Location Context Research Articles

A machine learning pipeline for classification of cetacean echolocation clicks in large underwater acoustic datasets.

Machine learning algorithms, including recent advances in deep learning, are promising for tools for detection and classification of broadband high frequency signals in passive acoustic recordings. However, these methods are generally data-hungry and progress has been limited by challenges related to the lack of labeled datasets adequate for training and testing. Large quantities of known and as yet unidentified broadband signal types mingle in marine recordings, with variability introduced by acoustic propagation, source depths and orientations, and interacting signals. Manual classification of these datasets is unmanageable without an in-depth knowledge of the acoustic context of each recording location. A signal classification pipeline is presented which combines unsupervised and supervised learning phases with opportunities for expert oversight to label signals of interest. The method is illustrated with a case study using unsupervised clustering to identify five toothed whale echolocation click types and two anthropogenic signal categories. These categories are used to train a deep network to classify detected signals in either averaged time bins or as individual detections, in two independent datasets. Bin-level classification achieved higher overall precision (>99%) than click-level classification. However, click-level classification had the advantage of providing a label for every signal, and achieved higher overall recall, with overall precision from 92 to 94%. The results suggest that unsupervised learning is a viable solution for efficiently generating the large, representative training sets needed for applications of deep learning in passive acoustics.

The Makerspace Planning for Startup Ecosystem in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

With the advent of the IR 4.0, the manufacturing industry is changing dramatically and in recent global urban development trend, makerspace is the top priority alternative for inner city urban regeneration. Many makerspaces had already been operated all over the world, makerspaces in UAE had not been well-activated comparatively. The objective of this paper is to examine the context, analyse the problems in makerspaces in United Arab Emirates, and to present the planning direction of makerspaces for revitalizing startup ecosystem in UAE. As a methodology, the definition of makerspace the status and main characteristics of U.S. and UAE and makerspaces are analyzed. To derive the direction of makerspace planning, a comparative analysis between three makerspaces in U.S. and three makerspaces in UAE is conducted with literature research and interviews. The comparative analysis result is as follows. First, it is essential to establish the location and space plan in the planning phase. Due to the nature of makerspace's business model, the context of location is extremely crucial. Second, it is essential to establish the plan for equipment. The size of the space and the architectural plan are determined by the type and amount of equipment in the makerspace based on their usages. Third, various programs and contents for education, collaboration and exchange ideas should be provided. Makerspaces are essential not only to provide space, but also to carry out various programs to spread the maker movement and promote startup activities. This study will serve as a basic data to create and enhance a makerspace in United Arab Emirates and if future research will be supplemented, it can be an efficient guide for decision-making process to prepare the design guidelines and operation plans.

BIM divide: an international comparative analysis of perceived barriers to implementation of BIM in the construction industry

PurposeBuilding information modelling (BIM) research studies are highly contextual as the contexts provide lenses for interpreting the results. However, there has been a growing decontextualization in extant studies especially between the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large firms; and between developed and developing countries. Albeit these contexts are all in the same construction industry, they often react differently to the same conditions. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the perceptions of firms in varying contexts of size and location on the perceived barriers to the implementation of BIM in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.Design/methodology/approachThe perceptions of 228 firms gleaned from 26 countries across the 6 continents were collated via an international empirical questionnaire survey. The data was analysed using the mean score, rank agreement analysis, Mann-Whitney U test and factor analysis.FindingsThe findings revealed the major factors impending BIM implementation in each of the contexts and a comparative analysis emphasized the difference in their perceptions. The findings underscore that there is a general digital divide as regard BIM implementation between the SMEs and large firms, and a deepening divide between the developed and developing countries.Originality/valueThe study has provided empirical evidence for the BIM divide in the AEC industry, which would influence the promulgation of BIM policy and transferability of best practices across varying contexts of both firm size and country level.

