Major Research Topics Research Articles

Faculty awareness of the economic and environmental benefits of augmented reality for sustainability in Saudi Arabian universities

In recent decades, smart technology has been one of the major thought-provoking research subjects in the quest to meet the needs of society in ways that do not damage or deplete the environment and that conserve natural resources. Augmented reality is an emerging technology that blends three-dimensional virtual objects with reality. Technologies such as Augmented Reality can be useful tools to promote sustainable development in higher education in terms of various economic, social and environmental considerations. This paper aims to investigate faculty members’ awareness of the potential benefits of incorporating Augmented Reality technology in Saudi Arabian universities in terms of its economic and environmental sustainability.For this study, quantitative data was collected by means of a survey questionnaire where participants responded to statements on a five-point Likert scale that ranged from “totally agree” to “totally disagree”. The study was conducted with a sample comprising 228 academic and e-learning department staff from Saudi universities. The exploratory factor analysis technique was utilised to identify factors related to awareness of advantages of using Augmented Reality in education, particularly in relation to sustainability. Two factors were identified, namely environmental and economic factors. Study findings indicated that academic and e-learning department staff believe that the use of Augmented Reality in higher education has positional environmental and economic sustainability benefits. The findings from this study provide insights that will assist further studies regarding AR in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

A Critique of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Framework in Epidemiology and Public Health: Uses and Misuses

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have emerged as a major research theme. They make reference to an array of potentially harmful exposures occurring from birth to eighteen years of age and may be involved in the construction of health inequalities over the lifecourse. As with many simplified concepts, ACEs present limitations. They include diverse types of exposures, are often considered cumulatively, can be identified using prospective and retrospective approaches, and their multidimensional nature may lead to greater measurement error. From a public health perspective, ACEs are useful for describing the need to act upon complex social environments to prevent health inequalities at a population level. As the ACEs concept becomes popular in the context of policy interventions, concerns have emerged. As a probabilistic and population-level tool, it is not adapted to diagnose individual-level vulnerabilities, an approach which could ultimately exacerbate inequalities. Here, we present a critique of the ACEs framework, discussing its strengths and limits.

Music Ephemera within Library Collections: A Review of the Literature

ABSTRACTWhile interest in including music ephemera in library collections continues to grow, there has been very little research into why it is important to collect and maintain such material within library collections, or the best ways to manage music ephemera collections. This paper presents an examination of research on the need for music ephemera in library collections along with the challenges involved in managing such collections. The literature review is synthesised from research gathered from 40 publications from countries including; New Zealand (UK), Australia, the United States of America (USA), Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK), and the date range of literature spans from 1941 to 2019 inclusive. It briefly examines the history of music and performing arts ephemera collections and looks at best practice for the management of ephemera in library collections including printed and e-ephemera. Content analysis was used to identify major research topics. As there is very little literature on music ephemera, it also explores the importance of performing arts and arts ephemera collections in libraries, with a focus on collecting and managing collections, along with the best practices for the digitisation of ephemera going forward. On the basis of the review, future research directions are discussed.

Discovering thematic change and evolution of utilizing social media for healthcare research

BackgroundSocial media plays a more and more important role in the research of health and healthcare due to the fast development of internet communication and information exchange. This paper conducts a bibliometric analysis to discover the thematic change and evolution of utilizing social media for healthcare research field.MethodsWith the basis of 4361 publications from both Web of Science and PubMed during the year 2008–2017, the analysis utilizes methods including topic modelling and science mapping analysis.ResultsUtilizing social media for healthcare research has attracted increasing attention from scientific communities. Journal of Medical Internet Research is the most prolific journal with the USA dominating in the research. Overly, major research themes such as YouTube analysis and Sex event are revealed. Themes in each time period and how they evolve across time span are also detected.ConclusionsThis systematic mapping of the research themes and research areas helps identify research interests and how they evolve across time, as well as providing insight into future research direction.

