European Journal of International Management celebrates indexing achievements

We are pleased to announce that the European Journal of International Management has recently improved its indexing scores on several fronts, with a move to Rating 2 in the Chartered ABS Academic Journals Guide, an improved Scopus CiteScore of 3.7 (from 2.7), and a Scimago H index jump to 25 (from 22). EJIM's Editor in Chief and Deputy Editor in Chief, Prof. Ilan Alon and Prof. Włodzimierz, thank their editorial staff, Senior Editors, Editorial and Review Board, reviewers and authors for helping the journal to make such excellent progress.

Research pick: Adsorbing arsenic - "Development of modified kaolins for the removal of As (III) in waters"

Back in the early 1990s, this author first heard about an insidious environmental disaster unfolding on the Indian subcontinent. Once insoluble arsenic salts were being exposed to the atmosphere when aquifers were drained for irrigation, becoming oxidized to a soluble form, and then being carried into the drinking water tapped from those aquifers once they refilled. The problem had first been unearthed by K.C. Saha, a government dermatologist from what was then known as Calcutta in the early 1980s. Scientists from Jadavpur University and Dhaka Community Hospital spent many years attempting to draw attention to this invisible killer affecting millions of people and this author attempted to bring awareness to the plight at the time through the western media.

The problem still exists despite ensuing international efforts to address it. Arsenic poisoning leads to startling visible symptoms: tell-tales skin problems such as melanosis, keratosis, and skin cancer, inflammation of the eyes, gangrene and skin growths, and can ultimately be lethal. There have been numerous attempts to develop ways to precipitate the solubilised arsenic from well water so that it might be filtered easily with varying degrees of success. In subsequent years, the problem has been revealed to be a far more widespread problem, being seen in various parts of Southeast Asia the Americas, and elsewhere.

New work published in the International Journal of Environment and Health, by a team from Argentina has looked at how modified kaolins might be used to remove dissolved arsenic(III) salts from water.

Estefanía Baigorria, Leonardo Cano, and Vera Alvarez of the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata and Karim Sapag of the Universidad Nacional de San Luis, explain how iron-containing clays are known adsorbents of dissolved arsenic. They have now impregnated natural and acid-treated kaolinites with iron oxide and demonstrated 97 percent effectiveness with one such material impregnated to 30 percent iron oxide within an hour. After a prolonged exposure 100 percent reduction of arsenic content is possible.

As such, the team recommends further investigation of these modified materials as a possible solution to the problem of arsenic-contaminated water.

Baigorria, E., Cano, L., Sapag, K. and Alvarez, V. (2020) ‘Development of modified kaolins for the removal of As (III) in waters’, Int. J. Environment and Health, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp.116–132.

Special issue published: "Recent Advances in Motion Control for Unmanned Marine Vehicles"

International Journal of Vehicle Design 84(1/2/3/4) 2020

• Research on motion control of an autonomic launch and recovery device for unmanned surface vehicle
• Three-dimensional trajectory tracking control of underactuated autonomous underwater vehicles
• Formation control for underactuated unmanned surface vehicles based on consistency theory and leader-follower mode
• Finite-time tracking control of underactuated surface vehicle with tracking error constraints
• Network-based global H∞ pinning synchronisation for unmanned marine vehicles subject to disturbances
• Network-based sampled-data control for unmanned marine vehicles with dynamic positioning system
• Trajectory tracking of underactuated unmanned surface vehicle with uncertain external disturbances and model parameters
• State observer-based adaptive fuzzy backstepping point stabilisation control of underactuated unmanned surface vehicles with input constraints
• High-gain-observer based adaptive output-feedback formation control for underactuated unmanned surface vessels with input saturation and uncertainties
• 3D trajectory tracking control of an underactuated AUV based on adaptive neural network dynamic surface
• Investigating capacity degradation of LiFePO4 battery for electric vehicles under different overcharge conditions
• Motion reliability evaluation of six-axes robot based on non-probability interval theory

Research pick: Editing out fake news - "Fake news and misinformation detection on headlines of COVID-19 using deep learning algorithms"

Fake news and misinformation have become commonplace in the political, economic, climatic, and social arenas in recent years and are amplified significantly by social media with important repercussions for political outcomes and our quality of life. As we continue to face the global COVID-19 pandemic, fake news and misinformation in this realm becomes a matter of life and death. Researchers from the USA and China writing in the International Journal of Data Science discuss a new approach to detected false headlines.

Xin Wang and Peng Zhao of the Big Data and AI Lab at IntelligentRabbit LLC, in New Jersey and Xi Chen of the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture have developed an algorithm-based ranking method for mainstream media credibility and tested long short-term memory (LSTM), convolutional neural network (CNN) and Deep belief networks (DBNs) to this end. They suggest that it is vital that we address this problem.

“In the age of social media, the ability to spread false information has increased exponentially,” the team writes. “Irresponsible organisations and individuals published misleading information causing catastrophic consequences to society.”

The researchers point out that while technology may have fostered the rapid spread of fake news in an unprecedented way, technology is in many ways the only means by which fake news can be tackled effectively. As such, the team has developed an algorithm based on the neural network approach performs with up to 94 percent accuracy and outstrips other approaches. This is critical given that it is difficult to retrieve whole documents reporting fake news especially as they are commonly camouflaged among genuine news content.

The team explains that many news organisations have established fact-checking units or recruited independent teams to manually scour their user output to identify fake news and false claims. There are also well-known services, such as Snopes, PolitiFact, and FactCheck that act as third-party factcheckers for content being shared online. A system that can work ahead of such checking and automatically flag fake news for subsequent manually checking could help guarantee the trustworthiness of a news source and label problem material.

The team adds that they will next develop a decentralised machine learning model that will guarantee the transparent and traceable delivery of news and take us a step closer to ending the era of fake news.

Wang, X., Zhao, P. and Chen, X. (2020) ‘Fake news and misinformation detection on headlines of COVID-19 using deep learning algorithms’, Int. J. Data Science, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.316–332.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Society Systems Science

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Society Systems Science are now available here for free:

• The individual competencies and organisational ambidextrous: Indonesian SMEs perspective
• Development of an individual work performance and work design questionnaire
• Establishing the validity and reliability of Kuwait resources of nation branding model
• The impact of emotional intelligence on ambidextrous behaviours in small and medium enterprises in Malaysia
• Assessing recent pattern of gold price volatility in Malaysia (2005-2018)
• Psychosocial safety climate and burnout among academicians: the mediating role of work engagement

Special issue published: "Discussing Business and Behaviour Studies Using an Interdisciplinary Approach"

International Journal of Society Systems Science 13(1) 2021

• Understanding window dressing practices among Indonesian construction companies: an effort to minimise investment risks
• Contextual divide, methodological variations and theoretical usage of voluntary employee green behaviour research: a review
• The impact of technology on human behaviour and business environment
• The effect of consumer proximity and media exposure on corporate social responsibility disclosure
• Investment strategy development: does public service serve the investor well?
• Crisis management and COVID-19: the case of budget hotels in Muang Chiangmai District

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing are now available here for free:

• Economic optimisation of range-extended electric bus based on AMGA algorithm
• Prediction and validation of terramechanics models for estimation of tyre rolling resistance coefficient
• Development of vehicle test system and vehicle state estimation based on GPS/INS integrated navigation system
• Study on the laminated frame strength of heavy-duty fracturing pump truck considering slip effect
• Study on equivalent circuit model of lithium titanate battery for rail transit
• Interacting multiple model state observer-based coordination control of electro-hydraulic composite electronic stability program

Research pick: Corporate karma in COVID-19 - "Initiatives taken by NGOs and private companies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic"

New research published in the International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, suggests that many companies, particularly so-called tech companies providing software for mobile devices, apps, have focused on helping people during the COVID-19 pandemic rather than measuring their success in these difficult times on the fiscal bottom line of a spreadsheet.