Lifestyle differentiation among older adults: exploring the links between individuals’ behaviours, socio-demographic characteristics, health and wellbeing in later life

AbstractThe association between everyday activities, health and subjective wellbeing in older adults has mostly been examined using different activities as separate variables. Which activities are likely to come together in individuals’ daily time-use patterns, or in what context, has not yet been analysed. This study looks at a broad range of spontaneously reported activities, their location and social context to identify latent behavioural classes. The data used in the study came from a sample of 200 non-institutionalised adults aged 65 and above. Activity data were collected using the Experience Sampling Method. Generalised structural equation modelling was used to identify the classes. Three distinctive behavioural classes, representing different lifestyles, emerged: passive domiciliary, active functional and social recreational. They constituted 30, 53 and 17 per cent of the sample, respectively. Class membership was related to individuals’ age, education and selected dimensions of health measured using the Nottingham Health Profile: energy levels and emotional response. There was consistency between the objectively measured class and an individual's subjective assessment of their physical and emotional health. While both class membership and subjective wellbeing were associated with health, the relationship between class and wellbeing was weak and fully explained by socio-demographic and health-related variables.

Catholic Identity in a Hostile Vandal Context: Insights from the Notitia Provinciarum

Abstract Evaluating the Notitia Provinciarum, ambiguities regarding the transmission and the content are to be encountered. This paper attempts to gain a consistent view on this document in respect to facts conveyed and the presumptive historical context and to draw conclusions concerning the identity of Catholics in Vandal Africa. The relationship to the Historia Persecutionis by Victor of Vita and the Liber Fidei Catholicae has been surveyed. Assuming textual consistency of the document, conclusions concerning the contextual location have been drawn from its Incipit and hints inside. Linking it to events as reported in the Historia Persecutionis the meaning of appositions to names has been enlightened and a consistent understanding of the document has been demonstrated. Information regarding the identity of Catholics in Vandal Africa has been deduced from the results of this evaluation due to the fact of differences between the provinces in respect of the appositions. Thus, different views and decisions within the African Catholic Church in regard to Vandal rule and to the relationship to Catholic ecumenical Christianity become evident. In spite of a common confession of faith as documented in the Liber Fidei Catholicae, there was no common posture toward Vandal rule and toward Catholic ecumenical Christianity.

Older adults’ lifestyles are associated with their structural position, health and wellbeing

Abstract The association between older adults' everyday activities, health and subjective wellbeing has mostly been examined using different activities as separate variables. It has not been analysed which activities are likely to come together in individuals' daily time use patterns, or in what context. Meanwhile, different combinations of activities and contextual variables may indicate distinctive lifestyles. This study looks at a broad range of spontaneously reported activities, their location and social context, and constructs latent behavioural classes. It examines how individuals' class belonging is linked with their structural position, health and wellbeing. The data used in the study came from a sample of 200 noninstitutionalized adults aged 65 and above. Activity data was collected using Experience Sampling Method. Generalized structural equation modelling (GSEM) was used to identify latent classes. Three behavioural classes were identified and labelled as: passive domiciliary, active functional, and social recreational. Lifestyles are related to individuals' structural characteristics and health status. Variables associated with class belonging are age, education, and detailed dimensions of health measured using the Nottingham Health Profile. Class differences in mean subjective wellbeing were statistically significant, but fully explained by sociodemographic and health-related variables. This study shows that behaviours and their settings form distinctive lifestyles, and that there is consistency between objectively measured lifestyles and subjective assessment of individuals' physical and emotional health. Key messages There is association between older individuals' daily behaviours and their subjective evaluation of detailed dimensions of their health. This study points to the life-long effects of education and suggests that individuals' socioeconomic characteristics may predict their lifestyle at older age.