Research Subjects and Research Trends in Medical Informatics.

To identify major research subjects and trends in medical informatics research based on the current set of core medical informatics journals. Analyzing journals in the Web of Science (WoS) medical informatics category together with related categories from the years 2013 to 2017 by using a smart local moving algorithm as a clustering method for identifying the core set of journals. Text mining analysis with binary counting of abstracts from these journals published in the years 2006 to 2017 for identifying major research subjects. Building clusters based on these terms for the complete time period as well as for the periods 2006-2008, 2009-2011, 2012-2014, and 2015-2017 for identifying trends. The identified cluster includes 17 core medical informatics journals. By text mining of these journals, 224,992 different terms in 14,414 articles were identified covering 550 specific key terms. Based on these key terms five clusters were identified: "Biomedical Data Analysis," "Clinical Informatics," "EHR and Knowledge Representation," "Mobile Health," and "Organizational Aspects of Health Information Systems." No shifts in the clusters were observed between the first two 3-year periods. In the third period, some terms like "mobile phone," "mobile apps," and "message" appear. Also, in the third period, a "Clinical Informatics" cluster appears and persists in the fourth period. In the fourth period, a rearrangement of clusters was observed. Beside classical subjects of medical informatics on organizing, representing, and analyzing data, we observed new developments in the context of mobile health and clinical informatics. These subjects tended to grow over the past years, and we can expect this trend to continue.

Global genetic diversity and geographical distribution of Bemisia tabaci and its bacterial endosymbionts.

Bemisia tabaci is one of the most threatening pests in agriculture, causing significant losses to many important crops on a global scale. The dramatic increase and availability of sequence data for B. tabaci species complex and its bacterial endosymbionts is critical for developing emerging sustainable pest management strategies which are based on pinpointing the global diversity of this important pest and its bacterial endosymbionts. To unravel the global genetic diversity of B. tabaci species complex focusing on its associated endosymbionts, along with Israeli whitefly populations collected in this study, we combined available sequences in databases, resulting in a total of 4,253 mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (mtCOI) sequences from 82 countries and 1,226 16S/23S rRNA endosymbiont sequences from 32 countries that were analyzed. Using Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, we identified two new B. tabaci groups within the species complex and described the global distribution of endosymbionts within this complex. Our analyses revealed complex divergence of the different endosymbiont sequences within the species complex, with overall one Hamiltonella, two Porteria (P1 and P2), two Arsenophonus (A1 and A2), two Wolbachia (super-groups O and B), four Cardinium (C1-C4) and three Rickettsia (R1-R3) groups were identified. Our comprehensive analysis provides an updated important resource for this globally important pest and its secondary symbionts, which have been a major subject for research in last three decades.

Reusability in goal modeling: A systematic literature review

Abstract Context: Goal modeling is an important instrument for the elicitation, specification, analysis, and validation of early requirements. Goal models capture hierarchical representations of stakeholder objectives, requirements, possible solutions, and their relationships to help requirements engineers understand stakeholder goals and explore solutions based on their impact on these goals. To reuse a goal model and benefit from the strengths of goal modeling, we argue that it is necessary (i) to make sure that analysis and validation of goal models is possible through reuse hierarchies, (ii) to provide the means to delay decision making to a later point in the reuse hierarchy, (iii) to take constraints imposed by other modeling notations into account during analysis, (iv) to allow context dependent information to be modeled so that the goal model can be used in various reuse contexts, and (v) to provide an interface for reuse. Objective: In this two-part systematic literature review, we (i) evaluate how well existing goal modeling approaches support reusability with our five desired characteristics of contextual and reusable goal models, (ii) categorize these approaches based on language constructs for context modeling and connection to other modeling formalisms, and then (iii) draw our conclusions on future research themes. Method: Following guidelines by Kitchenham, the review is conducted on seven major academic search engines. Research questions, inclusion criteria, and categorization criteria are specified, and threats to validity are discussed. A final list of 146 publications and 34 comparisons/assessments of goal modeling approaches is discussed in more detail. Results: Five major research themes are derived to realize reusable goal models with context dependent information. Conclusion: The results indicate that existing goal modeling approaches do not fully address the required capabilities for reusability in different contexts and that further research is needed to fill this gap in the landscape of goal modeling approaches.

