Major Users Research Articles

Applying the theory of planned behavior to explain geospatial data sharing for urban planning and management: cases from urban centers in Tanzania

This paper illustrates the potential use of the theory of planned behavior as a guiding framework for understanding intentions and behavior in geospatial data sharing in Tanzania. A structured questionnaire survey, was constructed and sent to local governments as well as academic and private organizations that are major producers and/or users of geodata. The questionnaire covered issues of how collection of geodata is financed, management of geospatial data, and compatibility of spatial data-sets. The theory was found to be generally effective in accounting for intentions to share geospatial data in Tanzania (p < .01). Results show potential for data sharing between local governments and other organizations in Tanzania, and it is suggested that creating awareness among spatial data stakeholders and the establishment of a spatial data infrastructure policy framework will speed up geospatial data sharing.

Taiwan’s science miracle

In the past two decades, a flourishing economy and maturing infrastructure have Taiwanese physicists both staying home more and engaging internationally.

Global Gas — Oversupply and Uncertain Future

SHOULD GAS STAY AT HOME? As recently as 2005-2007, North America was seen as threatened by major and enduring gas shortage. Prices were expected to stay as high as, or exceed present European gas import prices, typically $10 $12 per million BTU (July 2013) for pipeline gas, and often more than that for LNG imports. Asian LNG gas import prices for certain markets, especially Japan, can presently attain more than $15 per million BTU pricing this energy at close to $35 per 1000 kWh (MWh). Electricity produced from gas at this price will have a generating-fuel-only cost of around or above $70 per 1000 kWh. For September delivery, early August prices of US natural gas contracts traded on the Nymex are currently priced around $3.45 per million BTU. In 2005-2007 major investment was underway in the US to build terminals to import LNG, not to ship it overseas. Today, converting import terminals into export terminals, and building new LNG export terminals at typical costs ranging from $10 to $20 billion each, is the major planned or projected gas infrastructure program underway in the US and Canada. Due to the turnaround being recent, the high costs, and regulatory requirements including energy policy and environmental concerns, the US government has to date only approved two projects for LNG exports. Debate rages in Washington over whether to allow more, with calls for no or low exports from the USA coming from consumer groups and major industrial gas and energy users, such as Dow Chemical, who say the gas should stay on the continent to ensure cheap energy for domestic manufacturing and consumers.

Assessing water demands and coverage sensitivity to climate change in the urban and rural sectors in central Chile

Snow dominated basins in the subtropics are susceptible to climate change, since evaporation and streamflows are affected, impacting key water sectors and increasing the risk of water shortages. This paper shows an integrated assessment of the impacts of climate change on the major water users in the Maipo Basin of Chile, allowing a direct comparison between competing sectors, describing their sensitivity to future climate changes instead of focusing on individual scenarios, and assessing the effect of likely responses, such as pumping, that impact groundwater levels. We developed a statistical downscaling mechanism to correct biases in global circulation model projections and ran a hydrological model to determine the impacts of climate change on the ability of the system to meet water demands. Mean coverage and minimum coverage of urban and agricultural sectors are sensitive to climate change, particularly to larger changes in precipitation. The urban sector is less sensitive because of higher reliability standards and holds a greater fraction of water-use rights in comparison to actual withdrawals. In addition, groundwater pumping represents an additional source of water to meet population demands. However, this favorable condition could no longer be present if climate change also affects aquifer recharge dynamics.

Here comes the cord.