The Importance of Context and the Effect of Information and Deliberation on Opinion Change Regarding Environmental Issues in Citizens’ Juries

Citizens’ juries have become a popular method for engaging citizens in deliberation about complex public policy issues, such as climate action and sustainable development. Empirical evidence routinely indicates that jurors change their minds throughout the process. What is less clear is when and why this occurs and whether the causes are consistent across juries that consider the same topic but are situated within different contexts. We present evidence of opinion change in citizens’ juries through a natural experiment, contrasting three local contexts of onshore windfarm development in Scotland; viz. existing, planned, and absent. Jurors’ individual opinions of climate change, wind energy, and windfarms were measured through questionnaires at four time points: the start, following information-giving, reflection, and deliberation. Statistical examination of jurors’ responses, through paired sample t-tests, Wilcoxon sign-tests, and Generalised Least Squares regression, reveals to what extent substantive changes were associated with different phases and locational contexts. In all three juries, opinion change occurs throughout the process, on different topics, and to different degrees. While the information phase consistently influences jurors’ opinions the most, jury composition affects the magnitude and direction of opinion change, with outcomes contingent on contexts. Our findings are important for informing how mini-publics are designed and used to inform environmental policy-making at different scales.

How Community Ideology Influences How Much Firms Pollute

Utilizing ten years of panel data on 13,198 US commercial facilities, this study examines whether political contexts of facility location influences the amount of hazardous pollution facilities emit. Countering both the lay and academic perspectives which predict that a facility’s toxic emissions would increase in the conservatism of its political context, I find that emissions of hazardous pollution decline with the conservatism of the local community, where a facility is located. Such relationship between community conservatism and facility hazardous pollution is more salient when a facility is less embedded in the community and is located in an otherwise liberal state. I theorize that a strong sense of group identity and a narrow moral boundary associated with conservatism delineates why – contrary to our common beliefs – facilities would pollute less as the community becomes increasingly conservative.

Reflections on inherently embedding safety teaching within a chemical engineering programme

The importance and the challenges of teaching safety are widely recognised amongst educators and industry. There are different approaches to teaching safety, from incorporation of safety into every aspect of a degree programme, to focusing all the safety teaching within stand-alone courses, to an integrated approach which simultaneously combines both approaches to varying extents. Effective safety teaching is also dependent on the experience and knowledge of the teaching staff involved and the locational context of the institution. Here, the novel and comprehensive approaches taken to inherently embed safety teaching within a chemical engineering programme, which is part of the wider Integrated Engineering Programme (IEP) teaching framework at UCL’s Faculty of Engineering Sciences, are examined and its success is measured against student perceptions. Students following the IEP chemical engineering degree programme widely recognise that safety teaching is immediately embedded into the curriculum from the first year and they are given increasing opportunities to apply safety learnings throughout their degree. This leads to a feeling of preparedness for their capstone design projects and future industrial roles, ultimately achieving the aim of developing well-rounded, responsible graduate engineers with a strong safety culture embedded in the way they will approach their future work.

How effectively do drought indices capture health outcomes? An investigation from rural Australia

AbstractDrought is a global threat to public health. Increasingly, the impact of drought on mental health and wellbeing is being recognised. This paper investigates the relationship between drought and wellbeing to determine which drought indices most effectively capture wellbeing outcomes. A thorough understanding of the relationship between drought and wellbeing must consider the: (i) three aspects of drought (duration, frequency and magnitude); (ii) different types of drought (e.g. meteorological, agricultural, etc.); and (iii) the individual context of specific locations, communities and sectors. For this reason, we used a variety of drought types, drought indices, and time windows to identify the thresholds for wet and dry epochs that enhance and suppress impacts to wellbeing. Four postcodes in New South Wales (NSW), Australia are used as case studies in the analysis to highlight the spatial variability in the relationship between drought and wellbeing. The results demonstrate that the relationship between drought indices and wellbeing outcomes differs temporally, spatially and according to drought type. This paper objectively tests the relationship between commonly used drought indices and wellbeing outcomes to establish if current methods of quantifying drought effectively capture wellbeing outcomes. For funding, community programs and interventions to result in successful adaptation, it is essential to critically choose which drought index, time window and wellbeing outcome to use in empirical studies. The uncertainties associated with these relationships must be accounted for and it must also be realized that results will differ based on these decisions.

