Demand For Information Research Articles

Large-Scale Urban 3D Geological Modeling Based on Multi-Method Coupling Under Multi-Source Heterogeneous Data Conditions

The development and utilization of urban underground space represents a crucial strategy for achieving sustainable urban development. Three-dimensional (3D) geological models provide a data foundation and technical support for research in urban planning and construction, as well as the prevention and control of environmental geological issues. However, current urban 3D geological modeling generally faces the challenge of multi-source heterogeneous modeling data. This often necessitates varying degrees of generalization in data processing, resulting in the majority of current urban 3D geological models being relatively coarse and insufficient to fulfill the demand for detailed geological information in contemporary urban development and management. Therefore, determining how to formulate or optimize the 3D geological modeling schemes to enhance the utilization of multi-source heterogeneous data is a key challenge in current urban 3D geological modeling. This study, taking the 3D geological structure modeling of Wuhan’s metropolitan development area (MDA) as an example, develops an automated scheme for standardizing modeling data based on multi-scale geological chronostratigraphy. By utilizing the standardized stratigraphy as a unified and independent geological framework for layered modeling, a high-precision 3D geological model of Wuhan’s MDA, characterized by large-scale and ultra-complex geological conditions, is constructed through a methodology that integrates the global discrete constrained points modeling approach with the global layered modeling approach, without generalizing the multi-source heterogeneous modeling data. This research not only holds significant practical implications for the prevention and control of comprehensive urban geological issues in Wuhan but also provides novel technical insights into the methodology of 3D urban geological modeling.

Themes in Abortion Forum Discussions in a Restrictive Access Context: Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses.

Abortion is one of the most common medical procedures worldwide. Despite this, access to abortion on demand remains restricted in many countries, including Poland. As a result, many women resort to undergoing the procedure without medical supervision, putting themselves at risk of serious health consequences such as drug poisoning, excessive bleeding, and hypovolemia. Unfortunately, some abortions also lead to severe infections. This study aims to qualitatively identify key themes in abortion forums to analyze the issues faced by individuals. The forums were then quantitatively analyzed to determine which problems were most prevalent. The most popular abortion forums were identified. A preliminary thematic analysis was conducted for the qualitative phase, followed by a manual quantitative analysis. Two independent researchers reviewed forum posts, categorizing them into specific themes. An analysis of 13,397 responses from 370 threads across 4 forums revealed "Abortion Process Progression" as the most discussed theme, highlighting a strong demand for information, emotional support, and medical guidance. The highest percentage of threads (162/886, 18.3%) focused on the need for mental support and the desire to have someone in contact during the abortion process. Concerns about the effectiveness of the termination also emerged as a significant topic, accounting for 83 of the 886 (9.4%) discussions. "Emotional and Psychological Aspects" and "Medical and Pharmacological Aspects" were also significant, highlighting the need for holistic care. Anxiety and fear related to the process were frequently discussed, accounting for 60 of the 886 (6.8%) responses. The issue of isolation and lack of support was also a common topic, appearing in 30 of the 886 (3.4%) threads. Notably, "Social and Ethical Perception" accounted for only 13 of the 886 (1.5%) responses and appeared in just 13 threads. This study highlights the critical need for information and support for women navigating abortion, particularly in regions where access is restricted. It emphasizes the importance of addressing the multifaceted challenges women face and calls for policy changes and strengthened support networks to improve the health and rights of women, as well as all those seeking gynecological care in abortion contexts. Further research is encouraged to refine and expand support strategies.

Navigating accounting reforms: a qualitative comparative analysis of accrual implementation in Italian local governments

PurposeThis research aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the prospective advantages of implementing accrual accounting in countries where such a transition is underway, with a focus on Italian municipalities. The research seeks to ascertain the requisite conditions, in public sector accounting mangers’ perception, for a useful transition from modified cash accounting to full accrual accounting within the Italian context.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology adopted is Qualitative Comparative Analysis, which involves conducting a survey through semi-structured interviews with accounting managers in municipal accounting departments. The sample is drawn from municipalities in the Emilia-Romagna region with populations exceeding 15,000 inhabitants.FindingsThe study shows that some stakeholders have a tangible demand for financial statement information. They believe that accrual accounting statements provide accurate insights into municipal financial health and that these statements are comparable across municipalities. All these factors together constitute sufficient conditions for considering useful the implementation of accrual accounting in local governments, in the opinion of public sector accounting managers.Originality/valueThis paper contextualises the broader international debate on transitioning to full accrual accounting in the New Institutional Sociology framework. The Qualitative Comparative Analysis is an underutilised methodology within the field of public sector accounting, and the public sector accounting managers’ point of view is scarcely investigated in literature.

