, only sending emails when needed and to whom who needs to know”

The life hacks emerge from a study of social networking in a team working in the high-tech industry carried out by Stori Lynn Hybbeneth of Cisco, in Englewood, Colorado, Dirk Brunnberg of Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany and Peter Gloor of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Their study revealed structural holes and bottlenecks, stress among overburdened individuals, and isolation among others. The resulting social networking analysis offers a new perspective on identifying the best network structures to allow people to work more effectively and increase their job satisfaction and is something of a blueprint for SNA-based organizational redesign and optimization, the researchers report.

Social network analysis (SNA) follows a longer tradition in social science and long predates, the modern phenomenon of online social networking with which most people are now familiar. In recent years, it has climbed down from the academic “ivory tower” and become a useful tool improving productivity and staff well-being in the workplace. “Research in the field of organizational science confirms that using teams and work groups as units of analysis for knowledge intensive work leads to profound insights,” Hybbeneth and colleagues say.

The researchers in carrying out an analysis of a month’s worth of communications at a high-tech company first made the assumptions that improved collaboration between teams will increase the ability to scale and improve efficiency as critical information is shared. They also took it as read that improved team collaboration between different teams will improve key metrics. Additionally, different collaboration tools were known to produce different levels of team cohesiveness and that some individuals are more central to the team than others with different types of collaborative ties creating different social networks.

“We found that it is really quality of communication that matters. Just spamming team members with information consumes valuable ‘information processing cycles’,” Hybbeneth and colleagues say. “The people in highest demand need to transfer some of their knowledge into more permanent repositories than email,” the researchers add. “While one can never share enough knowledge, it really matters how it is done, we envision a future where there is much more information pull than push.” However, they also recognize that this will require a paradigm shift in sharing behavior that has been the norm for at least the last two decades. Nevertheless, the researchers are convinced that companies, organizations and other collaborative groups that adopt their two life hacks – less email, more face-to-face – will see efficiency, productivity and well-being improve.

Hybbeneth, S.L., Brunnberg, D. and Gloor, P.A. (2014) ‘Increasing knowledge worker productivity through a ‘virtual mirror’ of the social network’, Int. J. Organisational Design and Engineering, Vol. 3, Nos. 3/4, pp.302–316.

Two life hacks to boost business is a post from: David Bradley's Science Spot

via Science Spot http://ift.tt/1wBP760

Inderscience is media partner for Global Water Conference 2015

Inderscience is a media partner for the Global Water Conference 2015 (6-7 October 2015, Yangon, Myanmar).

The journal involved is the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues.

Call for papers: "Intelligent and Expert Methods for Sustainable Industrial Systems"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Automation and Logistics.

The challenges faced by modern industry systems in this era of continued intense competition and increasing concerns of environmental sustainability include maximising productivity and ensuring high product quality, as well as simultaneously reducing production waste, costs and undesirable environmental impacts. Many important industrial design and planning problems are plagued with conflicting objectives and uncertainties. It is thus of paramount importance to develop effective decision support and capabilities to assist managers and stakeholders in various critical phases of data collection, problem analysis, clarification and solution processes.

An intelligent systems approach can be defined as one that synthesises the tools and methods of control theory, operations research and artificial intelligence (AI) to support the modelling, analysis and design of complex systems. Expert systems methodologies further enrich the approach by synthesising state-of-the-art computational techniques with the requisite knowledge bases distilled from human expertise. Such a holistic and synergistic approach provides the necessary arsenal and capability to cope with the increasing complexities of the systems that we work and live in, including manufacturing, services and socio-economic systems. The theoretical development and advancement of intelligent and expert system methodologies and technologies and the realisation of their added value through real-world applications continues to be an important and thriving research area.

This special issue aims to bring together a showcase of top research developments in the area of intelligent and expert systems for sustainable industrial applications.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Development of intelligent and expert system techniques (artificial intelligence, data analytics, control theory, operations research, evolutionary computation, etc.) for sustainable industrial systems, with emphasis on environmental issues such as energy efficiency, recycled manufacturing, carbon emissions, etc.
• Industrial case studies and practices in intelligent and expert control systems are especially encouraged
• Roadmaps and frameworks for developing decision support systems and sustainable industry systems

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 January, 2015

Notification to authors: 1 April, 2015

Final versions due: 1 June, 2015

Special issue published: "Harmonisation Within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling For Regulatory Purposes: Part I"

International Journal of Environment and Pollution 54(2/3/4) 2014

Expanded versions of papers presented at the 15th International Conference on Harmonsation within Atmospheric Dispersion Modelling for Regulatory Purposes.