Sadrul Huda of the North South University, Afsana Akhtar of BRAC University, and Syeeda Raisa Maliha of Re-think, Re-search, all in Dhaka, Bangladesh, explain how the social and economic pressures that have arisen during the pandemic have led to many businesses failing. However, some businesses have thrived by providing services and software that have helped people. Indeed, has reinvigorated many companies allowing them to glean new meaning for their efforts beyond the profit margin while also retaining employees and showing a positive financial return.

A new study of app companies in Bangladesh has shown that healthy profits seem to follow a healthy outlook for many of those companies that have turned to helping people. The team focuses on various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and app-based companies such as Pathao, FoodPanda, and Uber Eats who have all taken an ethical stance towards helping. “In a world where all businesses have come to a standstill, these app-based companies have found a new life only because they thought about the people before their business. They are a living role model of how the companies should set their goals,” the team writes.

To paraphrase Charles Dickens – “It is the best of times, it is the worst of times” – it would be foolish in an age of wisdom not to move towards a better world where businesses care about people instead of only running after profits.

Huda, S.S.M.S., Akhtar, A. and Maliha, S.R. (2021) ‘Initiatives taken by NGOs and private companies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic’, Int. J. Work Organisation and Emotion, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp.86–92.

Special issue published: "Environment and Sustainable Development: A Multidisciplinary Approach"

International Journal of Environment and Health 10(2) 2020

• Location of areas of emission of pollutants when poor urban air quality is detected
• Bentonite/carbon composite development for the treatment of agroindustrial effluents
• Development of modified kaolins for the removal of As (III) in waters
• Development of eco-compatible polymers with cyclodextrins for the treatment of wastewater from the textile industry
• Enhancement of methane production and wastewater treatment from algae
• Restoration scenario analysis of Hindon River in India using water quality model, WASP8

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Sustainable Materials and Structural Systems

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Sustainable Materials and Structural Systems are now available here for free:

• Effect of recycled fine aggregate on properties of mortar: a factorial design approach
• Beam-column joints made of self-compacting concrete containing recycled coarse aggregates and nano-silica
• An overview of the properties of sustainable concrete using fly ash as replacement for cement
• Effects of corrugation on the stiffness properties of composite beams for structural applications
• Effects of bio-composites in sandwich panels with an optimum corrugated cores under edgewise compression loading

Research pick: Mathematically modelling COVID-19 in India - "The spreading of covid-19 in India and its impact: a mathematical analysis"

A mathematical analysis published in the International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design has revealed the impact of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in India on mortality rates and suggests that the death toll may ultimately be in the millions before the pandemic subsides.

Physicists Bibhatsu Kuiri, Bubai Dutta, Saikat Santra, Paulomi Mandal, Khaleda Mallick, and Ardhendu Sekhar Patra of Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University in Purulia, India, have used the SEIR model as a fundamental tool to model the spread of the novel and potentially lethal coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which was first identified in China in late 2019 and the spread of which had reached pandemic proportions by February-March of 2020. This highly infectious disease spreads easily even when those infected are not yet showing symptoms and so has had an enormous and often devastating impact on society and economies around the world. Indeed, it is estimated that 80 percent of transmission is by people who are asymptomatic.

Theoretical tools that work with raw data can help us explain the spread of the disease and understand how it might continue, and hopefully when and where it will end in terms of its presence as a global pandemic. Ultimately, such models might also help us predict the behaviour of subsequent emerging pathogens and ward off a future pandemic or at least ameliorate its impact by being better prepared for the possible consequences.

In the SEIR model, each letter is defined as follows: S for susceptibility humans, E for exposure, I for infected/infectious, and R for recovery rate. Additionally, D is the death count. Each SEIR parameter feeds into D at different points in the model. The team’s numbers are based on those available in October 2020 and so do not take into account the recent devastating wave of infections in that country. At the time of writing their paper, there were tens of millions of people across India who had been infected and recovered but many tens of thousands of deaths too.

The number infected has, as of the date of this Inderscience Research Pick, passed 30 million in India with almost 400,000 deaths and almost 29 million people have recovered. The number of those with long-covid could well be significant.

Kuiri, B., Dutta, B., Santra, S., Mandal, P., Mallick, K. and Patra, A.S. (2021) ‘The spreading of covid-19 in India and its impact: a mathematical analysis’, Int. J. Computational Biology and Drug Design, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp.130–137.

Free open access article available: "A review of FinTech research"

The following paper, "A review of FinTech research" (International Journal of Technology Management 86(1) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.

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

Special issue published: "Resilience in the World: Share the Knowledge, See the Future, Help Communities"

International Journal of Sustainable Materials and Structural Systems 5(1/2) 2021

• Resilience and recoverability enhancement of concrete structures
• Resilient isolation-structure systems with super-large displacement friction pendulum bearings
• Resilience and sustainability of FRP-retrofitted concrete structures
• Present and future resilience research driven by science and technology
• From event to performance function-based resilience analysis and improvement processes for more sustainable systems
• A strategic framework for resilient and sustainable urban infrastructure systems - an overview, modelling, design and assessment
• Damage reduction countermeasures for short span bridges focusing on restorability of structural joints
• Structural health monitoring of composites from carbon nanotube coated e-glass fibre
• Comparison between honeycomb and composite corrugated cores in sandwich panels under compression loading

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Image Mining

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Image Mining are now available here for free:

• A novel method for query based image retrieval using prototype based clustering
• Trigonometry-based motion blur parameter estimation algorithm
• Computer-aided mammography techniques for detection and classification of microcalcifications in digital mammograms
• Generating efficient classifiers using facial components for age classification
• Object boundary detection through robust active contour based method with global information
• Analysis of diverse optimisation algorithms in breast cancer detection

Research pick: Optical music recognition - "Music note position recognition in optical music recognition using convolutional neural network"

Optical character recognition (OCR) commonly used to convert the text in scanned documents into a searchable and editable form on the computer is a well-established digitisation technique. But, what about other kinds of documents, rich with meaning, such as musical manuscripts? New work in the International Journal of Arts and Technology discusses the possibility of optical musical recognition, OMR.

A new approach developed by a team at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta, Indonesia, uses deep machine learning and a convolutional neural network trained to recognise the nuance of musical notation on known manuscripts. The algorithm can then convert a newly presented musical manuscript into a digitized form with 8 percent accuracy. Even at this level, this greatly reduces the amount of manual input and correction needed to convert a manuscript.

The system requires clef, stave, and musical key to be in position, but these are easily assigned in a template. The conversion of a scanned manuscript then detects the position on the stave of each note, thus defining pitch. The next step will be to use a parallel algorithm to detect the duration of each note and to identify the position of silences, rests, and other such characteristics of a manuscript.