Accuracy Assessment of Advanced Laser Scanner Technologies for Forest Survey Based on Three-Dimensional Point Cloud Data

Forests play a crucial role in carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, offering ecosystem services, biodiversity conservation, and water resource management. As global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensify, the demand for accurate spatial information to monitor forest conditions and assess carbon absorption capacity has grown. LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has emerged as a transformative tool, providing high-resolution 3D spatial data for detailed analysis of forest attributes, including tree height, canopy structure, and biomass distribution. Unlike traditional manpower-intensive forest surveys, which are time-consuming and often limited in accuracy, LiDAR offers a more efficient and reliable solution. This study evaluates the accuracy and applicability of advanced LiDAR technologies—drone-mounted, terrestrial, and mobile scanners—for generating 3D forest spatial data. The results show that the terrestrial LiDAR achieved the highest precision for diameter at breast height (DBH) and tree height measurements, with RMSE values of 0.66 cm and 0.91 m, respectively. Drone-mounted LiDAR demonstrated excellent efficiency for large-scale surveys, while mobile LiDAR offered portability and speed but required further improvement in accuracy (e.g., RMSE: DBH 0.76 cm, tree height 1.83 m). By comparing these technologies, this study identifies their strengths, limitations, and optimal application scenarios, contributing to more accurate forest management practices and carbon absorption assessments.

Information Needs Among Thai Women Breast Cancer Patients During the Initial Treatment Phase: A Cross-Sectional Study.

To examine the information needs of breast cancer patients during the initial phase of treatment and to analyse the factors that influenced these needs. Providing comprehensive and timely information during early breast cancer treatment is crucial for informed decision-making and effective coping. Healthcare providers must address these needs to enhance patient support and improve outcomes. A cross-sectional study was reported following the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines. A total of 123 post-mastectomy patients were selected through purposive sampling and completed the Thai version of the Sri Lankan Information Needs Assessment Questionnaire-BC (SINAQ-BC). Direct associations between demographic data and information needs were analysed descriptively, while bivariate analysis and linear regression were used to identify significant predictors of information needs. The findings revealed that patients exhibited high overall information needs (224.7/260.0), with the greatest demand focused on physical care, treatment and diagnosis. In contrast, needs related to disease specifics and psychosocial care were less prominent. A total of 94 respondents (76.4%) expressed a particularly high demand for information regarding physical care. Education level was identified as an influencing factor, accounting for 7.7% of the variance in information needs among women with breast cancer. Patients with higher education levels had significantly greater information needs. Nursing staff should provide customised information packages that are tailored to the participants' education levels. Further testing of the Thai version of the SLINQ-BC would also be warranted. Patients are increasingly expected to manage their own care even as medical treatment grows more complex and technical. Nursing staff can contribute to the care of patients by being ready to evaluate, monitor and address breast cancer patient's individual information needs in the early stage of treatment based on factors such as educational level. No patient or public contribution because the nature of the study's design, data analysis and writing did not require patient or public contribution.

Migrant Content Creators as Actors of Transnational Education on Social Media

This paper discusses the role and motivations of migrants who create content about educational opportunities abroad and distribute it on social media platforms. Following a digital ethnography, this exploratory case study focuses on three young Brazilian women from lower socioeconomic classes who migrated to Germany to pursue formal education. Having identified a demand for information about such pathways, they started systematically to compile and circulate information about educational opportunities in Germany and gathered thousands of followers.Our analysis shows that their engagement in information sharing is based on solidarity and mutual support, paired with a personal enjoyment of social media use as well as expectations of future payoffs. We argue that their focus on vocational education and training highlights that the concept of transnational education is applicable beyond university degrees and that by circulating information about how to access those levels of education, these content creators contribute to the transnationalisation of education.