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation has been established as a lifesaving therapy for leukemias or other hematopoietic malignancies since more than a half century ago [1]. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched sibling is the preferred donor for the better clinical outcomes, whiles, even patients without suitable family donor could also receive the benefits from unrelated donor registries or cord blood (CB) banks. International collaboration has also been well-improved in this field. Nowadays, almost all patients who need allogeneic transplantation are able to find adequate donors. Advantages to use CB unit are the quick availability, lower risk of severe graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) even though HLA between recipients and CB grafts is mismatched in most cases, and no risk for CB donors medically and mentally. Since the first patient received the CB from his HLA-matched sister to treat Fanconi Anemia successfully in 1988 [2], many CB banks have been established and the numbers of transplants using unrelated CB units dramatically increased. There are approximately 621,000 CB units in the database of Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide (BMDW: http://www.bmdw.org/). Recently, more than 3,000 CB transplantation (CBT)s are carried out annually all over the world: one third in Europe, one third in North America and another one third in Asia (mostly in Japan). Pediatric patients were major users in early period, however, CBT are gradually adopted in adults in this decade. For example, we are performing more than 1,200 transplantations using single CB unit annually in Japan, and more than 80% are adult patients with hematology malignancies, and a half of the recipients are older than 50 years. The major reason of this increment in the world is the improved clinical outcomes. Recently, for example, Eapen and colleagues [3] compared results of 165 single CBT for adult patients, 888 peripheral blood stem cell transplant (PBSCT) patients, and 472 bone marrow transplant (BMT) patients. Transplant-related mortality was higher for the CBT patients, but chronic GVHD were lower. Leukemia-free survival was comparable among CBT, fully matched, and mismatched PBSCT/BMT patients [3]. These findings have contributed to increase the CBT activity among the international transplant societies and have gradually improved the reliability of this transplant strategy. There is still limitation in CBT such as delayed engraftment and poor immune cell reconstitution [4]. The quality assurance of CB unit is also key issue for the reliability of CBT among the patients, their families, and transplant physicians. Cell dose is the most significant parameters for engraftment capacity of CB unit and also for survival results after CBT. Especially, CD34-positive cell number indicates the hematopoietic stem or progenitor cell function. However, the diversity of technical difference between CB banks has been evoked and it is necessary that we adjust that standard. Efforts are being intensified by the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy and the Joint Accreditation Committee - International Society for Cellular Therapy and European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (FACT-JACIE), the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), and CB banks all over the world. Because the importance of cell dose is critical, researchers are focusing on CB expansion strategies and some of them are under laboratory and clinical assessment. Under the situation described as above, CBT is definitely contributing to improving the life prognosis of patients with hematological malignancies. On the other hand, the utilized percentage of donated CB units all over the world is 6.3% reported by World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA), however it was reported as 1.2% in Korea. In this issue of Blood Research, Choi et al. [5] has analyzed the reasons by the questionnaire survey using Audience Response System for 67 board-certified transplant physicians at the annual meeting of the Korean Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. According to ordinary expectations, Korean physicians are now not positive for choose CB units as stem cell source for transplantation, because of the fears for poor clinical results and for unsatisfied quality of CB units from domestic CB banks. However, some Korean transplant specialists and CB bank persons have continued to proceed with great efforts for achieving the satisfied clinical outcomes with CBT and for obtaining good enough quality of CB units. They have already known the education is also important to improve the reliabilities for the strategy. Please just remember the time when you started BMT or PBSCT, or even transplant with haplo just a couple of years ago. Nothing gains without going forward. Here comes the time of CBT.

E. sveikatos dalyvių funkcijų pasiskirstymo svarba: dalyvių vaidmenų rinkinys

The objective of the present research is to develop a model for cooperation and distribution of e-health interested functions and to test the model in an actual health care system, i.e., to check how Lithuania’s e-health interested parties share their cooperative roles and functions in the multidisciplinary knowledge control cycle to develop elements of the e-health system. The aforementioned model is based on the key assumption that a health care institution and its employees are major users and owners of e-health production and therefore take the leading role. Two management theories have been employed: the knowledge control process and the theory of role distribution in the cooperation cycle. The core of the theoretical model is to tackle the question as to which of the interested parties and during which knowledge generation phases should take coordinating, developing, observing, implementing and specialist roles.The practical testing of the model has revealed that the theoretical role distribution model is only partly realized in practice. The Ministry of Health Care performs excessive functions leaving too few for health care institutions. Patient participation is also ignored. Moreover, a tendency that e-health participants constantly request a strong coordinator independently of the stage of the knowledge cycle has been observed. The participants tend to pass the function on to the Ministry of Health Care in expectation to simultaneously dispose responsibility for financial decisions and the quality of final results. Having passed the leading role on to the health care institution, the problems of distribution of functions would remain incompletely resolved due to an overestimated contribution of IT companies as product developers or other reasons, including disregard and isolation. Thus, the developing role of IT companies is possible only in a separate knowledge control phase, whereas their contributin during other phases is shared between an implementor and observer.

The Perspectives of the Development of Moldovan Statistics

The biggest challenges which producers of official statistics are now facing are to provide reliable, relevant statistics for major user groups, but also to support the public with statistical knowledge, to help the users to take appropriate decisions. Moreover, the European Union's (EU) integration aspirations of the Republic of Moldova dictate the need for harmonization of national statistics with the European standards and best practices. Modernizing the system of production and dissemination of Moldovan official statistics in compliance with EU standards is a challenge, but also a great opportunity to improve the quality of national statistics, including its comparability at the European level, responding to user's needs. The process of reformation of statistics implies a review of dissemination and communication practices, making them more users oriented, the redesign of statistical production system, making efficient use of new information technologies and of available administrative data.The paper reflects the authors’ vision on the main activities needed to be fulfilled by national statistics to better meet the information demands in quality statistics in the European context.