Once fully digitised it is, given current software, a trivial matter to use the computer to “play” the manuscript using all manner of instrumental sounds or even to correlate a lyrical score with the music and have the computer “sing” the song. OMR, once mature, will have many applications in archiving musical manuscripts, in the performance of music, and in music education. The team suggests that their approach could allow software “app” developers to write a program for smartphone or tablet to allow anyone to quickly scan a piece of sheet music, for instance, and to carry out OMR on that manuscript.

Of course, while music digitization tools could be enabling for a wide range of people interested in music, there is still the question of musical talent. There is, unfortunately, no app for that.

Andrea, Paoline and Zahra, A. (2021) ‘Music note position recognition in optical music recognition using convolutional neural network’, Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.45–60.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Arts and Technology

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Arts and Technology are now available here for free:

• Enhancing the creative learning experience through harnessing the creative potential of digital and social media platforms in art and design educational contexts
• Evolving visual artefacts based on consumption patterns
• Storytelling and remote-sensing playful interventions to foster biodiversity awareness
• Designing disruption for social touch, in public spaces of merging realities: a multi-sensory model
• Understanding urban gamification - playful meaning-making in real and digital city spaces

Special issue published: "Enhancing Business Practices Across Different Cultures: Creating Value from the External Environment"

Journal for Global Business Advancement 14(2) 2021

• Breaking down the export barriers for small and medium-sized enterprises: focus group study across Vietnam
• Entrepreneurial characteristics and internationalisation of new ventures: a study of cognitive factors
• Understanding consumerism within Western and Muslim based societies: Twitter usage of Saudi and American consumers
• Sustainable values and willingness to pay: an analysis of an analytical technique
• Review and replication three existing measurement scales of consumer cosmopolitanism: an empirical study in Vietnamese young segment
• Enabling and disenabling boundary conditions of export marketing assistance: an interdisciplinary framework

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Financial Services Management

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Financial Services Management are now available here for free:

• Are SHGs catalysts for rural empowerment? Impact assessment of Stree Shakti interventions in India
• Consumers' intention to hire wedding planners: a study of selected cities in Northern India
• Credit usage among the un(der) banked: consumer socio-economic characteristics and influence of financial technology
• How market orientation enhances business performance through value creation: Iranian commercial banks
• Investigating the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction of BKash in Bangladesh

Research pick: Machines learn pandemic prediction - "Role of machine learning and big data in healthcare for the prediction of epidemic diseases: a survey"

Might machine learning and big data allow us to predict how an emerging disease might spread and so be more prepared than we were for the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic? A new survey from India of the various techniques published in the International Journal of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation suggests so.

S. Sharma and Yogesh Kumar Gupta of Banasthali University in Jaipur, explain how they have tracked the tools and data that have been used to investigate the spread of well-known and unfortunately well-established diseases of influenza, malaria, and dengue to model the spread of a pathogen through the human population and how this spread gives rise to an epidemic. Fundamentally, they suggest, the more data that is available, the more accurate the predictions can be as long as “fake” data can be excluded. They point out that in some regions, certain diseases are always present, they are endemic, while in other regions we might observe sudden large-scale outbreaks of the same disease representing a surge in morbidity and mortality. As such, modeling could be used to make forecasts about the repeated re-emergence of certain diseases in those places.

The team’s perspective on machine learning and big data points to ways in which they might be used together to provide expert decision support especially in regions of the developing world with very limited healthcare resources. Readily available information from sources such as Twitter, Google Trends, Flu Near You, Influenza Net, Wikipedia Access Logs, Health Map, Electronic Health Records, WHO, Centre for Disease Control, and Meteorological departments have all been pooled to help track the emerge of influenza and might be adapted and fed into new models for emerging pathogens as they are identified.

The team points out that different statistical tools have different pros and cons when looking at different known diseases but all can fail when there is a dearth of data. They also suggest that temperature and weather patterns can have a big influence on certain diseases and so should be taken into account when modeling emerging diseases.

Sharma, S. and Gupta, Y.K. (2021) ‘Role of machine learning and big data in healthcare for the prediction of epidemic diseases: a survey’, Int. J. Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation, Vol. 12, Nos. 2/3, pp.148–155.

Special issue published: "System Dynamics Applications for Solving Complex Problems"

International Journal of Intelligent Engineering Informatics 8(5/6) 2020

• Dynamic strategies for measuring the performance of inventory system in closed loop supply chain
• The most common issues in development of causal-loop diagrams and stock-and-flow diagrams
• Performance evaluation of telecommunication services provision with combined approach of balanced scorecard and system dynamics (case study: telecommunications infrastructure company)
• Development of a risk assessment model for the customer performance perspective in power plants applying a system dynamics approach
• A system dynamics model to analyse economic challenges of apparel industry: the case study of Iran
• Exploring the linkages between the patent applications and energy transitions: a system dynamics perspective

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management are now available here for free:

• GHG emissions inventory: a statistical analysis of the voluntary disclosure in Brazil
• Optimising the proportion of pure and mixed culture in inoculum to enhance the performance of microbial fuel cells
• Rapid impact assessment matrix, sustainable analysis and environmental performance index-based approach for selection of wastewater treatment units
• Application of mycoremediation for municipal solid waste management
• Review of waste strategy documents in Australia: analysis of strategies for construction and demolition waste

Special issue published: "Application of Remote Sensing and GIs in Environmental Studies"

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management 24(1/2) 2021

• Spatial balance degree evaluation model of land use based on regional collaborative remote sensing observation
• Dynamic prediction of urban landscape pattern based on remote sensing image fusion
• Spatial distribution characteristics of urban landscape pattern based on multi-source remote sensing technology
• Research on dynamic simulation of land use change based on geographical weighted CLUE-S model
• Spatial-temporal evolution of complex urban landscape pattern based on remote sensing technology
• Dynamic remote sensing monitoring of land cover in ecological protection area based on GIS technology
• The spatial pattern planning method of rural landscape based on remote sensing technology
• An integrated planning method for open space of urban street landscape based on remote sensing technology
• Extraction of carbon emission feature in urban residential area based on remote sensing technology

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management are now available here for free:

• Enhancing traceability in heterogeneous design platforms
• Defining lean product service systems features and research trends through a systematic literature review
• Features of integration management tools in the aviation industry
• Product and supply chain related data, processes and information systems for product portfolio management

Special issue published: "Uncertainty in the Digital Twin Context"

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management 13(1) 2021

• Quality information framework - quantifying and minimising uncertainty
• An approach for mastering data-induced conflicts in the digital twin context
• Managing the uncertainty in data-acquisition by in situ measurements: a review and evaluation of sensing machine element-approaches in the context of digital twins
• Integration of MBSE and PLM: complexity and uncertainty
• Reducing the uncertainty in engineering change management using historical data and simulation modelling: a process twin concept

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Product Development

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Product Development are now available here for free:

• An empirical analysis of the impact of AMT and e-commerce on innovation and performance in Spanish firms
• Green production benefit evaluation model of trade products based on principal component analysis
• Product's green production method based on environmental management and ecological perspective of enterprise
• Green production cycle mining of mass production based on random forest algorithm
• The control method of green production efficiency based on multi-layer and complex network under the background of export trade transformation
• Multi-objective scheduling model of green production based on genetic algorithm under agricultural supply side structure
• Scheduling method of green flexible production line for enterprise products based on task priority
• Distribution and transportation control of high-speed and flexible packing production line for medical kit based on green technology
• Optimisation model construction of enterprise's green production and energy saving based on internet technology

Inderscience board member Prof. Mohan Munasinghe wins Blue Planet Prize

Inderscience is pleased to announce that Prof. Mohan Munasinghe, an Editorial Board Member for both the International Journal of Global Environmental Issues and International Journal of Global Warming, has been awarded a 2021 Blue Planet Prize. This year marks the 30th awarding of the Blue Planet Prize, an international environmental award sponsored by the Asahi Glass Foundation, chaired by Takuya Shimamura. Every year, the Foundation selects two winners, individuals or organisations who have made significant contributions to the resolution of global environmental problems.