Gridded, temporally referenced spatial information on soil organic carbon for Hungary

Soil organic carbon (SOC), known as the most important soil attribute, affects various soil functions and services, essential for nutritious food and clean drinking water. Since recognizing its key role in many environmental challenges, there has been an increasing demand for spatial information on SOC. Our objective is to present the results of a mapping activity aimed at producing spatially exhaustive information on SOC content, density, and stock for the topsoils of Hungary for 1992 and 2000. A “time-for-space” digital soil mapping approach was pursued to predict and map these SOC properties, with the associated uncertainty, at a resolution of 100 × 100 m. Particular attention was paid to validating the accuracy of the maps and the reliability of the uncertainty quantifications. The published maps are recommended to be used as baseline maps for Hungary. The spatial resolution makes them suitable for various practical applications (e.g., GHG inventory, sustainable agriculture, carbon sequestration). The maps are of interest to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, helping to achieve scientifically sound results and informed decision-making.

Network-based method for assessing multi-modal transportation network vulnerability to cascading failures

Transportation systems are vulnerable to disruptive events such as natural disasters, industrial accidents, terrorist attacks, and climate change. Vulnerability assessment is necessary to understand the impacts of these disruptive events, identify underlying deficiencies within the network, and improve transportation system resilience. Multi-modal transportation networks are often interdependent and form a “system of systems”, which creates a susceptibility to cascading indirect impacts within the integrated transportation network. Accurately modeling these interdependencies typically requires a large amount of data, such as traffic flow and travel demand information for transportation systems, which may not be available or accessible. This paper proposes a network topology-based framework to conduct an interdependent transportation network vulnerability analysis by introducing an algorithm to simulate cascading failures across transport systems. The proposed framework estimates the vulnerability of the network with respect to a specific hazard, combining the network topology and the functional attributes of the transportation infrastructure components. A case study with real-world data is conducted to demonstrate the applicability of the framework to the Houston freight transportation network, and to understand the network performance under different scenarios. This study presents an alternate method that stakeholders may use to assess interdependent transportation network vulnerability when more detailed flow-based data is not available.

Navigating the Needles: Unveiling the Risks of Acupuncture: A Case Report.

Acupuncture, an increasingly popular alternative medical therapy, has heightened the demand for information on its safety profile. This is a case report involving a 28-year-old female who presented with intense right-sided chest pain and breathlessness after an acupuncture session where needles were inserted into her chest wall. The immediate medical evaluation revealed a tension pneumothorax with radiographic evidence of a mediastinal shift, compelling, urgent intervention via chest tube insertion. The patient's symptoms persisted for 2 days before the pneumothorax diminished, facilitating the removal of the chest tube. This case emphasizes the atypical presentation of pneumothorax after acupuncture, suggesting a delayed onset of symptoms possibly related to the size of the bronchopleural fistula formed by the acupuncture needle. While acupuncture-related adverse events are uncommon, serious life-threatening complications like tension pneumothorax underscore the necessity for rigorous safety standards. Amidst the growing popularity of acupuncture, this report urges healthcare professionals to be aware of and report such incidents for enhanced patient education and safety. Trial Registration: This is not an interventional study. We only reported the patient's findings from our database as a case report.

TPTC: topic-wise problems' trend clusters for smart agricultural insights extraction and forecasting of farmer's information demand.

To meet the challenges of increasing food production demand globally, extracting insights regarding the persistent agriculture-related problems on a nationwide scale is the need of the hour. Policymakers now have limited possibilities for acquiring a comprehensive knowledge of the difficulties that farmers face on a national level. In this direction, the presented work proposes a new artificial intelligence-based pipeline to gain insights at country level regarding the farmers' demand for assistance in India. The presented study uses the data from the Kisan Call Centres, a nationwide network of farmer's helplines, including 28.6million call-log records, made available by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare, Government of India. Additionally, the extracted insights are presented in the form of "Topic-wise Problems' Trend Clusters" (TPTC), which can be used by policymakers in both the government and private sectors to aid decision-making. The article also introduces a pipeline for designing forecasting models to estimate the monthly frequency of farmer inquiries (in terms of the number of query calls). The seven statistical forecasting models were examined in the study with the TBATP1 (Trigonometric seasonal components with Box-Cox transformation incorporating ARIMA errors and Trend including the Seasonal components) model attaining the lowest error rates in terms of Root Mean Square Error (0.034) and Mean Absolute Error (0.107). The study also explores numerous applications of the derived insights in the real world as well as the future scope of the presented work.

