On technological and analytical innovations in insurance research and industry practice

Summer: Time for Family Meals that Can Shape the Future

Environmental pollution is a pressing global issue, and the Internet of Things (IoT) offers transformative potential for its management through its application in advanced real-time monitoring and analytics. However, the heterogeneous and fragmented nature of IoT technologies poses challenges to seamless integration, limiting the efficacy of these solutions in addressing environmental impacts. This paper addresses these challenges by reviewing recent developments in IoT technologies, encompassing sensor networks, computing frameworks, and application layers for enhanced pollution management. A comprehensive analysis of 74,604 academic publications and 35,000 patent documents spanning from 2008 to 2024 is conducted using a textual analysis that combines quantitative bibliometric methods along with a qualitative analysis based on both scholarly research and patent innovations. This approach allows us to identify key challenges in IoT implementation for environmental monitoring—including integration, interoperability, and scalability issues—and to highlight corresponding architectural solutions. Our findings reveal emerging technology trends that aim to overcome a few of these challenges, and we present a scalable IoT architecture as key discussions that enhances system interoperability and efficiency for pollution monitoring. This framework provides targeted solutions for specific tasks in pollution monitoring while guiding decision-makers to adopt solutions effectively.

<i>Epilepsia</i> and the rough seas of medical publishing

The Indian manufacturing sector is undergoing a significant transformation with the integration of Industry 4.0 technologies, reshaping traditional supply chain models into more agile, data-driven, and intelligent systems. This thesis investigates the impact of digital transformation on Indian manufacturing supply chains by examining the adoption of technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data Analytics, and Cyber-Physical Systems. Through the analysis of primary and secondary data from various Indian manufacturing firms, thestudy explores the drivers, challenges, and outcomes associated with digital adoption. The research highlights how digital initiatives enhance operational efficiency, reduce lead times, and improve decision-making capabilities across the supply chain. Additionally, it identifies gaps in technological readiness and workforce capabilities that hinder the full-scale implementation of Industry 4.0. The findings suggest that a strategic roadmap involving investment in digital infrastructure, employee training, and policy support is essential for accelerating the digital transformation of supply chains in India. This thesis contributes to both academic literature and industrial practices by offering actionable insights into the future of manufacturing in a digitally connected ecosystem. Keywords Industry 4.0, Digital Transformation, Indian Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Cyber-Physical Systems, Smart Manufacturing, Operational Efficiency

The Internet of Things (IoT) has set the way for the continuing digitalization of society in various manners during the past decade. The IoT is a vast network of intelligent devices exchanging data online. The security component of IoT is crucial given its rapid expansion as a new technology paradigm since it may entail safety-critical procedures and the online storage of sensitive data. Unfortunately, security is the primary challenge when adopting Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. As a result, manufacturers’ and academics’ top priority now is improving the security of IoT devices. A substantial body of literature on the subject encompasses several issues and potential remedies. However, most existing research fails to offer a comprehensive perspective on attacks inside the IoT. Hence, this survey aims to establish a structure to guide researchers by categorizing attacks in the taxonomy according to various factors such as attack domains, attack threat type, attack executions, software surfaces, IoT protocols, attacks based on device property, attacks based on adversary location and attacks based on information damage level. This is followed by a comprehensive analysis of the countermeasures offered in academic literature. In this discourse, the countermeasures proposed for the most significant security attacks in the IoT are investigated. Following this, a comprehensive classification system for the various domains of security research in the IoT and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is developed, accompanied by their respective remedies. In conclusion, the study has revealed several open research areas pertinent to the subject matter.