Hazards and Risks in the Romanian Agriculture Due to Climate Changes

The climate changes represent one of the major challenges of our century-a complex area in which we must improve our knowledge and understanding in order to take immediate and correct action to address efficiently, in terms of costs, the challenges of the climate changes. The processes and the natural phenomena, though cyclic are accidental. Even though they appear as a necessity in the evolution of the system, they manifest themselves at random, undergoing, from this point of view, the hazard, the unpredictible. The agriculture is a major user of the agrometeorological information, their capitalization in connection to other types of specialized information (agricultural, technologic, economic. etc.) is achieved in order to prevent and reduce the risk generated by meteorological phenomena and to set strategies for sustainable development.

Analysis of the Irrigation Water Price in Rice Production Tanzania

Over the past 50 years, cross-sectoral water utilization in Tanzania has grown considerably due to the increase of human populations which increasing food demands and growing of economic activities that require water in production. The agriculture sector is one of the major users of water resource for irrigation activities. The purpose of this paper was to analyse the irrigation water price in rice production in Tanzania. The secondary data were collected from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives in Statistics Unit and zonal irrigation units. Elasticities were estimated using ordinary least squares technique with the help of STATA 11. Factor analysis technique was also applied. The estimated water price coefficient was found to be -0.03 and the average water price was estimated to be 5.50 Tshs/m3. However the water productivity was 0.3kg/m3, whereas the production was estimated to be 2.5ton/ha.

Different Hype Cycle Viewpoints for an E-Learning System

This paper uses Gartner Group's Hype Cycle as an analysis tool for the e-learning platform integration process at the University of Pitesti. The platform was installed three years ago and during this time there were many points of view (by major user groups) regarding the usefulness and adoption rate. Based on this fact, according to us, the e-learning Hype Cycle has two graphical representations, two variation curves that have the first part identical but differ significantly in the following two stages, differences that disappear in the end. Based on our analysis, we found necessary to improve the management strategies, to better motivate the teachers in order for them to reach the same level of interested shown by the students in using the system, and thus bringing the two educational groups to the same opinion. We have depicted all this evolution and the different points of view by the Hype Cycle curve, that should be only one for the 5th year of system presence in our institution, a convergence reached a bit too late in the IT world, where software solutions have a limited life cycle. Keywords: Hype Cycle, e-learning, academic collaboration

Water footprint of beef cattle and sheep produced in New Zealand: water scarcity and eutrophication impacts

Abstract There is increasing recognition of the tension between livestock production and freshwater availability. Changes in freshwater availability can be generated by both freshwater consumptive and freshwater degradative use. Agriculture is a major water user, and beef cattle and sheep farming is an important agricultural activity in New Zealand (NZ). This study assessed potential environmental impacts associated with water use in beef cattle and sheep farming in NZ, following a water footprint method compliant with life cycle assessment principles with a focus on the water scarcity footprint and eutrophication potential (EP) impacts. The life cycle required for the production of beef cattle and sheep was analysed cradle-to-farm-gate, excluding animal transport or processing. Survey data from Beef and Lamb New Zealand for the year 2009/10 were used to cover a range of beef cattle and sheep farm types throughout NZ (426 farms averaged in seven farm classes), and water scarcity footprint and EP weighted averages were calculated for beef cattle and sheep. The normalised NZ weighted average water scarcity footprint of beef cattle of 0.37 L H2O-eq/kg LW was lower than the published normalised values for the water scarcity footprint of beef cattle produced in Australia (3.3–221 L H2O-eq/kg LW) and in the UK. Also, the NZ weighted average water scarcity footprint of sheep of 0.26 L H2O-eq/kg meat (assuming that 40% LW was converted into meat) was lower than the water scarcity footprint of sheep meat reported for the UK (8.4–23.1 L H2O/kg meat). Blue water losses associated with evapotranspiration from irrigated pasture comprised the greatest proportion of the total water scarcity footprint, despite the small areas of farmland irrigated. The weighted average EP of beef cattle was 51.1 g PO4-eq/kg LW, and the weighted average EP of sheep was 26.1 g PO4-eq/kg LW. The NZ weighted average EP for beef cattle was lower than the 105 g PO4-eq/kg LW reported for European Union suckler beef cattle. On-farm nitrate leaching and phosphorus runoff dominated the EP. From an international marketing perspective, beef cattle and sheep produced in NZ have a potential advantage by having low water scarcity footprints compared to some non-NZ pastoral farming systems due to their production efficiencies and low annual water-stress levels. The impact of NZ pastoral farming on freshwater availability can potentially be reduced by practices that decrease water use, increase feed conversion efficiencies, increase the use of non-irrigated feed supplements, and reduce irrigation. The indicator EP was chosen to enable comparisons with non-NZ studies, but gaseous emissions of nitrogen compounds contributed 33–40% of the total, and their contribution to water pollution is uncertain. This study highlighted the need for a harmonised methodology and as well as to consider specific local contextual information when interpreting the absolute and relative implications of EP results, for example by developing NZ-catchment-specific characterisation factors for aquatic eutrophication in future studies.