A low-carbon driven price approach for energy transactions of multi-microgrids based on non-cooperative game model considering uncertainties

Under the requirement of improving energy utilization of the grid and the dual-carbon background, balancing the economic and environmental benefits of microgrids (MG) in the competition market has great research significance. To provide reasonable price signals for energy sharing among stakeholders, we propose a new low-carbon driven energy-sharing pricing mechanism based on supply and demand information. The mechanism can incentivize MG to actively participate in non-cooperative games for energy sharing. Specifically, on the one hand, the virtual energy sharing centre (VESC) generates price signals by analysing and integrating the supply-demand information of MG, and then releases them to each MG. On the other hand, each MG receives the latest price signals and accordingly optimizes its own operation. For each MG, a two-stage robust optimization (TSRO) model that considers the uncertainties of the source-load and aims at the economy and environmental friendliness of the MG is established. For the multi-microgrid system, a low-carbon driven energy sharing mechanism is proposed by introducing a low-carbon indicator. Finally, the alternating optimization procedure-looped CCG algorithm (AOP-Looped CCG) is adopted to solve the model effectively. The numerical examples validate that the energy complementarity is promoted and comprehensive benefits are enhanced of the proposed mechanism.

Navigating the intersection between postponement strategies and additive manufacturing: insights and research agenda

Postponement is a popular principle used to improve supply chain responsiveness and increase customisation by delaying manufacturing and logistics operations until more accurate market demand information is available. In business environments where responsiveness and customisation are increasingly important, additive manufacturing (AM) has recently emerged as a high-potential manufacturing technology. Due to changes in customer behaviours that affect product life cycles and variety, AM could disrupt traditional manufacturing and greatly impact postponement decisions. However, the intersection between postponement and AM is largely underexplored. This study aims to investigate the intersection between postponement and AM to meet the escalating demand for customised products. We conceptualise opportunities and challenges related to when customisation is introduced, concerning the positioning of the customer order decoupling point and to where customisation takes place, as operations could shift across supply chain tiers or even jurisdictions. By shedding light on the intersection of postponement and AM and its implications for customisation, this study formulates a research agenda focusing on five main postponement improvement dimensions: uncertainty, volume, lead time, supply chain design, and environmental sustainability. Moreover, it formalises a set of managerial implications to pragmatically foster the strategic implementation of AM across different postponement scenarios.

Demand for Information for Wildland Fire Management

Significant resources have been devoted to increasing the supply of data and information products for wildland fire management. There has been comparatively less emphasis on understanding the demand for these products. There are large differences in the number of information sources that fire managers use in decision making. We developed a value-of-information model for wildland fire managers to formulate hypotheses about what factors drive these differences. Data from a comprehensive internet survey targeting a well-defined population of the Southwest wildland fire managers are used to test these hypotheses. Results are generally consistent with hypotheses generated from the value-of-information model. Multiple regression results suggest information use increases with the number of decisions that managers make and is greater during fire season than before. Information use is affected by a manager’s level of education, age, experience, job type, the agencies they work for, and the multi-agency dispatch centers where they work. Agency and dispatch center effects explain more of the variation in information use than differences in the respondents’ personal characteristics. To better understand fire manager demand for information, future research could explore in more detail what specific attributes of agencies and dispatch centers affect use of information for wildland fire management.