Internet of Things (IoT) has received considerable attention in both industry and academia in recent years. There has been significant research on access control models for IoT in academia, while industrial deployment of several cloud-enabled IoT platforms have already been introduced. However, as yet there is no consensus on a formal access control model for cloud-enabled IoT. Currently, most of the cloud-enabled IoT platforms utilize some customized form of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), but RBAC by itself is insufficient to address the dynamic requirements of IoT. In this paper, we study one of the commercial cloud-IoT platform, AWS IoT, and develop a formal access control model for it, which we call AWS-IoTAC. We do this by extending AWS cloud’s formal access control (AWSAC) model, previously published in the academic literature, to incorporate the IoT specific components. The AWS-IoTAC model is abstracted from AWS IoT documentation and has been formalized based on AWSAC definitions. We show how this model maps to a recently proposed Access Control Oriented (ACO) architecture for cloud-enabled IoT. We demonstrate a smart-home use case in AWS IoT platform, and inspired by this use case, we propose some Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) extensions to the AWS-IoTAC model for enhancing the flexibility of access control in IoT.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has found a wide application in different domains. One domain in which IoT has considerable impact is in Education. In this context, IoT plays an important role in obtaining information about the environment and actors in which the educational processes take place. This paper presents a systematic review of the literature identifying how IoT is integrated in Education to enhance personalization of online learning processes. To achieve this, we conducted an extensive mapping study analyzing the different techniques and methods used to integrate IoT in Education with particular focus on Personalized Online Learning (POL). Our mapping study involved screening of more than 6400 research and academic articles, from which 65 papers were identified as having implemented experimental or solution-based research involving IoT. From preliminary results we determined that the use of IoT in Education to implement POL is in its early stages. This study highlights the possible gaps in implementing IoT in POL and suggests future work opportunities for researchers, educators, and practitioners.

Reviews and industry: A love‐hate relationship

La rivoluzione digitale è una rivoluzione sia tecnologica che culturale ed è di conseguenza destinata ad avere un grande e crescente impatto sulla società. I tempi di evoluzione stanno accelerando e vengono introdotte costantemente nuove tecnologie che impattano sul mondo delle biblioteche. Tra queste, l’internet delle cose si sta rapidamente sviluppando anche grazie all’ausilio di altre tecnologie come la blockchain e l’intelligenza artificiale. L’articolo traccia gli elementi principali di queste tre evoluzioni tecnologiche, la nascita e gli sviluppi, definendone le caratteristiche e gli usi generali per poi soffermarsi sulle applicazioni già realizzate in ambito bibliotecario o potenzialmente realizzabili e attualmente allo studio, e presentando linee guida emanate da diverse istituzioni. L’applicabilità di blockchain, intelligenza artificiale e internet delle cose è molto ampia nel mondo della conoscenza e dell’informazione, e quindi delle biblioteche, tanto da doversi chiedere non quali attività bibliotecarie ne saranno interessate, ma se e quali non ne saranno interessate. L’articolo esamina realizzazioni e progetti, sia in Italia che all’estero, condotti nelle tradizionali attività bibliotecarie di ogni tipo di biblioteca (catalogazione, sviluppo delle raccolte, information literacy) e nel mondo della comunicazione scientifica e della biblioteconomia accademica (editoria scientifica, peer-review, valutazione).

Academic publishing discussed in scholarships from the industry perspectives is reimagined to explore the academic publishing field from the perspectives of academics. Academic publishing is a ‘communication circuit’ in which the roles of varied the stakeholders, government, universities, publishers and libraries, are not only significant but also need to be adhered to by the academics. The significance of research publications due to the various factors, such as performance-based approach in allocation of research grants, university publishing policies contributing towards the tenure of academics require diligent analysis for understanding of the academic publishing field. A holistic approach from using the social theories is quintessential for examining the academic publishing environment inculcating the role of higher education institutes and its governing policies. This article through reimaging the academic publishing field establishes that though academic publishers are global, the publishing practices of academics are distinct to each country because academics are interdependent on the stakeholders, namely universities and government.

BackgroundThe pathway from evidence generation to consumption contains many steps which can lead to overstatement or misinformation. The proliferation of internet-based health news may encourage selection of media and academic research articles that overstate strength of causal inference. We investigated the state of causal inference in health research as it appears at the end of the pathway, at the point of social media consumption.MethodsWe screened the NewsWhip Insights database for the most shared media articles on Facebook and Twitter reporting about peer-reviewed academic studies associating an exposure with a health outcome in 2015, extracting the 50 most-shared academic articles and media articles covering them. We designed and utilized a review tool to systematically assess and summarize studies’ strength of causal inference, including generalizability, potential confounders, and methods used. These were then compared with the strength of causal language used to describe results in both academic and media articles. Two randomly assigned independent reviewers and one arbitrating reviewer from a pool of 21 reviewers assessed each article.ResultsWe accepted the most shared 64 media articles pertaining to 50 academic articles for review, representing 68% of Facebook and 45% of Twitter shares in 2015. Thirty-four percent of academic studies and 48% of media articles used language that reviewers considered too strong for their strength of causal inference. Seventy percent of academic studies were considered low or very low strength of inference, with only 6% considered high or very high strength of causal inference. The most severe issues with academic studies’ causal inference were reported to be omitted confounding variables and generalizability. Fifty-eight percent of media articles were found to have inaccurately reported the question, results, intervention, or population of the academic study.ConclusionsWe find a large disparity between the strength of language as presented to the research consumer and the underlying strength of causal inference among the studies most widely shared on social media. However, because this sample was designed to be representative of the articles selected and shared on social media, it is unlikely to be representative of all academic and media work. More research is needed to determine how academic institutions, media organizations, and social network sharing patterns impact causal inference and language as received by the research consumer.