From conventional governance to e-democracy: Tracing the evolution of e-governance research trends using network analysis tools

The adoption of e-governing practices has revolutionised the administrative machinery of governments worldwide by improving efficiency, transparency, and accountability. Researchers and administrators often aim to identify emerging research fronts and the timeline of the evolution to forecast and implement technology. In this work, we systematically investigate the trajectory of the global evolution and emerging research fronts as well as the prospects for e-governance using citation network analysis. The growth curve fitted to the number of articles published per year shows that the research activities are still in the ascendant phase. We visualise the global main path of the citation network and investigate the patterns to trace the knowledge diffusion path, major milestones, and emerging research fronts. The cluster analysis identifies the major topics of research as administration and information system management, e-governance framework design, efficiency or quality evaluation, and the application of social networks and open data leading to e-democracy. The adoption of open data and social networking for user interactions with government that leads to participatory governance are the emerging research trends. We also identify research that can have a future impact based on network parameters. The results contribute to the literature by setting the focus of future research, and assisting administrators in selecting suitable models and methodologies, and manufacturers with the development of required technical devices suitable for the upcoming phase of symbiosis.

Mapping the research trends on the biological effects of radiation less than 100 mSv: a bibliometric analysis for 30 years publication

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the global scientific publication of biological research of low dose radiation for the past 30 years and provide the insights into the characteristics of research activities and major topics regarding biological effects of low dose radiation exposure.Materials and methods: We bibliometrically investigated the biological research publication of radiation exposure less than 100 mSv. References published from 1987 to 2016 were achieved from the Scopus database and filtered by several criteria such as publication types, research fields, and radiation dose range.Results: Total 753 references were assembled for the bibliometric analysis on the biological studies of radiation effect less than 100 mSv. It provided fundamental knowledge of research, including production tendency, contribution, impact journals, and major research themes. Based on the keyword analysis, we found that specific topics on the biological response to radiation exposure have been changed from the examination of low dose radiation-induced phenomena to the investigation of how to induce a physiological response. In addition, featured articles showed the various views on the biological effects of radiation less than 100 mSv in 30 years publication, depending on radiation doses and types.Conclusions: Continuous studies in large programs of low dose radiation led to the increment of research achievements in accordance with societal needs in radiation safety regulation for health protection. Our findings can surely help radiation researchers to gain insights and penetration in low dose risk research for radiation protection, and establish a further research direction.

ГЕОЛОГИЯ АПТ-АЛЬБСКИХ ПОРОД КАРБОНАТНОЙ ПЛАТФОРМЫ ОСАДОЧНОЙ ГРУППЫ КОГОЛЛО И ПОСЛЕДСТВИЯ АНОКСИДНЫХ ОКЕАНИЧЕСКИХ СОБЫТИЙ БАССЕЙНА МАРАКАЙБО (СЕВЕРО-ЗАПАДНАЯ ЧАСТЬ ЮЖНОЙ АМЕРИКИ)

