Central Venue Research Articles

Renewable energy communities as public architectures and socio-ecological infrastructures

Three years after their establishment in the Italian regulatory framework, the Renewable Energy Communities (CERs) can be an important resource for architectural and urban design, combining decarbonisation and climate resilience objectives with the provision of new public spaces and social services, the reduction of energy poverty and the dissemination of a new environmental culture. In such a setting, the production networks spread over buildings and elements of urban equipment are connected to the new central venues constituted by the hubs, the heart of the community. Starting from the case study of the San Giovanni a Teduccio district in Naples, the Horizon Europe KNOWING project aims to define a replicable model to support a strategic vision for 2050.

Unplanned admissions after day-case surgery in an Italian third-level pediatric hospital: a retrospective study

BackgroundIncreasing procedures in day-case surgery can mitigate the costs of health service, without reducing safety and quality standards. The Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù has adopted an educational program for healthcare personnel and patients’ families to increase the number of day-case surgery procedures performed without reducing the level of safety. The unplanned admission rate after day-case surgery can be a quality benchmark for pediatric day-case surgery, and in literature, there are no Italian data.MethodsWe made a retrospective analysis of the hospital database and focused on children requiring unplanned admission to the central venue of the hospital for the night. The audit covered the period from September 2012 to April 2018.ResultsWe performed general anesthesia for 8826 procedures (urology 33.60%, plastic surgery 30.87%, general surgery 17.44%, dermatology 11.66%, dentistry 3.16%, orthopedics 1.64%, digestive endoscopy 1.63%). Unplanned admission for anesthetic reasons resulted in two cases: one case of syncope and one case of vomit (0.023% rate). No one major complication.ConclusionsGood quality of patient selection, the safety of the structure, family education, and an efficient organizational model combined with an educational program for anesthesiologists can improve the safety of anesthesia for day-case surgery.

UK Valuation of EQ-5D-5L, a Generic Measure of Health-Related Quality of Life: A Study Protocol

ObjectivesA high-quality and widely accepted UK EQ-5D-5L value set is urgently required to enable the latest version of EQ-5D scored using recent UK public preferences to inform policy including health technology assessments submitted to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. This article outlines the study protocol for the generation of a new EQ-5D-5L UK value set. MethodsTwelve hundred interviews will be undertaken using the composite time trade-off elicitation technique for 102 health states (86 from the international EQ-5D-5L valuation protocol, plus 16 with best predictive performance in an extended design used in the Native American EQ-5D-5L valuation). The sample will be UK adults (age ≥18 years) proportionately representative across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, representative for age, sex, ethnicity, and socioeconomic group, with inclusion of participants with/without health problems. Participants will choose to be interviewed via videoconference (by Zoom) or in-person in a central venue. Data quality will be rigorously assessed. ResultsThe value set will be generated using tobit random effects and heteroscedastic tobit models (with censoring at −1) using all data, excluding time trade-off values highlighted by participants as ones they would reconsider and data from interviewers failing protocol compliance. Quality and acceptance will be achieved by public involvement, regular Steering Group meetings, independent assessment of data quality at 4 time points, and final endorsement of data and analyses. ConclusionThis study will produce a UK value set for the EQ-5D-5L for use in prospective and retrospective data sets containing EQ-5D-5L data.

Implausible Possibility: Freedom and Realism in Live-Action/Animated Gag Comedies

While often unacknowledged, gags and gag comedy remain a vital part of Hollywood cinema. Following the runaway success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), an increase in the production of films combining live-action and animation has helped them become a central venue for gag comedy. However, while live-action/animation hybrids can be enormously successful, they are also extremely difficult and risky ventures, both in terms of their technical challenges and production costs. Given this, what is the rationale behind combining live-action and animation for comedy at all? As the author argues, both theoretical considerations of animation and hybrids as well as the discourse from creators of such films frame live-action/animation as particularly well suited for gag comedy due to its ability to balance the freedom of animation with the grounding realism of live-action. Films such as The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (2000), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015) serve to highlight the interaction between cartoonish animation and realistic live-action as well as key tensions that arise in combining the two forms. Examining the opportunities and challenges provided by these combinations helps explain why hybrid films remain a common vehicle for gag comedy today and an important subset of Hollywood comedy as a whole.