Boost Public Service Productivity with Effective IT Governance

Consumer demand for fast, accurate, and precise information has accelerated the adoption of information technology (IT) as a strategic tool in this era of globalization. The implementation of IT governance in public services plays an important role in improving efficiency, productivity, and service quality, by meeting community needs effectively. This study aims to evaluate IT governance in the public service sector through the implementation of international standards such as COBIT, ITIL, and ISO/IEC 20000 which focus on risk management, information security, and service efficiency. This research method uses a qualitative approach by analyzing related frameworks and regulations, and identifying factors that support and hinder effective IT governance. The results of the study indicate that the implementation of IT governance in public services faces significant challenges, including resistance to change, limited resources, and lack of readiness to adapt to changes in community values. The success of IT governance depends on the synergy between organizational policies, information strategies, and information architecture standards applied. In addition, the ITIL-based service model that emphasizes the integration of People, Process, Products, and Partners (4P) components has proven effective in improving the quality and satisfaction of public service users. This study recommends increasing inter-agency collaboration, improving technology infrastructure, and increasing digital literacy to ensure responsive, accountable, and sustainable IT governance in the public service sector.

Morphology and ecological significance of Holocene palynomorphs from the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt Biome of South Africa

Palynomorphs are indicators of past vegetation change. Since it is accepted that vegetation reflects the local climate, based on modern analogues, palynological analyses are a good proxy for climates of the past. In view of a demand for information on palynomorph types to support palaeoclimatic studies, we present an atlas of palynomorph taxa from the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt of eastern South Africa and Mozambique. Photomicrographs of the fossils are provided as well as brief descriptions and ecological information obtained from the literature. The palynomorphs in this atlas represent a vast variety of pollen, spores (algae, pteridophytes and fungi) and other palynomorphs such as types that were derived from the marine environment and incorporated into the lagoonal deposits. The holistic analysis of all microfossils found here is intended to assist palaeoecological interpretations of wetland dynamics, fire regimes, climate fluctuations and anthropogenic disturbances in the Indian Ocean Coastal Belt.

Molecular Engineering in the Semiconductor Industry: Progress and Prospects

Abstract. Along with population growth and economic development, human demand for energy and information will be more than ever, and humans need to rely on semiconductor devices to achieve energy storage, signal and other conversions. So how to design and prepare semiconductor materials with better performance, and industrialise and commercialise the materials has become a new hot topic. Typically, semiconductor materials are nanomaterials, and the current mainstream industrial processing is a top-down process, which raises the cost of production and leads to a waste of resources. Because of this, scientists are starting to believe that molecular engineeringa bottom-up strategy based on molecule self-assembly can save resources, energy, and production costs by constructing semiconductor material structures. This paper examines the bottom-up conceptual approach of molecular engineering and discusses the potential challenges in applying molecular self-assembly technology, which is a crucial method in molecular engineering, to the semiconductor industry. It ultimately concludes that molecular engineering plays a significant role in the semiconductor production process due to its advantages and vast potential for development.

The power of oversight: institutional investors as moderators of the earnings quality-information asymmetry nexus in Europe

Purpose While there is some evidence of a relationship between earnings quality and information asymmetry, there is limited evidence on the moderating role of institutional investors in this relationship. To fill this gap, this study aims to examine how institutional ownership affects the relationship between earnings quality and information asymmetry, with a focus on the impact of different investment horizons. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a sample of listed European firms from 2000 to 2022. Earnings quality is measured using the McNichols (2002) modification of the Dechow and Dichev (2002) model. The analysis examines the moderating effect of institutional ownership on the relationship between earnings quality and information asymmetry. Findings This study finds that the relationship between earnings quality and information asymmetry is more pronounced in firms with a higher percentage of institutional ownership. This study finds that the monitoring role of long-term institutional investors is more effective than that of short-term institutional investors. This study also finds that the influence of institutional investors is more significant in firms with incentives to engage in earnings management. Practical implications The findings provide evidence suggesting that institutional investors are an important class of investors in terms of exercising an effective monitoring role to mitigate information asymmetry and demand higher earnings quality from their investee firms. These findings are informative for many financial reporting participants, including investors, analysts, regulators and managers. Originality/value This study extends the existing research examining the relationship between earnings quality and information asymmetry (e.g. Affleck-Graves et al., 2002; Ascioglu et al., 2012; Bhattacharya et al., 2013; Jayaraman, 2008; Liu and Elayan, 2015) by examining the moderating effect of institutional ownership on this relationship. It further contributes to the literature by distinguishing between long- and short-term institutional investors and their respective monitoring roles. In addition, this study broadens the geographical scope of the research by using cross-country data from European firms, providing evidence that country-specific factors do not uniformly affect the relationship between earnings quality and information asymmetry.