Актуальность исследования обусловлена необходимостью проведения дополнительных поисково-разведочных работ на нефть и газ в северо-западной части нефтегазоносного бассейна Маракайбо, которые позволят повысить рентабельность разработки действующих месторождений и расширят возможности поиска новых залежей углеводородов в западной части Венесуэлы. Анализируемая осадочная толща Коголло, представленная формациями Апон, Лижур и Марака, включает промышленно продуктивный интервал, который слагают карбонатные отложения и нефтематеринские породы мелового периода. Литологическая характеристика нефтематеринских пород указывает на аноксидные океанические события при формировании формации Апон. Первое событие соотносится с осадконакоплением пачки Мачикес, а второе – с кровлей пачки Пиче. Обе пачки принадлежат к формации Апон. Рассматриваемые события способствовали формированию нефтематеринских пород высокого генерационного потенциала углеводородов, чем объясняется интерес данного исследования. Основной целью исследования является изучение фациальных условий формирования отложений формации Апон в разрезе обнажения континентальной части бассейна Маракайбо и их корреляция с ближайшими глубокими скважинами для определения стратиграфического местоположения коллекторов и их возможной связи с интервалами потенциальной нефтематеринской породы. Объекты: обнажения карьера Цементос Кататумбо С.А. в горной системе Периха, где выделяется карбонатная тоща нижней группы Коголло, а также глубокие поисковые скважины X-1, X-15, X-21, X-14 и X-23. Имеющиеся варианты корреляции отложений в обнажении горной системы Периха недостаточно обоснованы и требуют уточнения. Методы: седиментологический и геохимический анализы карбонатных пород группы Коголло в пределах в карьере Цементос Кататумбо С.А., штат Сулия, Венесуэла, включающие макро- и петрографическое описание пород, биостратиграфический анализ, изучение содержания общего органического углерода в породе, данных гамма-каротажа по разрезу обнажения и в глубоких скважинах. Результаты. Выделено 14 микрофаций, связанных с условиями седиментации в пределах склона карбонатного бассейна. В последовательности переслаивания отложений формации Апон выделяются участки максимальной трансгрессии моря и скрытые стратиграфические несогласия. Аппроксимированная и оценочная корреляция, учитывающая стратиграфию, литофации и данные гамма-каротажа, была проведена в обнажении карьера Цементос Кататумбо С.А. и сопоставлена с разрезами нефтяных скважин X-1, X-15, X-21, X-14 и X-23.

Knowledge generation in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster

A disaster is a crisis situation that causes significant harm to humans, the environment, the economy, and impacts upon society’s ability to cope both during the event and with the aftermath. A disaster may escalate rapidly to reach unpredicted consequences. They can be naturally occurring, or man-made, or a combination of the two. In this study we have focused on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident of 2011 that subsequently unleashed a floodgate of scientific activities, including basic and applied research, technology development, policy reform, inter-disciplinary collaboration, citizen science and re-strategization of research networks. In this context, a bibliometric study has been conducted on 5455 publications on the Fukushima disaster indexed by Scopus for the 2011–2017 period. The aim is to identify key papers in the field, the most substantive contributors to the literature, and to begin to map out the emergence of a body of knowledge resulting from the disaster. The findings present main national and international collaborators on Fukushima disaster related research, as well as an indication of the major research themes evolving over the immediate years following the event. This allows for a deeper understanding of the longitudinal impact of a disaster on society and upon the international research community and its deliberations.

