Information-based Activities Research Articles

Reflection as a Factor in the Success of Learners’ Innovative Activity

The analysis of the psychological grounds for learners’ innovative activity would provide avenues for development of innovation capabilities in the younger generation. In the article, reflection is considered a mechanism that impacts the efficacy of action. In this regard, the purpose of the study was to analyze how reflective practice is manifested in learners who are engaged in the university innovative activity but demonstrate its varying degrees. As a working hypothesis, it was assumed that students with varying degrees of innovative activity differ in the level of general reflection of their own activity and its individual components: information-based activity, motivation, benchmarking, decision-making, and performance. The study showed that students experience the greatest difficulties when analyzing the conditions for organizing activities, assessing their own resources and possible risks. Also, significant differences were found in the degree of intensity of such a component as the information-based activity among students with varying degrees of innovative engagement.

Ethical and Legal Aspects Pertaining to law Enforcement use of Drones

Law enforcement is an information-based activity. The use of drones (also referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs) for policing may be beneficial as an aerial surveillance tool in gathering information pertaining to crime prevention, detection and /or investigation which are conducted in the interest of national security. In most instances, the law enforcement use of drones for purposes of search and rescue, crime scene investigation and hostage situations are not controversial. However, police use of drones for crowd monitoring and protests may be contentious as it may violate various human rights such as the right to privacy which includes data protection, free speech, right to protest and freedom of movement. These rights must be balanced against public safety. The discussion focuses on identifying ethical and legal concerns relating to the use of drones by the police and how these concerns should be addressed. It highlights that the danger is not the drone technology itself, but how it is used and the manner in which the police deal with, process and act upon information gathered, in order to prevent or control crime. The use of drone technology for surveillance impacts on human rights. There is a risk that surveillance may manifest itself in governmental domination and power if no safeguards are in place to curtail pervasive surveillance. It should be established whether domestic drone policing is in general so intrusive that the drawbacks outweigh the benefits of using it for public safety purposes. The manner in which these issues are addressed may serve as a guideline to countries who are considering the use of drones for law enforcement.

Multimodal CSI-Based Human Activity Recognition Using GANs

Channel state information (CSI)-based human activity recognition (HAR) has received great attention in recent years due to its advantages in privacy protection, insensitivity to illumination, and no requirement for wearable devices. In this article, we propose a multimodal channel state information-based activity recognition (MCBAR) system that leverages existing WiFi infrastructures and monitors human activities from CSI measurements. MCBAR aims to address the performances degradation of WiFi-based human recognition systems due to environmental dynamics. Specifically, we address the issue of nonuniformly distributed unlabeled data with rarely performed activities by taking advantages of the generative adversarial network (GAN) and semisupervised learning. We apply a multimodal generator to approximate the CSI data distribution in different environment settings with limited measured CSI data. The generated CSI data using the multimodal generator can provide better diversity for knowledge transfer. This multimodal generator improves the ability of MCBAR to recognize specific activities with various CSI patterns caused by environmental dynamics. Compared to state-of-the-art CSI-based recognition systems, MCBAR is more robust as it is able to handle the nonuniformly distributed CSI data collected from a new environment setting. In addition, diverse generated data from the multimodal generator improves the stability of the system. We have tested MCBAR under multiple experimental settings at different places. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm overcomes environmental dynamics and outperforms existing HAR systems.

Piloting a more inclusive governance innovation strategy for forest ecosystem services management in Primiero, Italy

Forests are increasingly recognized for their role, importance and multifunctionality in terms of provisioning, regulating and cultural ecosystem services they provide. Even if timber production remains the most economically valuable provisioning service in Primiero, the importance of and need for multifunctionality of forests is acknowledged. This article analyses the development of Forest Ecosystem Services (FES) governance innovation strategies by the Provincial Forest Agency as a policy entrepreneur in the area of Primiero, in Trentino, northeast of Italy. Based on detailed case study material, we create the heuristic of Kingdon’s three streams model in order to reconstruct the development of and negotiations around the introduction of innovative approaches to the problem, policy and politics levels and to identify the chosen or missed windows of opportunity to deliver innovation in FES management. Findings show that the main issues perceived by the local stakeholders concern loss of biodiversity, of cultural identity and historical landscape values. The policy-entrepreneurial initiatives undertaken by the Forest Agency represent a governance mix of direct project execution, financial incentives, organisational incentives and information-based activities. The results highlight its efforts to move beyond the traditional top-down approach based on widely available public funds and towards coordination and collaborations among stakeholders, contribution of private investments, bureaucracy simplification and interconnection between participatory and institutional processes.