People in Motion: Introduction to Transnational Movements and Transwar Connections in the Anthropological and Genetic Study of Human Populations

People in Motion: Introduction to Transnational Movements and Transwar Connections in the Anthropological and Genetic Study of Human Populations

From a National Meeting to an International Conference: A Scientometric Case Study of a Finnish Computing Education Conference

Computerisation and digitalisation are shaping the world in fundamental and unpredictable ways, which highlights the importance of computing education research (CER). As part of understanding the roots of CER, it is crucial to investigate the evolution of CER as a research discipline. In this paper we present a case study of a Finnish CER conference called Koli Calling, which was launched in 2001, and which has become a central publication venue of CER. We investigate the evolution of Koli Calling’s scholarly communities and zoom in on it’s publication habits and internalisation process. We explore the narrative of the development and scholarly agenda behind changes in the conference submission categories from the perspective of some of the conference chairs over the years.We then take a qualitative perspective, analysing the conference publications based on a comprehensive bibliometric analysis. The outcomes include classification of important research clusters of authors in the community of conference contributors. Interestingly, we find traces of important events in the historical development of CER. In particular, we find clusters emerging from specific research capacity building initiatives and we can trace how these connect research spanning the world CER community from Finland to Sweden and then further to the USA, Australia and New Zealand. This paper makes an important strategic contribution to the evolution of CER as a research discipline, from the perspective of one central event and publication venue, providing a broad perspective on the role of the conference in connecting research clusters and establishing a truly international research community. This work contributes insights to researchers in one specific CER community and how they shape the future of computing education.

Computing Education Research Compiled: Keyword Trends, Building Blocks, Creators, and Dissemination

The need for organized computing education efforts dates back to the 1950s. Since then, computing education research (CER) has evolved and matured from its early initiatives and separation from mathematics education into a respectable research specialization of its own. In recent years, a number of meta-research papers, reviews, and scientometric studies have built overviews of CER from various perspectives. This paper continues that approach by offering new perspectives on the past and present state of CER: analyses of influential papers throughout the years, of the theoretical backgrounds of CER, of the institutions and authors who create CER, and finally of the top publication venues and their citation practices. The results reveal influential contributions from early curriculum guidelines to rigorous empirical research of today, the prominence of computer programming as a topic of research, evolving patterns of learning-theory usage, the dominance of high-income countries and a cluster of 52 elite institutions, and issues regarding citation practices within the central venues of dissemination.

What Recess Policy? Assessing Arizona Schools’ Adherence to Senate Bill 1083

Children’s health is affected by physical activity (PA) opportunities throughout the school day. Schools are a central venue for children meeting physical activity recommendations, and multiple areas, such as recess, have been established to protect against childhood obesity and overweight. Senate Bill 1083 is a law that addresses recess policies in Arizona that calls for students in Grades K–5 receive at least two recess periods per day. The purposes of this study were to explore Arizona charter and public elementary (K–5) school’s adherence to Senate Bill 1083 as well as investigate the barriers, if any, to implementing recess. A modified version of the School Physical Activity Policy Assessment survey was administered to members of the Arizona Health and Physical Education organization. Findings from the survey show that Arizona schools are not providing the recommended number of recess periods per day, and there are multiple barriers to recess implementation. Further investigations and bill modifications are needed.

Psychosocial Support for Newly Recruited Teachers of English Language in Kenya

Various forms of support frommore experienced teachers help Newly Recruited Teachers (NRTs) to quickly adjust to the expectations of the new job as well as the respective place of work.Today, support of NRTs is even more crucial considering that since 1998,the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) currently established under Article 273 (1) of the Constitution of Kenya (2012); the sole employer of teachers in Kenyaapplies a demand-driven-teacher recruitment formula. Teachers are recruited and posted subject to availability of vacancies in any part of the republic of Kenya. The posts are advertised and recruitment follows successful interview conducted in the schools with vacancies or of late in certain central venues that cater for particular sub counties.TheNRTs face a myriad of challenges given that many of them get employed in environments they are not familiar with and sometimes in counties that are far away from their counties of origin. Unfamiliar environments are bound to create heightened feelings in an individual. The NRTs are not an exemption to this. They obviously need psychosocial support:-opportunity to have someone to talk to and need to feel comfortable in asking for advice and assistance such as helping them feel at ease, attention for stress-relief, and stimulating self-confidence. This paper seeks to report the findings of a study with regard to such support strategies that various school managements use to get the NRTs acclimatize to their new schools in particular and the teaching profession in general. It also makes recommendations for improvement of such support in pursuit of better teaching environments for quality education in Kenya.