Prof. Munasinghe made the following statement:

"I am deeply grateful and honoured to receive the 2021 Blue Planet Prize, the premier global environmental sustainability award, symbolizing the outstanding commitment of the Asahi Glass Foundation of Japan, to a better future. I am indebted also to many who have contributed generously to my intellectual development and emotional intelligence, including teachers, mentors, colleagues, family and friends. Social ties have been invaluable to survive the pressures of COVID-19.

It is encouraging to learn that the award committee has specifically acknowledged several key concepts I developed and their practical application worldwide, during almost 5 decades, including the Sustainomics framework, sustainable development triangle (economy, environment, society), balanced inclusive green growth (BIGG), and Millennium Consumption Goals (MCGs).

My research interests have evolved, from basic disciplines like engineering, physics and economics, to application sectors like energy, water, transport, ICT, and environmental resources, and finally to multidisciplinary topics like poverty, disasters, climate change and sustainable development. This eclectic experience helped me develop Sustainomics, as an integrative, trans-disciplinary methodology. Drawing on my past work and the global platform provided by the prestigious Blue Planet Prize, I will continue my modest efforts to make our planet more sustainable for all."

Inderscience's Editorial Office sends its sincere congratulations to Prof. Munasinghe for this outstanding and significant achievement.

Research pick: Advertising and Android - "Android apps and advertising networks – a survey on data privacy"

The concept of privacy in the age of the web and social media remains high on the agenda for many people – those on the business and marketing side who would like to advertise with greater precision and those on the consumer side who would not wish for their personal information and profile to be compromised. A new survey of data privacy in the context of applications, apps, available on the Android operating system and the mobile devices it runs, such as smartphones and tablets, has now been published in the International Journal of Information Privacy, Security and Integrity.

Dirk Pawlaszczyk of the Hochschule Mittweida – University of Applied Sciences in Mittweida, and Jannik Weber, Ralf Zimmermann and Christian Hummert of the Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sector (ZITiS), in Munich, Germany, explain how users leave the online equivalent of a paper trail as they use different apps and websites, they share information deliberately but also unwittingly as they hop from one app or site to another.

A naïve user perhaps imagines that the information they share is kept private among their friends and associates and obviously the app they are using at any given time. However, the apps and websites they visit are themselves often interconnected and networked together, harvesting data and information about their users and commonly sharing that information with their associated companies, usually for some kind of fee.

The companies would have it that this data harvesting allows them to offer consumers more pertinent advertising. But, of course, users may be oblivious to this targeting and succumb to the advertising when under normal circumstances they would never see a poignant advertisement and would simply see the same as all other users.

aThe team has now analysed the advertising networks associated with the top 100 free apps in the Google Play Store, the official source of software for use under the Android operating system. They have analysed the behaviour of the apps as well as the networking each does and to what other systems it connects. They found that the top apps all have direct connections to multiple advertising networks, up to fourteen in one instance.

There are many rules and regulations regarding advertising and in some parts of the world transparency for the user is paramount. Consent is needed in advance before such advertising network activity can be carried out under French law, for instance. Moreover, the European Union put in place General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws which apply to everyone dealing with EU citizens’ data. However, users like their apps and often accept “terms & conditions” without reading them thoroughly or worrying about the implications of giving consent to apps and the third parties with which those apps are associated.

The compromising of privacy by apps is a global problem. Rules and regulations are in place but the companies and their connections are not entirely transparent. Indeed, some are wholly opaque. The implications for the protection of individual users in the face of such opacity are enormous and there is a pressing need for revision in the way apps are allowed to function and what information they are allowed to access and assimilate from their users. The team points out that apps and their associates can gather all kinds of normally private information about a given device and its use and so discern a “fingerprint” for that device. Given that users commonly must login to various apps to make full use of them and also store personal details such as home and work address, contacts etc etc, it is no huge leap from that fingerprint being associated with an individual and thus the inescapable compromise of their privacy.

Pawlaszczyk, D., Weber, J., Zimmermann, R. and Hummert, C. (2020) ‘Android apps and advertising networks – a survey on data privacy’, Int. J. Information Privacy, Security and Integrity, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp.261–275.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology are now available here for free:

• A secure VM allocation scheme to preserve against co-resident threat
• Improvement of TCP Vegas algorithm based on forward direction delay
• Short text classification using feature enrichment from credible texts
• The research on two phase pickup vehicle routing based on the K-means++ and genetic algorithms
• A model-driven approach for the verification of an adaptive service composition

Special issue published: "Interdisciplinary Supply Chain Management"

International Journal of Integrated Supply Management 14(2) 2021

• A bibliometric analysis of trends in electronic service quality research over two decades
• Blockchain: a game changer in electronic waste management in India
• Operational risk management: analysis of challenges faced by banks in India
• Evaluation of inventory replenishment policies on supply chain performance with grey relational analysis
• An innovative and humane way of improving the efficiency and productivity of the manual loading process at Indian Oil Corporation Ltd., Panipat: a case study

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Sustainable Society

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Sustainable Society are now available here for free:

• Mixed migration flows into Europe: discharging state anti-trafficking obligations through the proper identification of trafficking victims
• Blood diamonds: an analysis of the state of affairs and the effectiveness of the Kimberley Process
• Measures to facilitate the scale-up of education for sustainable development in higher education
• Women's entrepreneurial narrative: making sense of the partner's role
• The nexus of climate change and hotel management in Malaysia: an exploratory study

Research pick: Microfinance for Indian startups - "Crowdfunding and start-ups: an Indian context"

Crowdfunding has proven a useful way to gather funds for charitable and activist causes, to help launch a product or book, and even to provide financial backing for individuals or groups in all kinds of endeavours. The concept involves calling on other people to make a donation to the worthy cause, promotion is usually done through a website, social media, email, and other communication routes, but might well also involve more traditional approaches such as posters, billboards, and conventional media advertising.

Writing in the International Journal of Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Socrates Shahrour and M.H. Uma of the CMS Business School at the Jain (Deemed-to-be) University in Bangalore, discuss the notion of crowdfunding in the context of start-up companies in India. The team points out that start-up companies make an important contribution to the economy as well as offering new opportunities for employment. Moreover, as the company grows so too should its contribution to the economy and its role as an employer.

By the very nature of a start-up company, it is at its beginnings and all such fledgling companies need capital investment of some sort. Traditionally, this might come through a bank loan or investment from individuals or even other companies. However, without a proven track record, it is often difficult for an entrepreneur to garner the funds to lift their business plan from the word processor and into the real world of developing and offering a product or providing a service.

Crowdfunding is an alternative approach where a multitude of small financial contributions, microfinance, accumulate sufficiently to allow the entrepreneur to make this leap. In return, those who provide the microfinancing will earn some kind of reward, perhaps something small like the kudos of being recognised officially as an early backer or something substantial like an early offering of the product or service for free or at a discount commensurate with their initial financial contribution.

