“We Release Them Little by Little”: Maturation and Gender Identity as Seen in the Use of Mobile Telephony

: This paper examines the social meaning behind the adoption of mobile telephones by teenagers in Norway. Through this adoption process one can see the way in which youths are developing their adult identity as well as their gendered identity. The primary database used in this analysis is from two telephone questionnaires of Norwegian youth aged 13–20 carried out in October and December 1998. A total of 2007 interviews are included. The survey instrument covered teenagers’ ownership of mobile telephones, payment forms and the use of mobile telephones to send and receive Short Message System (SMS) text messages. In addition, the analysis draws on a survey of 1001 Norwegian parents and ethnographic interviews of 12 families.     

e-Infrastructures: How Do We Know and Understand Them? Strategic Ethnography and the Biography of Artefacts

In health research and services, and in many other domains, we note the emergence of large-scale information systems intended for long-term use with multiple users and uses. These e-infrastructures are becoming more widespread and pervasive and, by enabling effective sharing of information and coordination of activities between diverse, dispersed groups, are expected to transform knowledge-based work. Social scientists have sought to analyse the significance of these systems and the processes by which they are created. Much current attention has been drawn to the often-problematic experience of those attempting to establish them. By contrast, this paper is inspired by concerns about the theoretical and methodological weakness of many studies of technology and work organisation—particularly the dominance of relatively short-term, often single site studies of technology implementation. These weaknesses are particularly acute in relation to the analysis of infrastructural technologies. We explore the relevance to such analysis of recent developments in what we call the Biography of Artefacts (BoA) perspective—which emphasises the value of strategic ethnography: theoretically-informed, multi-site and longitudinal studies: We seek to draw insights here from a programme of empirical research into the long-term evolution of corporate e-infrastructures (reflected in current Enterprise Resource Planning systems) and review some new conceptual tools arising from recent research into e-Infrastructures (e-Is). These are particularly relevant to understanding the current and ongoing difficulties encountered in attempts to develop large-scale Health Infrastructures.     

Robots in the classroom: Differences in students’ perceptions of credibility and learning between “teacher as robot” and “robot as teacher”

Advancements in technology are bringing robotics into interpersonal communication contexts, including the college classroom. This study was one of the first to examine college students’ communication-related perceptions of robots being used in an instructional capacity. Student participants rated both a human instructor using a telepresence robot and an autonomous social robot delivering the same lesson as credible. However, students gave higher credibility ratings to the teacher as robot, which led to differences between the two instructional agents in their learning outcomes. Students reported more affective learning from the teacher as robot than the robot as teacher, despite controlled instructional performances. Instructional agent type had both direct and indirect effects on behavioral learning. The direct effect suggests a potential machine heuristic in which students are more likely to follow behavioral suggestions offered by an autonomous social robot. The findings generally support the MAIN model and the Computers are Social Actors paradigm, but suggest that future work needs to be done in this area.     

“Missing women”: Gender,ICTs, and the shaping of the global economy

In a key article (Walsham & Sahay, 2005) outlining research on information systems in developing countries and suggesting potential areas for future research, a notable omission was the issue of gender and gender relations. In this article, we draw on the substantial gender and development literature to demonstrate the centrality of gender to our understanding of information systems (IS) in developing countries. In particular, we consider the relationship among gender, information and communication technologies (ICTs), and globalization to illustrate how changes in the global economy both impact on and are influenced by changing gender identities and roles. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Quality and the efficiency of data in “Smart-Cities”