Wi-Multi: A Three-Phase System for Multiple Human Activity Recognition With Commercial WiFi Devices

Channel state information-based activity recognition has gathered immense attention over recent years. Many existing works achieved desirable performance in various applications, including healthcare, security, and Internet of Things, with different machine learning algorithms. However, they usually fail to consider the availability of enough samples to be trained. Besides, many applications only focus on the scenario where only single subject presents. To address these challenges, in this paper, we propose a three-phase system Wi-multi that targets at recognizing multiple human activities in a wireless environment. Different system phases are applied according to the size of available collected samples. Specifically, distance-based classification using dynamic time warping is applied when there are few samples in the profile. Then, support vector machine is employed when representative features can be extracted from training samples. Lastly, recurrent neural networks is exploited when a large number of samples are available. Extensive experiments results show that Wi-multi achieves an accuracy of 96.1% on average. It is also able to achieve a desirable tradeoff between accuracy and efficiency in different phases.

Organisational Information Security Strategy: Review, Discussion and Future Research

Dependence on information, including for some of the world’s largest organisations such as governments and multi-national corporations, has grown rapidly in recent years. However, reports of information security breaches and their associated consequences indicate that attacks are escalating on organisations conducting these information-based activities. Organisations need to formulate strategy to secure their information, however gaps exist in knowledge. Through a thematic review of academic security literature, (1) we analyse the antecedent conditions that motivate the adoption of a comprehensive information security strategy, (2) the conceptual elements of strategy and (3) the benefits that are enjoyed post-adoption. Our contributions include a definition of information security strategy that moves from an internally-focussed protection of information towards a strategic view that considers the organisation, its resources and capabilities, and its external environment. Our findings are then used to suggest future research directions.

Conceptual framework for research design: practical essential points for developing a proposal in forestry sector in Nepal

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/init.v5i0.10265 The Initiation 2013 Vol.5; 147-152

Universities and export market orientation: an exploratory study of UK post-92 universities

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore how post-92 UK universities perceive and manage market orientation (MO) in their export operations of educational services to international students (i.e. export market orientation (EMO)) in the context of international student recruitment.Design/methodology/approach– Through a case study design, this qualitative research was undertaken amongst eight post-92 UK universities. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with managers in the international offices of universities.Findings– The results indicate that EMO in universities consists of information-based activities geared towards foreign markets. Superior knowledge and awareness of the market components is central to the implementation of these information-based activities. This involves market information generation and dissemination, as well as the need for rapid responsiveness due to the changing nature of the higher education market.Research limitations/implications– The selected methodology makes these results alone unfit for generalising to a larger population. Improved theoretical models are needed for generating more knowledge about the antecedents and consequences of EMO in universities.Practical implications– The authors believe the findings are particularly relevant for international marketing managers of exporting universities. The current paper suggests some implications for international marketing managers when actively managing their marketing activities towards foreign markets.Originality/value– The paper identifies a gap in current higher education marketing research. The original contribution of the paper is to address this gap so that researchers and practitioners have some understanding of the export marketing behaviour of UK universities in the context of the recruitment of international students.

Rethinking Financial Capitalism and the “Information” Economy

This talk examines the popular idea that “economic growth” can continue indefinitely in post-industrial capitalist economies through the shift of labor to “service” sectors, particularly finance and information-based activities, in the light of the classical-Marxian theory of value and the related categories of productive and unproductive labor. As the generally accepted classical theory of land rent exemplifies, many types of income in capitalist economies, including interest, financial fees, speculative trading profits, and intellectual property royalties, arise as parts of the surplus value generated by the exploitation of productive labor appropriated through the assertion of various property rights. The dramatic phenomena of highly profitable “business models” based on network externalities associated with the internet and other information-based technologies do not represent new modes of value production, but modes (in some cases not particularly new) of participation in the pool of surplus value. National income accounting conventions that impute a fictitious output as a counterpart to incomes generated in sectors such as finance, professional and business services, education and health, and government, where there are no market-based measures of output create a distorted and misleading picture of value production and growth in advanced capitalist economies. A clear understanding of the origin of value in the expenditure of productive labor and of surplus value in the exploitation of productive labor is essential to thinking through the problems of post-industrial capitalist growth, distribution, resource conservation, and environmental protection.