Antecedents of Customer Satisfaction In Internet Banking: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) Redefined

In the banking sector, various electronic delivery channels are increasingly used for delivering products and services for the convenience of customers at low cost. Internet banking (IB) is one among them. IB is a product of e-commerce in the field of banking and financial services. The present study has been carried out to use the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) from the Information Technology (IT) literature to investigate the effect of TAM variables on customer satisfaction in the internet-banking context. The model was constructed by incorporating Perceived Risk (PR) to the twin traditional TAM constructs, Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) and Perceived Usefulness (PU). The model has been empirically validated using 406 IB users selected from the state of Kerala, India. It is found that the constructs PEOU and PU have positive effect on customer satisfaction and PR has negative effect on customer satisfaction. A profile analysis of the respondents revealed that young males, well-educated employees with a moderately high level of monthly income are the major users of IB in Kerala.

Life Cycle Water Use of Energy Production and Its Environmental Impacts in China

The energy sector is a major user of fresh water resources in China. We investigate the life cycle water withdrawals, consumptive water use, and wastewater discharge of China's energy sectors and their water-consumption-related environmental impacts, using a mixed-unit multiregional input-output (MRIO) model and life cycle impact assessment method (LCIA) based on the Eco-indicator 99 framework. Energy production is responsible for 61.4 billion m(3) water withdrawals, 10.8 billion m(3) water consumption, and 5.0 billion m(3) wastewater discharges in China, which are equivalent to 12.3%, 4.1% and 8.3% of the national totals, respectively. The most important feature of the energy-water nexus in China is the significantly uneven spatial distribution of consumptive water use and its corresponding environmental impacts caused by the geological discrepancy among fossil fuel resources, fresh water resources, and energy demand. More than half of energy-related water withdrawals occur in the east and south coastal regions. However, the arid north and northwest regions have much larger water consumption than the water abundant south region, and bear almost all environmental damages caused by consumptive water use.

Protests against #delhigangrape on Twitter: Analyzing India’s Arab Spring

This study offers a comprehensive approach towards analyzing and explaining the role of Twitter in shaping and facilitating social movements especially during protests. It presents automatic and manual analyses of the tweet themes, usage characteristics and major Twitter users during a public outcry against a gangrape incident in Delhi, the capital city of India. Our results identified Twitter as an important channel for the diffusion of ideas and news among a vast set of adopters in defiance of geographical boundaries. Results of the content analyses highlight the prominent use of social media resources in disseminating information on Twitter, and the remarkable role of Twitter users as citizen journalists during the days of the protest. Results of the social network analysis suggest that major role players on Twitter were the offline protest leaders.

Customer satisfaction in Web 2.0 and information technology development

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the individual and organizations best use Web 2.0 social networking technologies to improve its relationships with customers. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical background used in the paper was the familiarity-liking theory and prospect theory to understand the extent of user satisfaction with the services. Online survey from Second Life users was conducted to investigate customer satisfaction in Web 2.0 social networks and recent development on information technologies. Findings – The findings suggested that IT development is the inseparable part of Web 2.0 and enables to understand customer satisfaction as well as their perception on online technology. Both customer satisfaction and IT development has positive influence on consumer's service enjoyment and experience. Research limitations/implications – The generalizability of the paper is limited. The survey data in this study have some common method bias. The possibility of the existence of the common method bias cannot be completely eliminated. Practical implications – The paper provides the significance of customer satisfaction for organizations, researchers, managers, and policy makers. The paper provides validated measurements to facilitate evaluation of several major user satisfaction constructs. Originality/value – The recent development of information and communication technology (ICT), especially the internet and its related technologies has become the main force of the development of online social network. The number of Web 2.0 users has been growing so rapidly that it has become an important channel for marketers to reach their customers.

Analysing the lithium industry: Demand, supply, and emerging developments

Over the past century, lithium consumption has grown consistently and strongly as manufacturing firms utilise it in a growing number of important applications. Throughout this period, lithium supply has been obtained from brines and hard rock deposits from a limited number of producers operating initially most prominently in the USA, Canada, and Russia and more recently in Chile, Argentina, Australia, and China. Using a standard microeconomic framework the discussion assesses major factors influencing recent lithium demand and supply. Focusing on issues affecting the height of entry barriers, it then considers some potential developments in lithium supply by new players, some of whom are supported by major users of lithium in batteries and other applications.