Microfinance was recognised as long ago as the 1970s if not earlier but in the age of social media it becomes possible for an entrepreneur to reach and so recruit backers in far greater numbers and much faster than was plausible in the world of pen and paper rather than smartphones. Indeed, with a bigger crowdfunding audience, the contribution an individual needs to make to the start-up project can be much smaller than would be required from a smaller niche of backers or investors.

The team has reviewed the concept of crowdfunding in India and the legality of different approaches. They find that in the context of start-ups in India, the notion of peer-to-peer (P2P) microfinancing is more appropriate where other small companies help the start-ups and pay it forward as they develop. The rationale for this is that crowdfunding for donations in exchange for rewards does not fit well with the current legal framework in India.

Shahrour, S. and Uma, M.H. (2020) ‘Crowdfunding and start-ups: an Indian context’, Int. J. Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.335–343.

Research pick: Teenage Instagrammers! What are you thinking? - "What is inside the mind of teenagers on Instagram?"

Instagram is one of the most popular photo-sharing apps available to users the world over. It allows users to upload photos taken on their phones or indeed their digital camera and to apply various filters to “improve” the look of the photo as well as giving them space to add a description. People who follow a given user can “like” the photos or add comments. Other users may well see the photos if one’s account is set to public through the app’s search feature, via hashtags associated with a given photo or when a third party comments or shares a photo. The site was launched in October 2010 and was acquired by social media site Facebook in April 2012. It is estimated that more than a billion people use Instagram.

Researchers in Indonesia were aware that the most active age group on the app are the 18- to 34-year-olds. Moreover, the new users coming to this online realm tend to be teenagers. Writing in the International Journal of Business Information Systems, the team explains how they have analysed Instagram activity and modeled the results to ascertain what broad topic areas are most commonly used on the app by teenage users. They looked at almost active 500 accounts over a three-and-a-half-year period and found that two main categories stuck out in the analysis – school and relationships, with the latter, relationships, being by far the predominant topic.

Earlier research in Indonesia has shown that despite popular opinion, teenagers generally make use of social media apps, such as Instagram, in a relatively sensible way and that internet use, in general, does not lead to lower educational grades. However, there remains a need to understand the way in which the youth utilize the various apps available on their mobile phones and other devices. Critical to growth and good mental health may well be a clearer understanding among educators, parents and guardians, policymakers, and the social media companies and their app designers.

Rakhmawati, N.A., Valianta, T., Hafidz, I., Pratama, A., Ridwandono, D. and Annisa, L. (2021) ‘What is inside the mind of teenagers on Instagram?’, Int. J. Business Information Systems, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp.224–235.

Research pick: IoT and COVID-19 - "Secure data communication IoT and wireless sensor network for COVID-19"

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been much flaunted as the future of sensors and controllers allowing remote access to environmental and other information and facilitating feedback systems that would otherwise require human intervention. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote sensing and remote control of equipment has become increasingly important.

IoT devices already allow many tasks to be carried out in a wide variety of realms across industry, medicine, agriculture, environmental protection and much more. The emergence of a lethal, infectious disease that requires social distancing and increasing pressure on workers to work from home means that the IoT has an increasingly important role to play that will allow normality to continue for many systems and processes without people needing to be in the field, as it were.

Given that scientists are predicting that future pandemics may well be worse still in a world of drastic climate change and the problems that brings, the IoT could be set to become the new-normal that allows life to go on despite these problems. We might even be able to position ourselves using the IoT to pre-empt the issues that will inevitably arise in the next pandemic and as climate change leads to great unpredictability in weather patterns, sea levels, and other problems.

Anto Merline Manoharan of Anna University, in Chennai and M.G. Sumithra of the KPR Institute of Engineering and Technology, in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India, discuss an IoT technology inextricably linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the team describes secure IoT integrated with a wireless sensor network more monitoring the health condition of an infected patient. Writing in the International Journal of Sensor Networks, the team also explains their novel encryption system to ensure patient privacy. Currently, the encryption protocol is implemented on the server, the next step will be to port that software to the IoT devices and the wireless network itself, the team adds.

Manoharan, A.M. and Sumithra, M.G. (2021) ‘Secure data communication IoT and wireless sensor network for COVID-19’, Int. J. Sensor Networks, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp.11–24.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion are now available here for free:

• Impact of Hindu mythology on happiness with mediating effect of quality of life at the workplace
• Relational study between significance level of frontline executives and their happiness level in an organisational setup: a critical analysis
• Mediating role of self-efficacy on the relationship between conscientiousness and procrastination
• Exploring the linkage between emotional work and employee wellbeing: a study of civil aviation industry in North India
• Possible linkage between internet addiction, socio-demographic, and behavioural constructs: a case study of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain-based employees

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy are now available here for free:

• Building metatheory: a demonstration using the critical social marketing discourse
• The history and trajectory of economic value added from a management fashion perspective
• A comparison of the return forecasting power of domestic and international equity investors: evidence from India
• Exploring knowledge management in a Lean Six Sigma organisation
• A review of literature on impact of employer branding in talent management

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management are now available here for free:

• Prioritising factors influencing consumers' reversing intention of e-waste using analytic hierarchy process
• Do electronic loyalty programs still drive customer choice and repeat purchase behaviour?
• Evaluating the satisfaction index using automated interaction service and customer knowledgebase: a big data approach to 
• The current status of customer relationship management: experience of small businesses in the Jordanian food industry

Newly announced journal: International Journal of Digital Transformation

The International Journal of Digital Transformation explores the multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary challenges and opportunities presented to organisations through digital transformation. Digital transformation is explored from needs identification, conceptualisation and design perspectives through to implementation, as well as its subsequent consequences. A key feature is the examination of the relationship between strategic management and digital transformation. Digital transformation is seen as a combination of complex processes with the impact of prioritising one over others. This provides a fertile area for critical debate.

Rersearch pick: For whom does the online bell toll? - "Is this the beginning of the end for retail websites? A professional perspective"

For many years, the death knell for high street shopping has been sounded by the pioneers of online. The high street brands responded with some success by counterbalancing their “bricks and mortar” realm with a virtual world of e-commerce. New work published in the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, suggests that the end may well be in sight for retail websites.

Ricardo Ramos and Sérgio Moro of the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, and Paulo Rita of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, have investigated the attitudes and behaviour of marketing professionals with respect to social media and commercial mobile applications and found that online strategy is focusing very much on search engine positioning and thence retail websites rather than the former two overlapping and interconnected realms.

The team suggests that this flies in the face of consumer attitudes and experience where 90 percent of most user time online is on social media and apps and only 10 percent involves using search engines to find specific websites. Where there is resistance to accepting this reality, marketing professionals must disconnect themselves from an out-moded approach and face up to users where users are active online.

Ramos, R.F., Rita, P. and Moro, S. (2021) ‘Is this the beginning of the end for retail websites? A professional perspective’, Int. J. Internet Marketing and Advertising, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp.260–280.

Research pick: Scrambling against smudge attacks - "On the adoption of scramble keypad for unlocking PIN-protected smartphones"

The security-conscious among us use a PIN, a personal identification number, to “lock” our smartphones so that if the device is lost or stolen, a third party should not be able to access our contacts, messages, and other information held in myriad apps without a lot of effort to guess the PIN.

However, so many modern devices that hold our personal and business information are touchscreen and hackers and thieves are always resourceful. Picture the scene you give your phone screen a clean before tapping in your PIN to access your emails etc. The smudges left by your fingertips remain on the screen, marking out the likely numbers from the virtual keypad on your phone that you used to tap in your PIN.

Soon after, the phone is lost or stolen and that malicious third party carries out a “smudge attack” – they look at the screen and can have a good guess at the digits in your PIN and try them in various combinations pretty quickly. It is far easier to brute-force a four-digit PIN if you know the four digits rather than having to try all possible combinations of the numbers 0 to 9, after all!

So, how might one avoid a smudge attack? The obvious answer is to clean the phone’s screen more frequently and immediately after entering a PIN, but a less “onerous” approach would be for the device itself to have a randomised keypad for unlocking. In a scrambled keypad, the numbers 0 to 9 would be arranged differently each time you go to unlock your phone, so there would be no build-up of your frequently smudged keys as it were and thus far less chance of a successful smudge attack.

At the moment, a scrambled keypad is not a feature of Android nor iOS devices. New work from a team in the USA published in the International Journal of Information and Computer Security, demonstrates how a scramble keypad might be implemented to protect smartphones from smudge attacks. Geetika Kovelamudi, Bryan Watson, Jun Zheng, and Srinivas Mukkamala of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, in Socorro, have carried out a usability and security study of a scramble keypad. They explain that it works perfectly to protect from smudge attacks. The scramble keypad also reduces the risk of someone illicitly gleaning your PIN by “shoulder surfing” (watching over your shoulder) while you tap it in, because the digits of the pad 0 to 9 will not be in the familiar places for their eye to quickly ascertain as you tap.

The implementation of a scramble pad would require very little additional coding to the touchscreen device’s boot-up system but would offer a new level of protection from smudge attacks, a degree of protection from shoulder surfers, and potentially some protection from side-channel attacks.

Kovelamudi, G., Watson, B., Zheng, J. and Mukkamala, S. (2021) ‘On the adoption of scramble keypad for unlocking PIN-protected smartphones’, Int. J. Information and Computer Security, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.1–17.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Supply Chain and Operations Resilience are now available here for free:

• Disaster response supply chain in a city: the role of SMEs
• How can student's attitude impact education supply chain?
• Supply chain resilience and agility: a theoretical literature review
• Service portfolio extensions and sales incentives: an examination of financial value-added services provided by logistics service providers
• One size fits all? An analytical approach how to make use of process modelling techniques for different fundamental supply chain types

Research pick: Nepal’s unique take on lightning - "Unique lightning signatures observed from sub-tropical, mountainous country, Nepal"

While every lightning flash is unique in the way the discharge travels through the atmosphere, whether cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground or the more esoteric sprites, halos, jets, and elves of the upper atmosphere. There are common features in these different types of lightning and for cloud-to-ground flashes, it has been assumed that there are two main types of flash known to meteorologists and atmospheric scientists – negative ground flashes and positive ground flashes.

The difference between the negative and positive flash is simply that the polarity of the discharge reaching the ground in the lightning flash. Most (90 percent) cloud-to-ground flashes are negative ground flashes. Just 10 percent are positive. The positive ground flash involves a single stroke. However, writing in the International Journal of Hydrology Science and Technology, physicist Pitri Bhakta Adhikari of the Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal, explains a novel phenomenon seen in the sub-tropical, mountainous region of Nepal.

He has used a simple circuit and antenna system to measure the electrical signature of lightning flashes in the Himalayan region and found that positive ground flashes there are unique. Instead of involving a single strike, lightning here involves up to four strikes per flash, or discharge.

Adhikari explains that the lightning signature in this region is characterised by a relatively slow, negative electric field event preceded by a pronounced opposite-polarity pulse. The average duration of the main waveform was about 500 microseconds and the average duration of the preceding opposite-polarity pulses was approximately 40 microseconds. These figures are based on measurements of more than 5000 lightning flashes.

A likely explanation may lie in the fact that Nepal has regions that are a mere 60 metres above sea level and then within just 160 kilometres we can figuratively scale the giddy heights of Mount Everest, the peak at 8848 metres above sea level. Moreover across this altitude gradient and through the course of the seasons, Nepal can have a temperature ranging from a balmy 30 degrees Celsius down to –50 Celsius. All such characteristics are unique of themselves and so it is perhaps no surprise that the lightning seen in this region is unique too.

It is worth pointing out that lightning signatures not dissimilar to the unique flashes measured in Nepal have been seen occasionally in Sweden and Florida but not at anything like the frequency compared to other flashes seen in Nepal.

Adhikari, P.B. (2021) ‘Unique lightning signatures observed from sub-tropical, mountainous country, Nepal’, Int. J. Hydrology Science and Technology, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp.405–414.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of High Performance Systems Architecture

The following sample articles from the International Journal of High Performance Systems Architecture are now available here for free:

• Performance optimised architectures of Piccolo block cipher for low resource IoT applications
• A review on shared resource contention in multicores and its mitigating techniques
• Towards designing quantum reversible 32-bit MIPS register file
• Efficient hardware implementations of QTL cipher for RFID applications

Research pick: Pandemic effects on small companies - "Covid-19 pandemic: small actor point of view on manufacturing and logistics"

Everyone the world over has been affected enormously by the emergence of a novel coronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019, which led to the current COVID-19 pandemic. Our lives have been disrupted enormously by the medical, social, and economic implications of this lethal disease. Writing in the World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, a team from Finland offers a view from the small business manufacturing and logistics perspective in Finland.

Olli-Pekka Hilmola and Oskari Lähdeaho of LUT University, Kouvola Unit, point out that medium and large companies have continued to serve their customers and some have performed well in certain sectors. Hospitality and travel have obviously been limited in their performance because of lockdowns and social restrictions but online food retail, the information, and communications technology sector, and the pharmaceutical industry seem to be thriving in the face of the ongoing crisis. The smaller companies that need face-to-face interaction with customers for marketing, as well as their transactions, have not fared so well. Moreover, supply, logistics, and their ability to deliver their services and goods have been hurt significantly.

Smaller companies surveyed in Finland no longer have strong expectations with regard to their future ability to sell into and supply markets in China and Russia, the researchers report. They suggest that as we emerge from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, smaller companies will grow to depend on rail transport whereas the larger companies will still be able to readily access air freight.

The team adds that as weaknesses and indications of stagnation become apparent in their case studies of small businesses, more work is now needed to improve our understanding of the various scenarios that are developing and to help predict how things might develop or continue to fail among small businesses. They point out that previous large-scale events, such as the economic crisis of 2008-2009, have enormous long-term implications. We cannot yet see how this current pandemic, which is very much still with us in many parts of the world at the time of writing, will play out for business and economies.

If we learn at least one lesson from its effects, it is that sustainability needs to built into future economies starting now. Sustainability is key to address the much larger problem of climate change, pollution, water and food security, and perhaps allow us to face the next pandemic in the years to come with greater resilience and a more timely response so that we experience less hurt in our medical, social, and economic lives.

Hilmola, O-P. and Lähdeaho, O. (2021) ‘Covid-19 pandemic: small actor point of view on manufacturing and logistics’, World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp.87–105.

Special issue published: "Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Computing System Development"

International Journal of Engineering Systems Modelling and Simulation 12(2/3) 2021

• Cost-effective product prioritisation technique for software product line testing
• Enhanced impedance control for an sEMG-based prosthetic using RNE approach
• An orchestrator for networked control systems and its application to collision avoidance in multiple mobile robots
• Naive Bayes and deep learning model for wireless intrusion detection systems
• A compact CPW-fed wideband antenna with circular fractal elements for multiband operations
• Opportunities and challenges of machine learning models for prediction and diagnosis of spondylolisthesis: a systematic review
• Indian stock market analysis and prediction using LSTM model during COVID-19
• Role of machine learning and big data in healthcare for the prediction of epidemic diseases: a survey
• Simulation and experimental analysis on cast metal runs behaviour rate at different gating models
• A comprehensive review of deep learning models for plant disease identification and prediction
• Facial attendance system technology using Microsoft Cognitive Services
• Intelligent healthcare data segregation using fog computing with internet of things and machine learning
• A deep learning approach to fault detection in a satellite power system using Gramian angular field
• Mortality analysis of alcohol consumption using a hybrid machine learning model

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems are now available here for free:

• Intelligent data-driven monitoring of high dimensional multistage manufacturing processes
• A framework for differentiation in composed digital-physical products
• Evaluation on advantages of low frequency assisted drilling (LFAD) aluminium alloy Al7075
• Design and optimisation of a turning cutter embedded with impact damper
• A cost-effective device for online measurement of sheet metal bending angle on CNC press brakes based on capacitive sensors
• An industrial case study on discrete event modelling of value stream mapping for Industry 4.0
• An investigation of acceptance and e-readiness for the application of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies to maintenance training in the manufacturing industry
• Smart factory equipment integration through standardised OPC UA communication with companion specifications and equipment specific information models
• Data-driven productivity improvement in machinery supply chains
• Cutting force investigation in face milling of additively fabricated nickel alloy 625 via powder bed fusion
• Micro textured cutting tool effects on cutting forces, volumetric wear and adhesion in dry turning of titanium alloy
• Comparison of model free control strategies for chatter suppression by an inertial actuator
• Online correction of thermal errors based on a structure model
• Modelling and analysis of tool deflections in tailored micro end mills

Free open access article available: "CNN-based anomaly detection for packet payloads of industrial control system"

The following paper, "CNN-based anomaly detection for packet payloads of industrial control system" (International Journal of Sensor Networks 36(1) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.

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

Special issue published: "Innovative Computational Intelligence for Deep Learning and Knowledge Acquisition" (includes open access article)

International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies 10(2/3) 2021

• Code completion for programming education based on deep learning [FREE OPEN ACCES ARTICLE]
• Multi-objective optimisation of allocations and locations of incineration facilities with Voronoi diagram and genetic algorithm: case study of Hiroshima City and Aki County
• Efficient parameter-free adaptive penalty method with balancing the objective function value and the constraint violation
• Detecting audio adversarial examples for protecting speech-to-text transcription neural networks
• Using term similarity measures for classifying short document data
• A video prediction method by using long short-term memory-based adaptive structural learning of deep belief network and its investigation of input sequence length for data structure

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Sustainable Design

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Sustainable Design are now available here for free:

• Analysis of an indirect air heater solar dryer with multiple PCM
• Study and development of concepts of auxetic structures in bio-inspired design
• Environmental parameters for ecodesign: a tool based on ecolabel programs and life cycle thinking

Research pick: How does it feel? – Social data mining the student mood - "What are students thinking and feeling? Understanding them from social data mining"

Can social data mining reveal student feelings? A new study in the International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology suggests that this could be the case given that a student’s digital footprints on social media often reveal their personal experiences and opinions on a variety of subjects, including their course, their friends and family, and their own mental health.

Hua Zhao, Yang Zuo, Chunming Xu, and Hengzhong Li of the College of Computer Science and Engineering at Shandong University of Science and Technology in Qingdao, Shandong, China, suggest that educators and course administrators could benefit from social data mining to understand their students’ moods and provide appropriate help when needed. The same social data mining might also be used to spot trends and patterns as a course progresses and perhaps allow the course itself to be adapted within limits to best serve the students and their education.

Of course, there are such vast amounts of social data online and more added each data that mining such information can only ever tap the seam rather than extracting all of the putative knowledge within. At least that is the received wisdom, but the development of novel data mining tools and artificial intelligence algorithms might change that allowing new insights to be extracted in a timely manner.

The team has developed a new approach to help them understand the emotions and moods of a sample of Chinese students. First, they collect the appropriate social data related to the students and then build a hierarchy category system based on a content analysis. In the second step, they apply an effective multi-class classification method to classify the data into several categories of concern. Finally, a “sentiment” analysis around each category is undertaken to look for emotional content and language that can reveal changing moods in the students as a group or individually, for instance, surrounding exams and other matters. Obviously, exams are a major concern of students the world over and such an approach might be applicable elsewhere in social data mining student mood.

several categories of concern. Finally, a “sentiment” analysis around each category is undertaken to look for emotional content and language that can reveal changing mood in the students as a group or individually, for instance, surrounding exams and other matters. Obviously, exams are a major concern of students the world over and such an approach might be applicable elsewhere in social data mining student mood.

Zhao, H., Zuo, Y., Xu, C. and Li, H. (2021) ‘What are students thinking and feeling? Understanding them from social data mining’, Int. J. Computer Applications in Technology, Vol. 65, No. 2, pp.110–117.

Special issue published: "Advances in Operations Research"

International Journal of Operational Research 41(1) 2021

• A developed multi-criteria group decision-making method based on interval valued hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets and mentality parameter
• A FEPQ model of sustainable items with time and stock dependent demand under trade credit policy
• Self-adaptive bee colony optimisation algorithm for the flexible job-shop scheduling problem
• A postponed inventory system with modified M vacation policy
• Dynamic analysis to set idle time between jobs on a single machine
• Solving industrial multiprocessor task scheduling problems using an improved monkey search algorithm

Free open access article available: "Code completion for programming education based on deep learning"

The following paper, "Code completion for programming education based on deep learning" (International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies 10(2/3) 2021), is freely available for download as an open access article.

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

Special issue published: "Semantics and Metadata Lifecycle Management"

International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies 14(4) 2020

• Automatic metadata extraction via image processing using Migne's Patrologia Graeca
• An ontology-based method for improving the quality of process event logs using database bin logs
• A survey study on Arabic WordNet: baring opportunities and future research directions
• Stress-testing big data platform to extract smart and interoperable food safety analytics
• Data aggregation lab: an experimental framework for data aggregation in cultural heritage

Research pick: Flight shaming - "Flight shaming consumers into aviation sustainability: which factors moderate?"

Flight shaming is a modern social phenomenon. It emerged in Sweden in the summer of 2019 where people with an environmental bent feel obliged to embarrass friends and relatives who are taking more flights than they feel necessary – “flygskam”. It is apparent across the globe now and could be a growing issue for the aviation industry to address through better practices as well as marketing.

Given the emergence of COVID-19 towards the end of that year and its elevation to a global pandemic, flying became briefly less about the negative environmental impact than about avoiding the spread of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. Nevertheless, there are environmental issues still to consider and new research in the International Journal of Sustainable Aviation has looked at whether or not “flygskam” has led to a change in attitude among the ardent jetsetters?