Tourism information technology research trends: 1990-2016

Purpose The advancement of data analysis tools makes analyzing a huge amount of literature possible. This paper aims to identify tourism information technology research trends with the assistance of Toolkit for Academic Research (CATAR) to answer two research questions: the status of tourism information technology (IT) articles published in these selected journals from 1990 to 2016, and whether the number of Tourism IT articles is increasing or decreasing, and the main research topics studied in these articles from 1990 to 2016, and whether those have shifted over the 27 years. Design/methodology/approach Selected keywords identified by researchers that were used to extract Tourism IT articles published in Web of Science database. CATAR was used to carry out two analyses, namely, overview analysis and breakdown analysis. Overview analysis is performed to apply citation analysis to identify the general trend and the most cited reference of Tourism IT research represented by the selected articles. Breakdown analysis is based on bibliographic coupling (BC) analysis. Findings The number of Tourism IT publications grew rapidly in the second half of the 2000s, as mobile phones with touch screens became increasingly popular. It signals changes in the way of information searching behaviors. A total of 769 authors from 44 countries contributed to Tourism IT research. The USA, China, UK and Australia are the countries contributing the most. Six subject areas were revealed, namely, the interaction of people and organization; interaction of people and information; interaction of people and technology; technological implementation; the interaction of organization and information; and interaction of organization and technology. Research limitations/implications The major limitation of this study must be considered – the use of data merely derived from WoS database. The BC analysis makes a comparison between references of the given articles. This analysis requires the citation sources with better data quality, which is mainly based on the accuracy and standardization of databases. WoS is the database currently fit this requirement. The emergence of the new citation tools will enable scholars to pull data from new databases and to clean the data. Incorporating data from those new databases will reveal more accurate and comprehensive picture of Tourism IT research trend. Originality/value This paper revealed the research trend and major research subject areas of Tourism IT research for the past 16 years. The results can assist scholars to quickly grasp the Tourism IT research. This paper also provides an alternative approach to conduct literature review with computer-assisted analysis program.

Wireless Power Transfer—An Overview

Due to limitations of low power density, high cost, heavy weight, etc., the development and application of battery-powered devices are facing with unprecedented technical challenges. As a novel pattern of energization, the wireless power transfer (WPT) offers a band new way to the energy acquisition for electric-driven devices, thus alleviating the over-dependence on the battery. This paper presents an overview of WPT techniques with emphasis on working mechanisms, technical challenges, metamaterials, and classical applications. Focusing on WPT systems, this paper elaborates on current major research topics and discusses about future development trends. This novel energy transmission mechanism shows significant meanings on the pervasive application of renewable energies in our daily life.

Analysis and trends of photo-trapping in Mexico: text mining in R

This paper gathers published studies that used photo-trapping as the primary or supplementary method to obtain data on mammal and bird species in Mexico. The aim is to determine temporal trends, scientific journals, species, research groups, regions, and key topics investigated using this technology. A secondary objective of this paper was to illustrate the usefulness of text mining tools to analyze and summarize relatively large amounts of information. Papers about photo-trapping in Mexico published in specialized journals and books from 1998 to 2017 were compiled from Google Scholar and processed with various packages in R. A total of 188 papers about photo-trapping in Mexico were compiled, with 88.2 % published in 50 journals over the past seven years. The main journals were Therya, Revista Mexicana de Biodiversidad, Acta Zoologica Mexicana (New Series) and Revista de Biologia Tropical. The articles identified were written by 406 co-authors, 28 of whom contributed with 32.4 % of the papers published. A total of 40 species were reported in the title and abstract of these papers; the most frequent species were Panthera onca, Leopardus pardalis, Puma concolor, Tapirus bairdii, Tayassu pecari, Odocoileus virginianus , and Cuniculus paca . Oaxaca, Campeche, Sonora, Chiapas, Guanajuato, and Puebla were the main states where studies were conducted; in particular, most of them were carried out within Biosphere Reserves. Major research topics comprised records that broaden the distribution range, estimates of relative abundance and density, analysis of activity patterns, ecological interactions between species, and use of photo-trapping data as supplementary information to elaborate inventories of species. The analysis of text mining clearly indicates a trend towards an increasing use of photo-trapping in Mexico. Felines, ungulates and various species of the order Carnivora are main subjects of study. Photo-trapping has been used to explore a number of aspects of the biology of animal species. A large number of studies have been carried out in southeastern Mexico. The use of text mining techniques is a practical approach to analyze large volumes of data.