A linguistic landscapes study in Indonesian sub-urban high school signages: an exploration of patterns and associations

English is the most used lingua franca and its permeation is mainly through education sector. This expansion is reflected through the display of English coexisting with other languages in education sites. Linguistic landscape study in school sites helps to explain the functions of language choices in school signs. In Indonesia, the use of English captured in school signs have been frequently investigated focusing in their relation with urban communities, yet, the co-existence of languages in signages in sub-urban schools are still rarely investigated. To fill this gap, we scrutinized the languages present on Indonesian sub-urban schools focusing on their patterns and associations. 101 school signs were collected from three senior high schools in sub-urban areas in Jember, Magetan and Situbondo. The display patterns were analyzed based on the number of languages present in the signs and interpreted socio-culturally. This study found three patterns of the suburban school signs: monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual signs consisting of five different languages: Indonesian, English, Arabic, Sanskrit, and Latin. Indonesian becomes the dominant language used, and is followed by English. English is mostly used in schools that have history as international schools. In addition, Arabic is mostly used in school located in Islamic environment as a form of self-identification, and Sanskrit is used as a cultural symbol in the school located in dominant Javanese community. In conclusion, location and socio-cultural context influence the language used in school.

Contextual location recommendation for location-based social networks by learning user intentions and contextual triggers

Contextual location recommendation for location-based social networks by learning user intentions and contextual triggers

Dynamics of Remembrance across Time and Media: On Ruth Glasberg Gold’s Multiple Accounts of Her Holocaust Experiences in Transnistria

Abstract This article considers the dynamics of the memories of World War II for survivors who give multiple accounts of their experiences over time. I compare five testimonies with different medial content given in 1944, 1983, and 1996 by Ruth Glasberg Gold. In November 1941, at the age of eleven, she was deported with her parents and brother from Czernowitz to the Bershad ghetto, Transnistria, where she lost her family and was orphaned. My major interest is to examine how Glasberg Gold’s memories over time intersect with changes of medium, location, language, and temporal context, and might have brought different or similar emphases in her written, audio, and video testimonies of the Holocaust. I believe her case to be important for scholarly analysis as it allows one to explore how the developing personality of a Holocaust survivor and changing media environments intersect and relate to how memories of the Holocaust become shaped, rehashed, and modified over time.

Consideration of human centred emotional design and cultural strategy in urban regeneration in China

ABSTRACT Many renovations of former industrial sites in China have failed to respond to the different contexts of location within their design. Resulting from an international funded research project, this paper considers Human-Centred Emotional Design and cultural strategy as urban renovation tools that can attract capital, mark the city as a distinctive brand and encourage interaction and sensual engagement from citizens. This paper pinpoints the project’s initial discoveries and captures a range of personal narratives reflecting the real experiences of Chinese people. The findings unlock potential opportunities for culturally coherent regeneration strategies.

The contribution of different contextual informational sources in visual object recognition

ABSTRACT The contextual scene in which an object appears may allow it to be recognized with lower resolution. A contextual scene typically contains multiple potential sources of information that may facilitate such recognition including the contextual scene category, the location of the object within the scene and the relative size compared to nearby objects. Here, we assessed the contribution of different sources of contextual information as well as familiarity in facilitating low-resolution recognition. Participants increased the resolution of a photograph of an object until they could identify it. The threshold resolution for accurate identification was compared across three contextual conditions: (1) No Contextual Scene (2) Contextual Scene only (3) Contextual Scene and Location. Additionally, we assessed the effect of a standard size cue shown alongside the quantized object. We compared performance for photographs of objects taken from the subject’s own vs. participants who had no exposure to these scenes prior to the experiment. Finally, each object was rated along multiple dimensions (e.g. typicality, movability goodness of fit with the contextual scene). Results showed interactions between context condition, level of familiarity and the objects' rated dimensions, suggesting that people flexibly engage with multiple sources of contextual information during object recognition.

Transition From Subsistence Agriculture to Rubber Plantations in Northern Laos: Analysis of Household Livelihood Strategies by Ethnicity and Gender

The study examined livelihood changes in eight villages in Luang Namtha province of northern Lao PDR following the expansion in rubber plantations and analyzed its impact on gender roles and relations. All study villages are engaged in rubber production, but the impact is shaped by the context and history of the particular location. The study has demonstrated the importance of feminist political ecologist approach in analyzing the conjuncture and intersectionality, as well as the location that shapes these conditions to better understand the gendered impact of the introduction of rubber production. The concept of social interface has helped us to identify the shock that women and men face and the changes in access to resources as a result of the shock and the agencies that the people exercised.