CO-DETERMINATION AND APPRENTICESHIP IN SME: A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON WORK COUNCILS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE QUALITY OF APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Relevance. Training systems which are based on the principle of apprenticeship and involve the company as a central venue are gaining in significance in international terms. The fundamental recognition here is, “Apprenticeships as one successful form of work-based learning ease the transition from education and training to work, and evidence suggests that countries with a strong VET and apprenticeship system have lower levels of youth unemployment” (Euro-pean Commission, year of publication not stated).Aim: the purpose of the article is to prove that the competitiveness of companies on the market crucially depends on their skilled workers.Methods: іn methodological terms, we based our study on an industrial sociology case study approach.Results: іn our study we showed that the stakeholders at the companies forming the object of our investigations are working towards quality. If the high quality requirements of training are also to be realised at a company level, crucial significance needs to be attached to the central players within the company. In our case, these are the works councils.Conclusions: іn our study, we have shown that “good training” can be equated with the terms of “vocational proficiency” and “matching”. This combination, which aims both to impart employability skills and to facilitate inte-gration into the company, provides the bedrock which enables skilled workers to act autonomously and independently. Works councils bring their influence to bear if they believe that these principles are in jeopardy. This makes an essential contribution to integrating apprentices into a company in respect of skills and socialisation.

Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution. Ian Duncan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii+290.

<i>Human Forms: The Novel in the Age of Evolution</i>. Ian Duncan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii+290.

Introduction

From February 21 to 22, 2019, in Khanty-Mansyisk, the II SCIENTIFIC-PRACTICAL FORUM “OIL CAPITAL” was held by the government of the Khanty-Mansyisk Autonomous Okrug-Yugra with the support of the Russian National Committee of the World Petroleum Council (the RNC of WPC).In addition to the key event - the International Youth Scientific and Practical Conference - the extensive programme of the Forum included a competition and a specialised exhibition of innovative projects, Round Table discussions on hot topic issues of the Fuel & Energy Complex, a presentation of the corporate standards of the “Personnel for the Fuel & Energy Complex” company, and a social and cultural programme for participants and guests. For the first time, the International Petroleum Academic Congress named after F.K. Salmanov was held as part of the Forum.The organisers of the “Oil Capital” Forum highlight that the main tasks of the event are the capability enhancement for international cooperation between young scientists and specialists, and the promotion of innovative developments in the Fuel & Energy sector. At the same time, the Forum is considered as a catalyst for the optimisation of practical activities in the oil and gas industry of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra - a region that plays a key role in the oil and gas complex of Russia.The forum brought together a wide range of participants - representatives of different countries and generations, students, scientists, experts. Representatives of federal authorities, the government of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra, and professional industry associations also participated in the professional discussion of hot topic industry issues.Opening the Forum, the governor of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug-Yugra Natalia Komarova emphasised the practical significance of the event. She cited several examples of introducing innovative solutions into hydrocarbon extraction, which were presented by young specialists a year ago - at the 1st “Oil Capital” Forum.The delegation of the World Petroleum Council in Khanty-Mansyisk involved the Senior Vice-President of the World Petroleum Council Anatoly Zolotukhin, the Chairman of the Russian National Committee of the World Petroleum Council Valeriy Yazev, the Director of the RNC of WPC Vlada Streletskaya. Valeriy Yazev has made a presentation at the Plenary Session with the report “Oil and gas factor in geopolitics and sustainable development”. Anotoly Zolotukhin held a Round Table “Global trends in the oil and gas industry: today and tomorrow,” and Vlada Streletskaya presented a report revealing the importance and features of training a new generation of young professionals - industry leaders.The presentation of the first issue of journals of the VI Youth Forum of the WPC “Future Leaders” was held at the central venue of the “Oil Capital” Forum. Participants of the Khanty-Mansyisk Forum had the opportunity to be among the first to get acquainted with the publications of these journals. The appearance of new editions produced by the RNC of WPC was greeted with interest and approval.“We consider participation in the organisation and holding of events of the “Oil Capital” Forum as an important element in the preparation of the 6th Future Leaders Forum of the World Petroleum Council – VI Youth Forum of WPC, which will be held this summer in St. Petersburg,” Vlada Streletskaya noted. “Both forums, which provide opportunities for professional communication and quality professional training of young specialists from different countries, are platforms for dialogue between generations, and focus on attracting young, self-motivated people to the industry. The experience of the “Oil Capital” Forum and the impressions of participating in this event will help to better prepare for the Future Leaders Forum”.