Food Aid for Nutrition: Narrative Review of Major Research Topics Presented at a Scientific Symposium Held October 21, 2017, at the 21st International Congress of Nutrition in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Food aid is a valuable tool for meeting global nutrition goals, particularly for vulnerable populations of children and reproductive-aged women. On October 21, 2017, the Food Aid Quality Review Project hosted a scientific symposium at the 21st International Congress on Nutrition in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to take stock of what the global community has learned about selected topics in the research literature on food aid used to address malnutrition. This article presents the discussion that took place during the symposium, which was guided by presentations by 6 experts from the field of nutrition, food aid, and humanitarian response. The recent upsurge in research on food aid has advanced the collective knowledge of what food aid products and programs work for addressing nutrition, but there is much more to learn. Presentations in this symposium called for further inquiry on (1) different and novel food aid formulations, (2) the cost-effectiveness of products and programs, and (3) market-based approaches to food assistance. Continuing to expand the evidence base on these topics is critical to improving global nutrition programs.

Bibliometric Profile of an Agbioscience Research Enhancement Grant Program

This study is a bibliometric analysis of journal articles generated from an intramural grant program in the agbiosciences. Using citation analysis and bibliometric mapping, the study analyzes 515 journal articles published from 1999 to 2017. Results show the growth of journal article output, identify the major research fields and topics, describe national and international authorial and institutional collaborations, and quantify the performance and impact of the article output. The grant program’s journal article output presents a multi-disciplinary range of scholarly publications that reflect the disciplines of The Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, which houses the grant program.

Imitation, Reference, and Exploration—Development Path to Urban Renewal in China (1985-2017)

In China, the field of urban renewal is one of the core concepts within the disciplines of urbanism and architecture. After decades of economic growth, many issues have been added to the field of urban development, which has diversified significantly. To comprehensively understand the developmental context of urban renewal in China, this paper starts from the urban and architectural disciplines, combined with the international background of urban regeneration, and systematically analyzes the progress of urban renewal in China from 1985 to 2017. Four major research themes are summarized and divided into three stages of development with the aim of chronologically sorting the contexts and trends of urban renewal in the thirty years since China’s “Open Door Policy.”

Survey of State-of-the-Art Mixed Data Clustering Algorithms

Mixed data comprises both numeric and categorical features, and mixed datasets occur frequently in many domains, such as health, finance, and marketing. Clustering is often applied to mixed datasets to find structures and to group similar objects for further analysis. However, clustering mixed data is challenging because it is difficult to directly apply mathematical operations, such as summation or averaging, to the feature values of these datasets. In this paper, we present a taxonomy for the study of mixed data clustering algorithms by identifying five major research themes. We then present a state-of-the-art review of the research works within each research theme. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these methods with pointers for future research directions. Lastly, we present an in-depth analysis of the overall challenges in this field, highlight open research questions and discuss guidelines to make progress in the field.

Optimization of Inverse Kinematic Solution of a T4R Robotic Manipulator

Inverse kinematics has always been a major subject of extensive research filled with redundancy. A need for meticulous functioning and fast computation is always high in any mechatronic system and is growing with new advances and human requirements. In this paper, a T4R (T-Twisting, R-Rotary) robot with constrained motion and joint precision of 1 degree is analyzed for its workspace and kinematics. While the redundant inverse kinematic solution is being optimized for precision and limiting errors, further can be used for programming and motion planning a Robotic Manipulator or Arm. The strategies developed in this paper could also be useful for solving the inverse kinematics problems of other similar types of robotic arms.

Community-Driven Health Priorities for Healthy Aging With HIV

Palm Springs, CA, is a retirement community with the highest prevalence of gay men living with HIV older than 50 years in the United States. Through a community-academic partnership, we explored the major health issues, resiliencies, and priority research topics related to HIV and aging. We conducted five community facilitated focus groups with different stakeholders, including two focus groups with older adults living with HIV, one with their caregivers, one with HIV-focused community-based organizations, and a joint focus group with researchers and HIV care providers. Using the rigorous and accelerated data reduction technique, five major themes emerged, which included long-term side effects of medication, social determinants of health, mental health, resiliencies, and involving community in research. These data are important for developing effective interventions, conducting useful and impactful research, and providing health care providers with the tools and knowledge to provide optimal care.