Problematizing authentic leadership: How the experience of minoritized people highlights the impossibility of leading from one’s “true self”

This short essay argues that the case of minoritized individuals attempting to lead authentically highlights barriers that anyone leading from their “true self” will encounter. By offering the concepts of “double consciousness” and “intersectionality,” the notion of the ‘true self” at the center of authentic leadership is problematized from the perspective of the individual leader. These difficulties are exacerbated by considering both the role demands of leading, as well as needs followers have for leaders to be in some way prototypical of themselves. In concluding, the essay contends that rather than privileging the impulse of their “true self,” those attempting to lead authentically must make deliberate choices about which “self” to foreground, as well as interweaving the requirements of their social and contextual location into how they turn up as leaders.

Nonmetropolitan COVID-19 Incidence and Mortality Rates Surpassed Metropolitan Rates Within the First 24 Weeks of the Pandemic Declaration: United States, March 1-October 18, 2020.

PurposeThis report compares COVID‐19 incidence and mortality rates in the nonmetropolitan areas of the United States with the metropolitan areas across three 11‐week periods from March 1 to October 18, 2020.MethodsCounty‐level COVID‐19 case, death, and population counts were downloaded from USAFacts.org. The 2013 NCHS Urban‐Rural Classification Scheme was collapsed into two categories called metropolitan (large central, large fringe, medium, and small metropolitans) and nonmetropolitan (micropolitan/noncore). Daily COVID‐19 incidence and mortality rates were computed to show temporal trends for each of these two categories. Maps showing the ratio of nonmetropolitan to metropolitan COVID‐19 incidence and mortality rates by state identify states with higher rates in nonmetropolitan areas than in metropolitan areas in each of the three 11‐week periods.FindingsIn the period between March 1 and October 18, 2020, 13.8% of the 8,085,214 confirmed COVID‐19 cases and 10.7% of the 217,510 deaths occurred among people residing in nonmetropolitan counties. The nonmetropolitan incidence and mortality trends steadily increased and surpassed those in metropolitan areas, beginning in early August.ConclusionsDespite the relatively small size of the US population living in nonmetropolitan areas, these areas have an equal need for testing, health care personnel, and mitigation resources. Having state‐specific rural data allow the development of prevention messages that are tailored to the sociocultural context of rural locations.

COVID-19 Impacts On-Demand Ridership in New South Wales: Regional Services More Stable than Urban Counterparts

COVID-19 had a major impact on transit ridership and behavior patterns in New South Wales, Australia, and around the world. This paper evaluates impact on on-demand ridership levels using data from the New South Wales Open Data Portal. By separating services by urban and regional locality, it became clear that COVID-19 had impact patronage in different ways. The results demonstrate that locational context can fundamentally impact on-demand service uptake.

An Empirical Analysis of Location-Based Mobile Advertising—Determinants, Success Factors, and Moderating Effects

The emergence of Location-Based Mobile Advertising (LBA) on mobile phones is a recent phenomenon that has profoundly changed consumers' shopping behavior. In this context, little is known about the influence of LBA on the purchasing intention of users. Based on the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Privacy Calculus Theory (PCT), this study develops an impact model and empirically tests it using structural equation modeling (SEM) with data from 294 users in Germany of the PAYBACK mobile app. It was found that purchase intentions are influenced by the constructs “User Attitude towards LBA” and “Disclosure of Personal Information.” “User Attitude towards LBA” is dependent on how users perceive the various app functionalities. These effects are significantly enhanced by the app's “Location Context Quality.” The construct “Intention to disclose personal information” depends on the constructs “Perceived benefit” and “Perceived risks of disclosure of personal information,” while “Perceived benefit” is also enhanced by the “Location Context Quality” of the app.