Distributed Machine Learning through Heterogeneous Edge Systems

Many emerging AI applications request distributed machine learning (ML) among edge systems (e.g., IoT devices and PCs at the edge of the Internet), where data cannot be uploaded to a central venue for model training, due to their large volumes and/or security/privacy concerns. Edge devices are intrinsically heterogeneous in computing capacity, posing significant challenges to parameter synchronization for parallel training with the parameter server (PS) architecture. This paper proposes ADSP, a parameter synchronization model for distributed machine learning (ML) with heterogeneous edge systems. Eliminating the significant waiting time occurring with existing parameter synchronization models, the core idea of ADSP is to let faster edge devices continue training, while committing their model updates at strategically decided intervals. We design algorithms that decide time points for each worker to commit its model update, and ensure not only global model convergence but also faster convergence. Our testbed implementation and experiments show that ADSP outperforms existing parameter synchronization models significantly in terms of ML model convergence time, scalability and adaptability to large heterogeneity.

“That’s Not Funny!” Identity and the organization of interaction on USA entertainment-political interviews

Late-night talk shows have become a central venue for political communication in the U.S.A. In these interviews, entertainment and politics are both used and therefore we name them Entertainment-Political Interviews (EPIs). While research on such shows generally assumes that the EPI is a hybrid discourse, crafting entertainment and politics into one coherent discourse, this assumption has not been empirically justified. Using membership categorization analysis (MCA) to study how the participants self-categorize in the EPI, we illustrate how they orient to political and entertainment talk. First, by applying Sacks’ (1972) hearer’s maxim to its fullest extent, entertainment and politics are identified as independently foundational devices for the EPI. Second, only one of these devices is relevant at a time to shape a turn at talk. Third, still, each device is continuously relevant to the participants. Thus, the understanding of the activity is based on the separation of the device of politics and of entertainment. Therefore, we argue, the EPI does not result in a hybrid device with a hybrid form of talk, but rather, participants alternate between politics and entertainment.

Computing education theories

In order to mature as a research field, computing education research (CER) seeks to build a better theoretical understanding of how students learn computing concepts and processes. Progress in this area depends on the development of computing-specific theories of learning to complement the general theoretical understanding of learning processes. In this paper we analyze the CER literature in three central publication venues -- ICER, ACM Transactions of Computing Education, and Computer Science Education -- over the period 2005--2015. Our findings identify new theoretical constructs of learning computing that have been published, and the research approaches that have been used in formulating these constructs. We identify 65 novel theoretical constructs in areas such as learning/understanding, learning behaviour/strategies, study choice/orientation, and performance/progression/retention. The most common research methods used to devise new constructs include grounded theory, phenomenography, and various statistical models. We further analyze how a number of these constructs, which arose in computing education, have been used in subsequent research, and present several examples to illustrate how theoretical constructs can guide and enrich further research. We discuss the implications for the whole field.

WE have to change! The carbon footprint of ECPR general conferences and ways to reduce it

The political consequences of climate change have been topics at numerous political science conferences. Contrary to the plurality of discussions at these meetings, it is striking that there is no systematic account of the carbon footprint of political science conferences themselves. Applying a GIS-based approach I estimate the travel induced greenhouse gas emissions of the last six ECPR General Conferences (2013–18). The results show that for the five conferences that took part in Europe the average emissions per attendee were between 0.5–1.3 tons CO2-equivalents. At the 2015 conference in Montreal it were even 1.9–3.4 tons. Compared to estimations based on the latest IPCC reports which call for a reduction of per capita emissions to 2.5 tons by 2030 and even 0.7 tons by 2050 in order to keep on track with the 1.5-degree goal, the travel induced GHG-emissions of ECPR conferences are very high. Yet, further estimations demonstrate that significant emission reductions are possible: by choosing more central conference venues, promoting low-emission landbound means of transportation and introducing online participation for researchers from far away, the carbon footprint could be reduced by 75–90 per cent. The article also gives concrete recommendations how the carbon footprint of conferences could be reduced.