Cross-docking is a supply chain distribution and logistics strategy for which less-than-truckload shipments are consolidated into full-truckload shipments. Goods are stored up to a maximum of 24 hours in a cross-docking terminal. In this chapter, we build on the literature review by Ladier and Alpan (2016), who reviewed cross-docking research and conducted interviews with cross-docking managers to find research gaps and provide recommendations for future research. We conduct a systematic literature review, following the framework by Ladier and Alpan (2016), on cross-docking literature from 2015 up to 2020. We focus on papers that consider the intersection of research and industry, e.g., case studies or studies presenting real-world data. We investigate whether the research has changed according to the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016). Additionally, we examine the adoption of Industry 4.0 practices in cross-docking research, e.g., related to features of the physical internet, the Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems in cross-docking methodologies or case studies. We conclude that only small adaptations have been done based on the recommendations of Ladier and Alpan (2016), but we see growing attention for Industry 4.0 concepts in cross-docking, especially for physical internet hubs.

Alternative modes of publication for novice researchers

In the present academic world, excellence is often defined, proved and traded by using the level – both quantitative and qualitative – of scholarly research and publications realized by the staff of higher education institutions. This vision is grounded into the North American perception of academic quality, which was willingly adopted and applied by the top-ranking institutions, consequently becoming standard currency in today’s globalized academic marketplace. Although this vision has undisputable merits – especially in what concerns the capacity to clearly measure academic quality by using the number and ranking of scholarly publications, it may not always be adopted and recognized as the most desirable yardstick of organizational excellence by some stakeholders of higher education institutions. To investigate the relationship between academic excellence and scholarly research and publications, from the perspective of various stakeholder groups, we initiated in May 2018 a research project centered around the evolving research strategy of Montpellier Business School (MBS), located in the south of France. Founded in 1897, in the last 15 years MBS has known an impressive growth in the number of students and professors. Presently accredited by both the French higher education bodies, and by international institutions (AACSB, EPAS, AMBA), MBS has followed a distinctive strategy that led to a position of leader in the French market of apprentice students – students that follow their studies while working in (and being paid by) companies. In parallel, to achieve the quality standards required by national and – especially – international accreditations, the school introduced an ambitious program of increasing the number and quality of academic publications. At present, although academic quality is holistically defined and measured using three indicators (i.e., pedagogical quality, research quality, and general service), the evaluation of professors’ contribution is skewed towards research excellence. We collected primary data through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with a sample of 20 people, from each of the following categories of stakeholders: students, professors, companies. To avoid “politically correct answers” the discussions took place in informal settings, without revealing the aim of the project. The answers and the notes regarding the “non-verbal” behavior displayed by interviewees were written down immediately after the discussion, and then manually coded by the researcher, using open and axial coding techniques. The results indicate, as expected, that the perception of stakeholders regarding this topic depends on their specific interests and profiles. Although, in principle, all stakeholders outlined the importance of scholarly research and publications for knowledge creation, professional evolution, and theoretical understanding, from a practical perspective, many interviewees – especially company representatives and students – deplored the strong focus on theoretical research that has little relevance for their professional development and applications. Among some thought-provoking findings is the opinion that a good researcher is often a poor teacher, in direct relation to the level of his/her publications’ ranking, and that scholarly research and publication increasingly functions as a closed hierarchical system that has lost touch with the practical questions and needs of company managers and students.

How humans behave with emerging technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic?