Activities In Different Locations Research Articles

USE OF DIGITAL MARKETING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN MARKETING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS

This research explores the utilization of information technology, particularly digital marketing, in the marketing of agricultural products. Focusing on Wonotulus Village in Purworejo Regency, Indonesia, the study addresses challenges faced by millennial farmers due to lengthy distribution chains and dependence on middlemen, proposing online marketing strategies as a solution. Through in-depth references and case studies in various villages, the research emphasizes the impact of digital marketing on farmers' bargaining positions, market access, and income growth. The implementation of training, mentoring, and marketplace management activities in different locations demonstrates positive transformations. The results indicate increased enthusiasm, improved knowledge, and successful utilization of social media and e-commerce platforms. The discussion highlights the flexibility required in adapting digital marketing strategies to local characteristics. Challenges such as technology accessibility and varying levels of understanding among farmers are discussed, along with opportunities for global market expansion. Comparative analyses among case studies provide insights into successful aspects and potential improvements. The conclusion underscores the effectiveness of digital marketing, emphasizing the importance of training and mentoring for SME participants. This research contributes to the understanding of how technology can empower farmers, enhance local economic growth, and ensure the sustainability of agricultural businesses.

Everyday Activities of Older Adults in Tianjin, China: Coupling Constraints, Gendered Mobilities and Social Context.

Many Western studies have indicated that older women are generally more vulnerable in terms of mobility compared to older men, particularly regarding driving. However, the situation may differ in the context of China. This study, based on activity diaries and semi-structured interviews, focuses on the spatiotemporal behavior of older adults in Tianjin and explores how the constraints posed by activity companions (in terms of type, size, and composition) shape the mobilities of older men and women, including activity locations, travel distances, and transportation modes. The key findings are as follows: First, older women are more engaged with their families due to a higher percentage and longer duration of activities spent with family members. Second, older men tend to have more concentrated travel distances near their homes compared to older women. Third, older women exhibit a broader range of activities in different locations and engage in longer-distance leisure travel with family members when compared to older men. In the context of Western literature, this study discusses older women's enhanced social interactions, their earlier retirement in China, and the impact of COVID-19 as factors that help explain these findings. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of accompanied mobilities among Chinese older adults using geographical theory and methods, emphasizing the importance of flexible work schedules for the workforce and the organization of community-based activities to promote the social interactions and mobilities of older adults.

COMMEMORATING THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF HOWARD GARDNER’S THEORY OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES VIA RESEARCH OF HIS APPROACH ON DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EDUCATION SYSTEMS IN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN

Individual and social well-being is a priority of the OECD 2030 Learning Compass aiming at contributing to generally more livable societies. One of the thought leaders of this international professional innitiative and guidelines is Howard Gardner, the father of the theory of multiple intelligences (MI). This approach implies that human intelligence should be differentiated into modalities, rather than be accepted as a general ability. The present publication aims at commemorating the 40th birth anniversary of MI theory, illustrating different ways of its possible educational implications in the Carpathian Basin, that have been carried out in the past fifteen years by a team of researchers lead by Dezső and attached to the doctoral school in education sciences at the Faculty of Hunmanities and Social Sciences of the University of Pecs, Hungary. The teams’ professional results contain edited compilations of lesson plans, and thematic projects using Gardner’s theory, testbook analysis from adequate aspects, and relevant research on coopretion between pre-service teacher education and schools with socially disadvantaged pupils. One of the most longitudinal researches of the field is Schmidt’s development focusing on pre-scool education. Her work is built on one of the US «Project Zero» Project Spectrum methods, and is called EIDW (Everybody is Intelligent in Different Ways). Schmidt adopted games and activities in different locations in the Carpathian Basin and observed different children’s intelligence profiles as well as those of their educators’. Abraham and Kolip’s researches are in their emerging stage. Whereas Abraham has investigated possible manifestations of inter-, and intrapersonal intelligences in a Vojvodinan kindergarten, as part of MI, aiming at illustrating how socialization in the education system affects these components of children’s personalities, Kolip has focused on even younger children and their educators concerning these areas in a South-Transdanubian village nursery. Although the participants of the research team have issued their findings several times, this is the first publication their work is presented as a common achievement. Keywords: the theory of multiple intelligences, individual and social well-being, educational development, professional cooperation.

Incorporating social benefits in optimal design of bioethanol supply chains: a case study in China

ABSTRACT In this paper, we propose a new method of measuring social benefits of bioethanol supply chains, which considers job creation, biomass purchase and different impact of economic activities in different locations. A multi-objective MILP model is developed to address the optimal design of a bioethanol supply chain which maximizes both economic and social benefits. The ε-constraint method is employed, and a set of Pareto-optimal solutions is obtained. The developed model is applied to case studies in Heilongjiang Province in Northeast China. Actual data are collected as practical as possible for the feasibility and effectiveness of the result. The result shows the bioethanol supply chain can bring both economic and social benefits in the given area and offer governments a possible better and more efficient way to bring more social benefits. The effect of the government subsidy on enterprises’ decisions about economic and social benefits is discussed.

Top-k Socio-Spatial Co-engaged Location Selection for Social Users

With the advent of location-based social networks, users can tag their daily activities in different locations through check-ins. These check-in locations signify user preferences for various socio-spatial activities and can be used to improve the quality of services in some applications such as recommendation systems, advertising, and group formation. To support such applications, in this paper, we formulate a new problem of identifying top-k Socio-Spatial co-engaged Location Selection (SSLS) for users in a social graph, that selects the best set of k locations from a large number of location candidates relating to the user and her friends. The selected locations should be (i) spatially and socially relevant to the user and her friends, and (ii) diversified both spatially and socially to maximize the coverage of friends in the socio-spatial space. To address the NP-hard and challenging problem, we first develop an exact solution by designing some pruning strategies, and also develop an approximate solution by deriving relaxed bounds and advanced termination rules. To accelerate the efficiency, we further develop a fast exact approach and a meta-heuristic approximate approach. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of our proposed algorithms against three adapted existing methods using four real-world datasets.

Towards Position-Independent Sensing for Gesture Recognition with Wi-Fi

Past decades have witnessed the extension of the Wi-Fi signals as a useful tool sensing human activities. One common assumption behind it is that there is a one-to-one mapping between human activities and Wi-Fi received signal patterns. However, this assumption does not hold when the user conducts activities in different locations and orientations. Actually, the received signal patterns of the same activity would become inconsistent when the relative location and orientation of the user with respect to transceivers change, leading to unstable sensing performance. This problem is known as the position-dependent problem, hindering the actual deployment of Wi-Fi-based sensing applications. In this paper, to tackle this fundamental problem, we develop a new position-independent sensing strategy and use gesture recognition as an application example to demonstrate its effectiveness. The key idea is to shift our observation from the traditional transceiver view to the hand-oriented view, and extract features that are irrespective of position-specific factors. Following the strategy, we design a position-independent feature, denoted as Motion Navigation Primitive(MNP). MNP captures the pattern of moving direction changes of the hand, which shares consistent patterns when the user performs the same gesture with different position-specific factors. By analyzing the pattern of MNP, we convert gestures into sequences of strokes (e.g, line, arc and corner) which makes them easy to be recognized. We build a prototype WiFi gesture recognition system, i.e., WiGesture to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Experiments show that our system can outperform the start-of-arts significantly in different settings. Given its novelty and superiority, we believe the proposed method symbolizes a major step towards gesture recognition and would inspire other solutions to position-independent activity recognition in the future.

Task-Aware Waypoint Sampling for Robotic Planning

To achieve a complex task, a robot often needs to navigate in a physical space in order to complete activities in different locations. For example, it may need to inspect several structures, making multiple observations of each structure from different perspectives. Typically, the positions from which these activities can be performed are represented as waypoints – discrete positions that are sampled from the continuous physical space and used to find a task plan. Existing approaches to waypoint selection either iteratively consider the entire space or use domain knowledge to consider each activity separately. This can lead to task planning problems that are more complex than is necessary or to plans of compromised quality. Moreover, all previous approaches only consider geometric constraints that can be imposed on the waypoint selection process. We present Task-Aware Waypoint Sampling (TAWS), which offers two key novelties. First, it is an anytime approach that combines the benefits of random sampling with the use of domain knowledge in waypoint selection by performing a one-time computation of the connectivity graph from which waypoints are sampled. In addition, TAWS is the first approach that accounts for performance preferences, which are preferences a system operator may have about the generated task plan. These can account, for example, for areas near doorways where it is preferable that the robot does not stop to perform activities. We demonstrate the performance benefits of our approach on simulated automated manufacturing tasks.

The Mental Health Benefits of Purposeful Activities in Public Green Spaces in Urban and Semi-Urban Neighbourhoods: A Mixed-Methods Pilot and Proof of Concept Study.

Access and exposure to public green space might be critical to health promotion and prevention of mental ill health. However, it is uncertain if differential health and mental health benefits are associated with undertaking different activities in public green space. We evaluated the health and wellbeing benefits of different activities in different locations of public green spaces in urban and semi-urban areas. We used a mixed-methods before-and-after design. Volunteers at three conservation sites were recruited and took part in group guided walks, practical conservation tasks or citizen science. Repeated measures one-way ANOVAs with Bonferroni correction assessed the relationship between location and activity type on change in acute subjective mood from pre- to post-activity, measured with the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist (UWIST-MACL). Qualitative semi-structured interviews were undertaken and analysed thematically to explore participants’ perceptions about the health and wellbeing benefits of activities in public green space. Forty-five participants were recruited, leading to 65 independent observations. Walking, conservation and citizen science in public green space were associated with improved mood. Across all participants acute subjective mood improved across all domains of the UWIST-MACL. There was a significant association between reduction in stress and location (p = 0.009). Qualitatively participants reported that conservation and citizen science conferred co-benefits to the environment and individual health and well-being and were perceived as purposeful. Undertaking purposeful activity in public green space has the potential to promote health and prevent mental ill health.

Optimal Design of Bioenergy Supply Chains Considering Social Benefits: A Case Study in Northeast China

Bioenergy supply chains can offer social benefits. In most related research, the total number of created jobs is used as the indicator of social benefits. Only a few of them quantify social benefits considering the different impact of economic activities in different locations. In this paper, a new method of measuring the social benefits of bioethanol supply chains is proposed that considers job creation, biomass purchase, and the different impacts of economic activities in different locations. A multi-objective mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is developed to address the optimal design of a bioethanol supply chain that maximizes both economic and social benefits. The ε-constraint method is employed to solve the model and a set of Pareto-optimal solutions is obtained that shows the relationship between the two objectives. The developed model is applied to case studies in Liaoning Province in Northeast China. Actual data are collected as practical as possible for the feasibility and effectiveness of the results. The results show that the bioethanol supply chain can bring about both economic and social benefits in the given area and offers governments a better and more efficient way to create social benefits. The effect of the government subsidy on enterprises’ decisions about economic and social benefits is discussed.

Replica Reduced Routing Protocol for Intermittent Connected Networks in Emergency Scenarios

In an Intermittent Connected Networks / Opportunistic Networks, routing protocols follow store-carry-forward routing mechanism to deliver messages to destination. One of the application scenarios which makes use of opportunistic networks to route the packet from source to destination is an Emergency Search and Rescue operation where rescuer nodes get partitioned frequently and carry out their rescue activities in different locations. As wireless device has a short transmission range, communication between any two partitioned networks occurs only through the node mobility. The Probability based Routing, provides high packet delivery rate with high overhead. In this paper, a new technique called Replica Reduced and Energy-based routing protocol (REB) is proposed to control the replicas and increase the packet delivery ratio in emergency scenarios. Through simulation, this article demonstrates that the proposed system increases delivery rate and reduces overhead and energy consumption considerably, resulting in increased life span of the network.

Assessment of extreme values in geomagnetic and geoelectric field variations for Canada

AbstractDisturbances of the geomagnetic field produced by space weather events can have an impact on power systems and other critical infrastructure. To mitigate these risks it is important to determine the extreme values of geomagnetic activity that can occur. More than 40 years of 1 min magnetic data recorded at 13 Canadian geomagnetic observatories have been analyzed to evaluate extreme levels in geomagnetic and geoelectric activities in different locations of Canada. The hourly ranges of geomagnetic field variations and hourly maximum in rate of change of the magnetic variations have been used as measures of geomagnetic activity. Geoelectric activity is estimated by the hourly peak amplitude of the geoelectric fields calculated with the use of Earth resistivity models specified for different locations in Canada. A generalized extreme value distribution was applied to geomagnetic and geoelectric indices to evaluate extreme geomagnetic and geoelectric disturbances, which could happen once per 50 and once per 100 years with 99% confidence interval. Influence of geomagnetic latitude and Earth resistivity models on the results for the extreme geomagnetic and geoelectric activity is discussed. The extreme values provide criteria for assessing the vulnerability of power systems and other technology to geomagnetic activity for design or mitigation purposes.

How global strategies emerge: an attention perspective

AbstractMost prior research in the field of global strategy focuses on what choices executives make to build the competitive advantage of a firm, from setting up activities in different locations to coordinating the linkages between them. In this article, we shift the emphasis to how global strategies emerge in a firm by studying the processes through which top executive attention is channeled and structured. Building on the attention‐based view of the firm, we develop hypotheses linking aspects of the firm's operating environment and its internal organization to its international attention—the time and effort HQ executives invest in activities, communications, and discussions aimed at improving their understanding of the global marketplace. Using primary data collected from 134 firms across a large spectrum of industries, we test and find support for our arguments.

Assessment of respirable dust exposures in an opencast coal mine

All major opencast mining activities produce dust. The major operations that produce dust are drilling, blasting, loading, unloading, and transporting. Dust not only deteriorates the environmental air quality in and around the mining site but also creates serious health hazards. Therefore, assessment of dust levels that arise from various opencast mining operations is required to prevent and minimize the health risks. To achieve this objective, an opencast coal mining area was selected to generate site-specific emission data and collect respirable dust measurement samples. The study covered various mining activities in different locations including overburden loading, stock yard, coal loading, drilling, and coal handling plant. The dust levels were examined to assess miners' exposure to respirable dust in each of the opencast mining areas from 1994 to 2005. The data obtained from the dust measurement studies were evaluated by using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Tukey-Kramer procedure. The analyses were performed by using Minitab 14 statistical software. It was concluded that, drilling operations produce higher dust concentration levels and thus, drill operators may have higher incidence of respiratory disorders related to exposure to dust in their work environment.

Regional Occupational and Industrial Structure: Does One Imply the Other?

The product/profit cycle and new international division of labor theories hypothesize that establishments in a single industry may be undertaking different activities in different locations: innovative and developmental activities will be anchored in regions of origin, while more routine production and service functions will be dispersed to lower cost and downstream consuming regions. Disparities in occupational composition offer a test of these theories. In this article, we test whether a region’s occupational structure can be read off of its industrial structure. Using a data set created for eleven California metropolitan areas for 1997, we explore the extent to which the occupational mix within a specific metropolitan industry is dissimilar to the mix found for that same industry in other metros. We find that estimating a metro’s occupational mix by assuming that its industries mirror the national occupational structure for those industries often provides a reasonable approximation especially for aggregate occupational categories. However, this does not hold for a cluster of innovative industries and occupations that we tested, specifically in high-tech research and development and information technology activities. In such cases, pursuing industrial targeting will not achieve the same consequence as pursuing occupational targeting.

A Distribution Regional Freight Demand Model

The complexity of freight mobility is characterized by a large number of journeys connecting several activities in different locations, i.e. journeys consisting of sequences of trips influencing each other. This paper presents a tour-based freight model for the simulation of regional distribution. This kind of model allows one to simulate the dependences existing between successive trips of the same distribution channel. That means that each destination will be chosen considering the preceding and successive destinations by considering the number of transfers as a whole, and so on. In order to implement such a model it is essential to understand the constraints linking all decision-maker’s choices and to identify the type of relations linking one decision-maker to the other.