Scott Winter, Tracy Lamb, Ryan Wallace, and Carolina Anderson of the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, USA, suggest that this initially European phenomenon of flight shaming is growing. It perhaps pivoted initially on the well-publicised activism of the young, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, a relative of Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius who qualifited and quantified the nature of global warming in the late 19th Century.

The US team carried out three studies with 847 participants and found that people were significantly less willing to fly when they had been flight shamed. Moderators of the attitude – value with sustainability and willingness to pay for sustainability – had a significant effect on whether or not a participant was inclined to fly or not. The team points out that making flight a more sustainable mode of transport would be the way to counter the effects of flight shaming.

“These results suggest that flight shaming may affect passengers’ willingness to fly, and the industry should consider promoting their efforts to reduce environmentally harmful effects of air travel and their initiatives for improving the sustainability of air travel,” the team concludes.

Winter, S.R., Lamb, T.L., Wallace, R.J. and Anderson, C.L. (2021) ‘Flight shaming consumers into aviation sustainability: which factors moderate?’, Int. J. Sustainable Aviation, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.21–45.

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems are now available here for free:

• Fingerprint and password controlled garage access system with belt pulley and power screw driven mechanism
• A learning-based short-term wind speed forecasting approach through spiking neural networks
• A self-learning fall detection system for elderly persons using depth camera
• Data-based reinforcement learning for lane keeping with input saturation
• Research on static reactive power generator based on asymmetric distribution network

Research pick: Algal diesel - "Production, characterisation, comparison, and performance of algae biodiesel as an eco-friendly fuel"

The search for sustainable energy sources continues apace. Research highlighted in the International Journal of Renewable Energy Technology, looks at one such source – algae, from which biodiesel can be derived. The work discusses production issues, characterisation, and compares the performance of such fuels with other sources of diesel.

Alpesh Virendrabhai Mehta and Nirvesh Sumanbhai Mehta of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Government Engineering College, Gujarat, India, explain how ongoing industrialisation is increasing energy demands worldwide. This is giving rise to various interlinked problems for humanity – dwindling resources, increased pollution, and climate change. The fossil fuels on which we have relied for decades represent an entirely unsustainable and highly polluting resource.

The potential to use carbon compounds derived from sustainable sources such as crops and algae offer an energy stop-gap. Sustainable sources have the benefit of being renewable and will be required while we continue to rely on combustion for vehicles, heating, and power production at least until completely sustainable and non-polluting power sources, such as wind, solar, and tidal can be made more universally available. There is also the potential for certain approaches to biofuels that replace fossil fuels to have a smaller carbon footprint for the same power output. The use of algae rather than fuel crops would have the added benefit of not displacing food agriculture.

The team has demonstrated that algal biodiesel is less viscous than conventional diesel and so has a shorter delay before combustion in a diesel engine. A minimal chemical delay also benefits algal diesel in terms of giving the highest brake thermal efficiency. The presence of oxygen in algal diesel also adds to this efficiency because the oxygen atoms act to promote combustion from “within” the fuel itself.

The team reports that algal diesel gives better performance than conventional diesel. Moreover, exhaust gas analysis of various blends satisfies the emission regulations for biodiesel in India, the team writes. They suggest that algal diesel would be an environmentally beneficial substitute for conventional diesel.

Mehta, A.V. and Mehta, N.S. (2021) ‘Production, characterisation, comparison, and performance of algae biodiesel as an eco-friendly fuel’, Int. J. Renewable Energy Technology, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp.177–200.

Special issue published: "Mechatronics in Automotive Vehicles"

International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems 9(1) 2021

• Simulation with car-following model considering vehicle dynamic features
• Handling performance criteria evaluation for vehicle suspension system with semi-active control strategies
• System configuration of instrumented half-scaled armoured vehicle to enhance handling performance due to lateral firing impact
• Designing a graphical user interface for the decision support system of driving fatigue
• Simulation of electro-mechanical friction clutch control using proportional derivative plus conditional integral control scheme for automotive application
• Vehicle drifting: mathematical theory and dynamic analysis for stabilised drifting of RWD vehicles

Free sample articles newly available from International Journal of Sustainable Aviation

The following sample articles from the International Journal of Sustainable Aviation are now available here for free:

• Peculiarities of airports development strategy in Ukraine in context of environmental friendly land management
• Laser welding and its implementation in the assembly of battery packs in aviation
• A comparison of crash investigation of two aircraft, one with flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder and the other, without them
• Comparative analysis in terms of environmental impact assessment between railway and air passenger transport operation: a case study
• Energy/power efficiency and parametric optimisation of a non-afterburning turbojet engine

Special issue published: "Knowledge, Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship in a Cross-Cultural Context: Economies and Sustainability as Future Challenges"

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 43(1) 2021

• Born to be successful: start-up patenting activity determinants
• Micro, small, and medium enterprises in emerging economies and economic transition: a comparative study between Indonesia and Hungary
• Family involvement and financial performance in SMEs: evidence from Italy
• Knowledge for natural disaster-resilient businesses in emerging economies: a focus on decision-making by tourism entrepreneurs
• Entrepreneurs' time perspective: attitude to adversities, opportunities and self-confidence
• Reality check: changes in business students' psychological resources as they move towards graduation
• Entrepreneurship and gender: what do behavioural profiles have to do with it?
• Government financial support: does it improve the performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in Lithuania?

Research pick: The A to H of academic assessment - "Is the h-index the best criterion to select scientists?"

There are various ways to measure success. In research, one of those is to look at citations in the literature, awards, one’s position in the academic hierarchy, and other factors. Usually, these are all measured individually but then rounded together to form a bigger picture of the academic status of a given research. In 2005, physicist Jorge Hirsch of the University of California San Diego devised a more formal approach to author-level metrics, the h-index.

The h-index measures both one’s output and the citation impact of that output as well as the quality – high or low – of the publications in which that work has been published. It has been shown that the h-index usually correlates with more obvious indicators of success, such as major and international awards in one’s field, fellowships, and position held at higher-level institutions, for instance.

The h-index has been seen for many years as a more useful indication of a scholar’s “intellectual” ranking, as it were. However, there are some drawbacks to this approach that have become more problematic when using it to evaluate or rank scholars. Writing in the International Journal of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation, Alberto Boretti of the Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, suggests that in the age of citation farms and hyper-authorship the h-index is no longer an “indication of better knowledge or productivity”.

Boretti suggests that there needs to be a new ranking tool that will subsume and improve on the h-index. He points that the h-index itself improved on earlier approaches to academic assessment but there must now be a way to see the inappropriate use of automated tools that boost an author’s citations, which is wholly fraudulent. The new tools also need to be able to determine from papers with inordinately long lists of authors exactly who the main contributors are and which authors played minor or even marginal roles and perhaps even which authors have been included as a matter of courtesy rather than content.

Moreover, suggests Boretti, who has held numerous research positions around the world during his career as well as spending many years in industry at a senior level, the new tools also need to be able to embed the quality of research, innovation, and commercialisation processes undertaken by an individual. Ultimately, the indexing of researchers is about selecting suitable candidates for the next position and being able to discern who will be the best fit for a research team based more on the opportunities they can offer based on their past successes. Moreover, a new approach will help weed out those who are attempting to game the system through “author stuffing” and cheating by using citation farms and other such tools to defraud the academic archives.

Boretti, A. (2020) ‘Is the h-index the best criterion to select scientists?’, Int. J. Research, Innovation and Commercialisation, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.160–167.