• Calculation of the far range atmospheric transport of radionuclides after the Fukushima accident with the atmospheric dispersion model MATCH of the JRODOS system
• Experimental study on flow and ventilation behaviours over idealised urban roughness
• Dispersion models and air quality data for population exposure assessment to air pollution
• Towards a new scheme for parametrisation of deep convection in NAME III
• High resolution maps of nitrogen dioxide for the Province of Styria, Austria
• Large-eddy simulation of flows over two-dimensional idealised street canyons with height variation
• On formulating equations for plume spreads for near-surface releases
• Local PM10 source apportionment for non-attainment areas in Slovakia
• Operational background air pollution prediction over Slovenia by QualeAria modelling system - validation
• Operational air pollution prediction and doses calculation in case of nuclear emergency at Krško Nuclear Power Plant
• Evaluation of the WRF meteorological model results during a high ozone episode in SW Poland - the role of model initial conditions
• The multi-scale character of air pollution: impact of local measures in relation to European and regional policies - a case study in Antwerp, Belgium
• A congestion sensitive approach to modelling road networks for air quality management
• Comparison of hazard area and casualty predictions of a small-scale chemical attack using various toxic load toxicity models
• A Lagrangian stochastic model for estimating the high order statistics of a fluctuating plume in the neutral boundary layer
• Estimating odour impact range of a selected wastewater treatment plant for winter and summer seasons in Polish conditions using CALPUFF model
• Determinating the influence of different PM10 sources on air quality in Ljubljana basin with CALPUFF dispersion model
• Air quality modelling as a supplementary assessment method in the framework of the European Air Quality Directive

First issue: International Journal of Migration and Border Studies (free sample issue available)

The International Journal of Migration and Border Studies addresses the whole range of technological, human/social, political, policy, organisational and managerial issues related to migration and border studies. IJMBS is a peer-reviewed journal which offers a forum for disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research concerning conceptual, theoretical, empirical and methodological dimensions of migration and border studies. It aims to bring together a diverse range of international scholars and practitioners to advance knowledge, improve practice, and act as a definitive source on migration and border issues.

There is a free download of the papers from this first issue.

Special issue published: "Creative Networks"

International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering 3(3/4) 2014

Includes expanded versions of papers presented at the COINs Conference on Collaborative Innovation Networks 2013.

• The formation of political discourse within online networks: the case of the occupy movement
• Role and discipline relationships in a transdisciplinary biomedical team: structuration, values override, and context scaffolding
• A course design to develop meta-cognitive skills for collaborative knowledge building through tool-assisted discourse analysis
• Using pattern languages as media for mining, analysing, and visualising experiences
• Increasing knowledge worker productivity through a 'virtual mirror' of the social network
• What can Twitter tell us about social movements' network topology and centrality? Analysing the case of the 2011-2013 Chilean student movement

Additional papers

• Understanding the lifestyle of health and sustainability - an exploratory study
• Why space matters for collaborative innovation networks: on designing enabling spaces for collaborative knowledge creation

Inderscience is media partner for China Off-Highway Vehicle Summit 2014

Inderscience is a media partner for the 7th China Off-Highway Vehicle Summit 2014 (19-21 November 2014, Shanghai, China).

The journals involved are:

• International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management
• International Journal of Vehicle Performance

Special issue published: "Recent Business IT Developments"

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations 14(1/2) 2014

Expanded versions of papers presented at the Wuhan International Conference on E-Business 2013.

• The impact of boundary spanning capability, cultural differences on success of offshore information system outsourcing - from the vendors' perspective
• A resource mapping framework for value co-creation in social media
• A pricing model for governments' subsidy in the green supply chain
• An empirical study on user acceptance of healthcare website
• The model of making a price match based on automatic negotiated price for electronic commerce
• Opportunistic claiming behaviour in two-sided markets
• E-marketing under the adverse selection environment: model and case study 
• An empirical research of the factors affecting users to follow companies' microblogs
• Assessing multi-channel consumers' convenience expectations of online order/in-store pickup service
• Does online video-sharing advertising have diffusion gene?
• Research of instrument to measure customer perceived service quality of mobile data services 
• Customer engagement behaviour in online social networks - the Facebook perspective

Inderscience is media partner for Global Derivatives USA 2014

Inderscience is a media partner for Global Derivatives USA 2014 (17-21 November 2014, Chicago, USA).

The journals involved are:

• International Journal of Bonds and Derivatives
• International Journal of Financial Engineering and Risk Management
• International Journal of Financial Markets and Derivatives
• International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking
• International Journal of Portfolio Analysis and Management