The January effect, does options trading matter?

This study examines the effect of options trading on the January effect in the period 1996–2009. The options market offers investors an alternative trading venue that circumvents several trading limitations in the equity market and hence enables a higher level of arbitrage activities. In a cross-sectional setting, we find that optioned stocks exhibit significantly lower risk-adjusted returns in January than non-optioned stocks. This effect is not attributed to firm size, illiquidity, or transaction costs. We also find that the January effect is not only smaller but also considerably more short-lived for optioned stocks than for non-optioned stocks. In a firm-specific setting, January risk-adjusted returns are found to be significantly lower in the post-options-listing period than in the pre-options-listing period. These findings support the proposition that options trading enhances information-based trading activities and hence improves the informational efficiency of the equity market. JEL classifications: G10, G11, G12, G14

New Adaptation Linkages

Web technology is transforming all businesses into information-based activities and the rate of technological change is so high that emerging electronic commerce is already making fundamental changes in the economic landscape, affecting every aspect of how business is and will be conducted. There is substantial evidence to suggest that e-banking is being embraced by financial institutions in developed and emerging markets to the extent that explosive growth is almost at hand. This paper explores the adoption linkages in customer perceptions, preferences, and barriers to the adoption of banking technology in Kenya. The data for this study has been collected from bank customers in using well structured and pre-tested questionnaires. The result indicated that necessity perception is positive and ATM, Mobile and Internet banking were mostly preferred compared to others whilst negative linkage was observed between barriers and adoption as Security, bank lag in adoption and unawareness were identified as the most reported barriers to adoption. It means that positive link enable adoption while negative link distract adoption. The findings implicate banks and other financial institutions to increase the campaigns which may develop positive customer perceptions and preferences at the same time look for alternatives of reducing the possible barriers posing the banking technology.

Organizing social resilience in the context of natural hazards: a research note

Organizational scholars increasingly use the term “resilience” to analyze options of dealing with uncertain context conditions. What do these scholars have to offer to researchers in the field of natural hazards? This research note makes three suggestions. First, the research note frames social resilience—in contrast to a rigid response to radical change—as a process of broadening information-based activities, loosening formal controls, and using slack resources of organizational members. Second, the research note argues to leave the meaning of social resilience undefined at the outset of a research project with the aim of building theory about resilience. It is expected that a useful definition emerges in empirical research. Third, organizational studies highlight specific social structures and processes of social resilience, for instance, small groups of individuals in organizational and interorganizational contexts. Organizing becomes a crucial factor for dealing with natural hazards.

Reverse Fingerprinting and Mutual Information-Based Activity Labeling and Scoring (MIBALS)

A mutual information based activity labeling and scoring (MIBALS) approach to reverse fingerprint analysis is presented. Whole molecule scores produced by the method are shown to be capable of ranking compounds in virtual high-throughput screening (vHTS) experiments, while fragment scores produced by the method are able to identify pharmacophore moieties important for biological activity. The performance of MIBALS in vHTS experiments is assessed using reference ligands active against 40 different biological targets, and MIBALS retrieval rates are compared with those obtained using more traditional group fusion similarity search methods. The use of MIBALS to identify important pharmacophore fragments is demonstrated by comparing ligand fragment scores with known pharmacophores and known ligand/protein contacts. The ability of MIBALS to highlight beneficial and detrimental groups in a congeneric series is examined by comparing MIBALS fragment scores with features in known structure-activity relationships.

Electronic Commerce: Review of Critical Research Issues

There is a revolution transforming the global economy. Web technology is transforming all business into information-based activity. The rate of technological change is so rapid that emerging electronic commerce already is making fundamental changes in the economic landscape, affecting every aspect of how business is and will be conducted. The Web has extended the reach of corporations. New business opportunities are growing exponentially because of the vast amount of business information made available by the global Web, which helps bring together the information passed between businesses, between a business and its customers, and among different departments of a business. It will no longer be possible operationally or strategically to ignore the information-based virtual value chains for any business. This paper reviews the scope, current applications, and the potentials of electronic commerce. It also develops a framework for identifying the significant opportunities and important research issues associated with electronic commerce. The emphasis is on taking an interdisciplinary view that integrates technology and business models.