As a new form of sustainable development, the concept “Smart Cities” knows a large expansion during the recent years. It represents an urban model, refers to all alternative approaches to metropolitan ICTs case to enhance quality and performance of urban service for better interaction between citizens and government. However, the smart cities based on distributed and autonomous information infrastructure contains millions of information sources that will be expected more than 50 billion devices connected by using IoT or other similar technologies in 2020. In Information Technology, we often need to process and reason with information coming from various sources (sensors, experts, models). Information is almost always tainted with various kinds of imperfection: imprecision, uncertainty, ambiguity, we need a theoretical framework general enough to allow for the representation, propagation and combination of all kinds of imperfect information. The theory of belief functions is one such Framework. Real-time data generated from autonomous and distributed sources can contain all sorts of imperfections regarding on the quality of data e.g. imprecision, uncertainty, ignorance and/or incompleteness. Any imperfection in data within smart city can have an adverse effect over the performance of urban services and decision making. In this context, we address in this article the problem of imperfection in smart city data. We will focus on handling imperfection during the process of information retrieval and data integration and we will create an evidential database by using the evidence theory in order to improve the efficiency of smart city. The expected outcomes from this paper are (1) to focus on handling imperfection during the process of information retrieval and data integration (2) to create an evidential database by using the evidence theory in order to improve the efficiency of smart city. As experimentation we present a special case of modeling imperfect data in the field of Healthcare. An evidential database will be built which will contain all the perfect and imperfect data. These data come from several Heterogeneous sources in a context of Smart Cities. Imperfect aspects in the evidential database expressed by the theory of beliefs that will present in this paper.     

Self-correcting mechanisms and echo-effects in social media: An analysis of the “gunman in the newsroom” crisis

The positive and negative effects of social media in crises are currently receiving an increased amount of scholarly attention. This study focuses on Twitter users in the context of a crisis in the Netherlands on January 29, 2015. After having made a bomb threat, an armed man managed to get access to the national news broadcasting station around 8 pm, where he demanded airplay to share “an important message” with Dutch citizens. Three weeks after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris, approximately 1.5 million viewers were anxious that a similar attack was taking place in the television studio. The crisis, also followed by social media users, reached a climax when armed policemen arrested the man, which was later shown on national TV. We analyzed 58,931 tweets, posted in the six hours after the incident. By examining shared facts and rumors during the gunman crisis, we identified an “echo-effect”: the dissemination of older tweets continued after the posting of new facts by the same source. Moreover, we found that two rumors were based on misinterpreted humor in Twitter messages. The study adds insight into the self-correcting mechanism of social media communities when verifying and dispelling online rumors during crises.     

Better Safe than Sorry: A Study of Investigating Individuals’ Protection of Privacy in the Use of Storage as a Cloud Computing Service

Since the use of network-based storage as a cloud computing service [Storage as a Service (StaaS)] becomes ubiquitous, users who store data in the cloud are exposed to risk and potentially severe consequences. Therefore, individuals should carefully consider security and privacy issues when using StaaS. Drawing upon the principle of self-preservation and the theory of protection motivation, this study develops a research model explaining the mechanisms leading to the development of a protection strategy for individuals’ safe use of StaaS and empirically tests the proposed model. The results show that the natural propensity to trust, an individual trait, influences an individual’s need for privacy. This, in turn, along with perception of privacy risk, significantly affects individuals’ perception of the need to protect themselves. Three coping appraisal factors, preventive measures, self-efficacy, and willingness to incur cost of prevention, together with the individual perceived need to protect self, directly and positively affect users’ need to develop a protection strategy in a cloud computing environment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Internet technology in support of the concept of “communities-of-practice”: the case of Xerox

Work practices usually differ fundamentally from the way that organizations describe their operations in manuals, training programs, etc. This paper focuses on the way that certain work practices are supported at Xerox, and the conclusions of this effort are related to complementary investigations on learning and innovation. Here we propose that the combination of work, learning and innovation should be reconsidered within the framework of informal “communities-of-practice.” Information Technology tends to be used in order to reinforce the old work and study paradigms. This paper suggests a different use of IT, a use especially well suited to intra- and internets, with the aim of supporting informal structures rather than formal procedures. The case of Xerox Corporation is used as an example.     