Driving Mobile Accounts Sales: Strategic Imperative for Telenor Pakistan

In October 2013, Mahboob Ali Shah Manager Financial Services Planning Telenor Pakistan (TP) needed to make decisions on the future of Mobile Accounts Sales officers (MASOs). TP had two businesses, i.e., GSM (96 per cent revenue contribution in TP 2012 sales) and financial services offering (4 per cent revenue contribution in TP 2012 sales) under the brand name of EasyPaisa. TP launched EasyPaisa in 2009 with a view to reach out to the unbanked segment (60 million people). By 2012, EasyPaisa had a brand awareness of 80 per cent with the largest footprint of 36,000 EasyPaisa shops. Mobile accounts (MAs) were introduced in 2010 which could be operated only by Telenor sim and; hence, offered a great opportunity for TP to attract and retain customers for continual usage of its complete offerings. TP developed an elaborate go to market strategy (direct as well as indirect) to reach its customers effectively. Territory Sales Supervisors (TSS) has been the focal contact point between TP and their franchises since the launch of GSM services in 2005; however, as TP increased their offerings in the realm of financial services and offered diverse services such as MAs it became difficult for TSS to focus on MA and other financial services products whereas ironically MA contributed only (5 per cent) in KPI of TSS. At the same time, selling of MAs required different selling process as opposed to selling GSM services to franchisees and subsequently to retailers. Due to this change in the selling process, highly successful TSS had not been able to achieve sales targets for MA. In order to achieve corporate objectives for MA sales, Mahboob needed to make a choice from among different possible options for MASO’s expansion to achieve this year’s target of 350,000 MA, out of which until now he could achieve only 224,000.

Daily Stand-Up Meetings: Start Breaking the Rules

Members of high performing software teams collaborate, exchange information and coordinate their work on a frequent, regular basis. Most teams have the daily stand-up meeting as a central venue for these activities. Although this kind of meeting is one of the most popular agile practices, it has received little attention from researchers. We observed 102 daily stand-ups and interviewed 60 members of 15 teams in five countries. We found that the practice is usually challenging to conduct in a way that benefits the whole team. Many team members have a negative experience from conducting the meeting, which reduces job satisfaction, co-worker trust and well-being. However, the practice can be adjusted and improved to empower teams. In this article, we describe key factors that affect the meeting and propose four recommendations for improving the practice.

How to Increase Profits Through Predictive Analytics When Only Few Competitors’ Bids Are Known

The clear majority of pre-existing work in the published domain of competitive bidding requires large sample sizes for reliable econometric, probabilistic or game-theoretic modelling techniques. Such unrealistic large data requirements have prevented the successful application of bid modelling in managerial practice. This article presents a new predictive analytics method for very small samples of historical bidding data. Requiring as few as nine competitive bid prices for a group of pooled/aggregated competitors over a 30-month period is the standout differentiator of this research from any previously published research. This minimizes the demands on competitive intelligence and, therefore, realistically enables its application in the real world of practice. Maximum likelihood estimations are used to evaluate two new, revolutionary bid strategies against a range of evaluation criteria, taking into account the pricing judgements made by competitors, including a degree of competitive reaction among them. Using off-the-shelf analytics software, a case study of a bidder from the telecommunications infrastructure sector demonstrates how commercial outcomes can be improved substantially: A 400 per cent improvement in win ratio, an 86 per cent increase in contribution margin and 76 per cent revenue growth. In addition, the difference between the submitted bids and the lowest-priced competing bids (which is an opportunity cost, sometimes referred to as the ‘spread’ or ‘money left on the table’), has been reduced to 2 per cent on a total revenue of US$210 million.

Infections Associated with Iron Administration.

A dynamic interplay between the host and pathogen determines the course and outcome of infections. A central venue of this interplay is the struggle for iron, a micronutrient essential to both the mammalian host and virtually all microbes. The induction of the ironregulatory hormone hepcidin is an integral part of the acute phase response. Hepcidin switches off cellular iron export via ferroportin-1 and sequesters the metal mainly within macrophages, which limits the transfer of iron to the serum to restrict its availability for extracellular microbes. When intracellular microbes are present within macrophages though, the opposite regulation is initiated because infected cells respond with increased ferroportin-1 expression and enhanced iron export as a strategy of iron withdrawal from engulfed bacteria. Given these opposing regulations, it is not surprising that disturbances of mammalian iron homeostasis, be they attributable to genetic alterations, hematologic conditions, dietary iron deficiency or unconsidered iron supplementation, may affect the risk and course of infections. Therefore, acute, chronic or latent infections need to be adequately controlled by antimicrobial therapy before iron is administered to correct deficiency. Iron deficiency per se may negatively affect growth and development of children as well as cardiovascular performance and quality of life of patients. Of note, mild iron deficiency in regions with a high endemic burden of infections is associated with a reduced prevalence and a milder course of certain infections which may be traced back to effects of iron on innate and adaptive immune function as well as to restriction of iron for pathogens. Finally, absolute and functional causes of iron deficiency need to be differentiated, because in the latter form, oral iron supplementation is inefficient and intravenous application may adversely affect the course of the underlying disease such as a chronic infection. This chapter summarizes our current knowledge on the regulation of iron metabolism and the interactions between iron and the immune response against microbes. Moreover, some of the unanswered questions on the association of iron administration and infections are addressed.