Среднемасштабное интернет-картографирование почвенного покрова

The article presents the results of the development of an open geoinformation system of soil cover based on a medium-scale soil map. The scale of the map is 1:100 000. Coverage of the territory—Okhansky Urban District of the Perm Krai. The relevance of the work performed is caused by the growing demand for digital soil-cartographic information on a medium scale, which is characterized by representativeness in the conduct of a land cadastre, environmental impact assessment, obtaining information about the thickness of the fertile layer in civil, industrial and road construction, as well as in the development of adaptive landscape farming systems. The purpose of the research is to develop and test a method for integrating archival soil-cartographic materials with open web GIS solutions for a modern level of visualization and efficient use of soil maps (using the example of a medium-scale level within the boundaries of the Okhansky Urban District of the Perm Krai). For vectorization, the scanned map was defined in the coordinate system of the Pulkovo 1942/Gauss-Kruger zone 10 projection. As a result of vectorization, the total number of soil contours was 648. The source of attributive information is the soil outlines of land uses in the Okhansky District of the Perm Krai. The structure of the GIS project, in addition to the layer of soil contours, contains thematic layers characterizing the granulometric composition and quality classes of soils, calculated by the method of A.S. Fatyanov. The developed technological scheme for creating an open soil web GIS has two main blocks: the development of a GIS project and web design. Between them is the result of the functioning of the qgis2web module, which allows you to create a web map from a GIS project. Open access to GIS is organized at the web page [Web resource: https://chascshin.github.io/Ohansk-GIS (accessed 27.09.24)]. Using GitHub Pages to host a site with a web map significantly reduces the cost of the final geoinformation project. However, the main disadvantage of GitHub hosting is the limitations on the count and amount of data.

Demand Information Forecasting and Sharing in a Remanufacturing Closed‐Loop Supply Chain

ABSTRACTWe delve into the incorporation of demand information forecasting and the subsequent information sharing in a closed‐loop supply chain (CLSC). We consider the competition between an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and an independent remanufacturer (IR). The OEM autonomously determines whether to forecast demand information and further considers whether to disseminate the realized demand signal to the IR. We find that the IR adopts either a partial‐ or a full‐remanufacturing strategy to compete with the OEM. The OEM shares negative demand signals with the IR, as such signals decrease the retail prices and increase the production quantity of all‐new products. Additionally, the sharing of negative demand signals helps alleviate the cannibalization effect caused by the introduction of remanufactured products. When examining the optimal sharing strategy in equilibrium, the OEM only invests in forecasting demand if the forecasting cost is relatively low. Furthermore, the numerical studies reveal that, in equilibrium, the OEM does not necessarily benefit from possessing more precise demand information. Additionally, we assess the influence of consumers' environmental awareness on the production decisions of both companies. The findings indicate that heightened environmental awareness prompts the IR to adopt a full‐remanufacturing strategy, and the information management strategies remain robust.

Individual differences in information demand have a low dimensional structure predicted by some curiosity traits

To understand human learning and progress, it is crucial to understand curiosity. But how consistent is curiosity's conception and assessment across scientific research disciplines? We present the results of a large collaborative project assessing the correspondence between curiosity measures in personality psychology and cognitive science. A total of 820 participants completed 15 personality trait measures and 9 cognitive tasks that tested multiple aspects of information demand. We show that shared variance across the cognitive tasks was captured by a dimension reflecting directed (uncertainty-driven) versus random (stochasticity-driven) exploration and individual differences along this axis were significantly and consistently predicted by personality traits. However, the personality metrics that best predicted information demand were not the central curiosity traits of openness to experience, deprivation sensitivity, and joyous exploration, but instead included more peripheral curiosity traits (need for cognition, thrill seeking, and stress tolerance) and measures not traditionally associated with curiosity (extraversion and behavioral inhibition). The results suggest that the umbrella term "curiosity" reflects a constellation of cognitive and emotional processes, only some of which are shared between personality measures and cognitive tasks. The results reflect the distinct methods that are used in these fields, indicating a need for caution in comparing results across fields and for future interdisciplinary collaborations to strengthen our emerging understanding of curiosity.