Knowledge spaces and places: From the perspective of a “born-global” start-up in the field of urban technology

The success of cities increasingly relies on its capacity to capitalize on its knowledge base, but also on its potential to anchor external knowledge and the strategies of knowledge-based firms. In this paper we analyze how a “born global” start-up firm is linked to different types of places, and how it explores and exploits different territorial innovation potentials. Our case company—i.e., Living PlanIT—develops, tests and sells smart city software to processes real-time information collected through sensors embedded in a city’s buildings and infrastructure towards energy savings and manifold efficiency gains. The paper illustrates how the interaction with different places and knowledge-based cities provides unique resources for the technology development, search, experimentation, market formation and societal legitimation. Beyond focusing on a place’s fixed knowledge assets, the paper empirically assesses the innovation functions of different types of knowledge-cities and temporary “non-places” such as international high-level events.     

A Review of “College Libraries and Student Culture: What We Now Know”

This article discusses a student-guided Instagram program for first-year English composition classes at the University of Montevallo during Fall 2013. The activity engaged aspects of critical pedagogy by placing value on students’ prior experiences as creators and users of information and encouraging a classroom environment guided by student input. Since the program was meant for students in their first semester, it was also designed to be fun and social. The Instagram program helped students encounter the unfamiliar academic library environment through the familiar medium of social media, alleviating library anxiety as they produced online content representing their experience.     

Distilling the salient features of natural systems: Commentary on “On the mapping of genotype to phenotype in evolutionary algorithms” by Whigham,Dick and Maclaurin

Here we comment on the article, “On the mapping of genotype to phenotype in evolutionary algorithms”, by Peter A. Whigham, Grant Dick, and James Maclaurin. The authors present a critical view on the use of genotype to phenotype mapping in Evolutionary Algorithms, and how the use of this analogy can be detrimental for problem solving. They examine a grammar-based approach to Genetic Programming (GP), Grammatical Evolution (GE), and highlight properties of GE which are detrimental to effective evolutionary search. Rather than use loose analogies and methaphors, we suggest that a focus should be (and has been in GE and other approaches to GP) on addressing one of the most significant open issues in our field, i.e., What are the sufficient set of features in natural, genetic, evolutionary and developmental systems, which can translate into the most effective computational approaches for program synthesis?     

“I Fall Asleep in Class … But Physics Is Fascinating”: The Use of Large-Scale Longitudinal Data to Explore the Educational Experiences of Aspiring Girls in Mathematics and Physics

This article explores how students' aspirations to study mathematics or physics in post-16 education are associated with their perceptions of their education, their motivations, and the support they feel they received. The analysis is based on the responses of around 10,000 students in England in Year 8 (age 12–13) and then in Year 10 (age 14–15). The students were first surveyed during 2008–2009 and then followed up in 2010–2011. t-tests revealed a decline in their perceptions of their mathematics and physics education. Factor analyses indicated subject-specific constructs that were associated with gender aspiration groups (i.e., high-aspiring girls, high-aspiring boys, low-aspiring girls, low-aspiring boys). High-aspiring girls were more likely than low-aspiring boys to be positive about mathematics/physics education, motivation in these subjects, and support received. However, high-aspiring girls were less likely than high-aspiring boys to be encouraged by their teachers and families to continue with these subjects post-16 and had lower self-concepts, intrinsic valuations, and perceptions of lessons. Low-aspiring girls reported the least favorable views of their mathematics/physics education of all four gender aspiration groups. Findings were generally similar for mathematics and physics, although students overall responded more favorably to mathematics than to physics. The quantitative findings are illustrated with extracts from longitudinal interviews (ages 15, 16, and 17) of two high-aspiring girls.     

Modeling of the energies and splitting of the Qx and Qy bands in positional isomers of zinc pyridinoporphyrazines by TDDFT approach: Can TDDFT help distinguishing the structural isomers?

Electronic structures, energies and splitting of the Q_x and Q_y bands for positional isomers of zinc mono-, di-, tri-, and tetra pyridinoporphyrazines as well as parent zinc phthalocyanine were investigated using density functional theory (DFT) and time-dependent (TD) DFT approaches. The influence of the Hartree–Fock exchange on excited state energies and Q_x and Q_y bands splitting were studied using GGA BP86 and hybrid B3LYP and PBE1PBE exchange-correlation functionals. Solvent effects were estimated using the polarized continuum model (PCM) approach and cyclohexane, toluene, or DMSO as solvents. It was found that general trends in the Q_x and Q_y band energies and splitting correlate very well with the available experimental data on pyridinoporphyrazines and follow the trends in HOMO–LUMO and HOMO–LUMO + 1 energy gaps as well as LUMO–LUMO + 1 splitting. TDDFT trends allow estimation of the Q_x and Q_y band energies and splitting in unknown tripyridinoporphyrazines and in individual positional isomers of tetrapyridinoporphyrazines.     

The mysterious optimality of Naive Bayes: Estimation of the probability in the system of “classifiers”

Bayes Classifiers are widely used currently for recognition, identification and knowledge discovery. The fields of application are, for example, image processing, medicine, chemistry (QSAR). However, by mysterious way the Naive Bayes Classifier usually gives a very nice and good presentation of recognition. More complex models of Bayes Classifier cannot improve it considerably. We demonstrate here a very nice and simple proof of the Naive Bayes Classifier optimality that can explain this interesting fact. The derivation in the current paper is based on a paper of the author written in 2002.     

A commentary and correction on the article “Pansharpening by exploiting sharpness of the spatial structure”

This study clarifies the implicit potential deficiency caused by the sparse cardinality parameter k in Rong et al. (2014). In addition, k = β × W × M × N (0.9 ≤ β < 1) is suggested to avert this potential deficiency, where β is a ratio controlling the amount of sparse cardinality, W is the number of multispectral bands and M × N is the size of panchromatic image. With the choice of k suggested in this study, the low rank matrix L and sparse matrix S obtained by Go Decomposition (Zhou and Tao 2011) can be iteratively optimized and solved. Thus, instead of choosing k as W × M × N in Rong et al. (2014), the potential deficiency that L is directly obtained as an analytic solution can be averted.     

Modalities in linear logic weaker than the exponential “of course”: Algebraic and relational semantics

We present a semantic study of a family of modal intuitionistic linear systems, providing various logics with both an algebraic semantics and a relational semantics, to obtain completeness results. We call modality a unary operator on formulas which satisfies only one rale (regularity), and we consider any subsetW of a list of axioms which defines the exponential of course of linear logic. We define an algebraic semantics by interpreting the modality as a unary operation on an IL-algebra. Then we introduce a relational semantics based on pretopologies with an additional binary relationr between information states. The interpretation of is defined in a suitable way, which differs from the traditional one in classical modal logic. We prove that such models provide a complete semantics for our minimal modal system, as well as, by requiring the suitable conditions onr (in the spirit of correspondence theory), for any of its extensions axiomatized by any subsetW as above. We also prove an embedding theorem for modal IL-algebras into complete ones and, after introducing the notion of general frame, we apply it to obtain a duality between general frames and modal IL-algebras.     

Reasoning about coalitional agency and ability in the logics of “bringing-it-about”

The logics of “bringing-it-about” have been part of a prominent tradition for the formalization of individual and institutional agency. They are the logics to talk about what states of affairs an acting entity brings about while abstracting away from the means of action. Elgesem’s proposal analyzes the agency of individual agents as the goal-directed manifestation of an individual ability. It has become an authoritative modern reference. The first contribution of this paper is to extend Elgesem’s logic of individual agency and ability to coalitions. We present a general theory and later propose several possible specializations. As a second contribution, we offer algorithms to reason with the logics of bringing-it-about and we analyze their computational complexity.