Instructor’s Performance:A Proposed Model for Online Evaluation

Currently due to high awareness and quality audits, the higher education institutions have made to keep a track on various performances of the institutions. One such most important activity that has to be analyzed and evaluated is Instructor's classroom performance. As the students are the main stakeholders of the educational process, their concerns over the instructor, teaching pedagogies and methodologies, assessment techniques need to be collected and analyzed for achieving the institution's goals and objectives. The students shall give their opinions related to the various performance indicators of instructor.In general, the higher education institutions use various techniques to evaluate instructor's performance in the classroom from the students. The latest technological developments help in data collection using web technologies. Online system with required questionnaire and attributes will help the higher education institutions in easy data collection. Apart from that the students shall give their opinions without any fear from any place and at any time. In this paper, we have identified the major factors and users of an instructor online evaluation system. Also, we have proposed a model for such system with subsystem interface, entity relationship diagram and context diagram.

Energy efficient optimization of wireless embedded sensor networks

The energy optimization techniques developed for conventional ad hoc networks do not appropriately address the unique features of the wireless embedded sensor networks (WESNs). In the WESN environment, only reducing the overall energy consumption is not considered enough to maximize the life span of the entire network, but maintaining full network connectivity for a sufficiently long period of time is also an important design goal due to the energy constraints of each node. The wireless radio is a major energy user and is often the focus of energy conservation mechanisms, since the nodes communicate in a shared medium (air interface). The medium access control (MAC) layer of the communication protocol stack arbitrates access to the communications link by manipulating the sleep, listen, transmit, and receive states of the radio transceivers. The bursty traffic networks experience long periods of inactivity interrupted by unplanned and often short lived periods of high traffic loads. Currently available MAC protocols cannot meet application fidelity requirements of the bursty traffic networks since they are designed either for networks with periodic traffic or are not sufficiently traffic-adaptive, thereby introducing large multi-hop latency delays to realize network connectivity, overprovision during light traffic conditions, and slow ramp up at the initiation of a high traffic episode. This paper presents enhancements made to the energy efficient MAC protocol which is especially designed for the bursty traffic networks and in the process targets some available communication techniques used in the WESNs for discussion and comparison.

Evaluating System for Direct Purchasing Exchange of Major Power Users

This paper Research on the Intelligent Optimization Operating Modeling of Pumped Storage Power Station in Hunan Power Grid. First it introduces the characteristics of Hunan power grid and analysis the practical requirement of dispatching. Then it brings forward the intelligent optimization model and set up running model for pumped storage power station of Hei Mi-feng. At last, it introduces the application of pumped storage power station in Hunan power grid and proves the effectiveness of the optimization models.

Major drivers of health inequalities in later life and future research needs.

Europe is the oldest region in the world and its life expectancy is currently increasing at around about 12 months every 5 years. When added to population re-structuring as a result of demographic change, this means that by 2060 30% of the European population will be aged 65 years and over and with those aged 80 and over being the fastest growing age group. The European Union is placing a high priority on healthy ageing and its key indicator is Healthy Life Years (HLY). It is already obvious from the variation in HLY that not all European populations are ageing healthily. For example in France, life expectancy at age 50 for women is 22.9 years, with 9.9 years of healthy life. In comparison women’s life expectancy at age 50 in Latvia is 17.2 years, with only 4.3 years of healthy life. In 2009 the European Commission funded the FUTURAGE project, whose aim was to develop a definitive road map for ageing research for Europe for the next 10-15 years. Seven major research priority themes were identified by FUTURAGE according to a standard format covering: the significance of the theme; the fundamental insights necessary for future research; an overview of current research knowledge; and the main priority topics within the general theme (full report available at http://futurage.group.shef.ac.uk/road-map-launch-conference.html). Here we focus on one of these seven themes, that of ‘Unequal Ageing’. Six challenges related to future European ageing research were identified in the area of unequal ageing: Monitoring inequalities; Health in work and retirement; Inequalities and discrimination on health; Ageing and migration; Focus on the very old; and Inequalities and discrimination in the labour market. These challenges, as well as examples of specific research questions, can be described in the context of a life course perspective and the World Health Organisation model of health transitions. FUTURAGE represented the most extensive consultation ever conducted in this research area, and it included all major stakeholders and active users of ageing research. ‘Unequal Ageing’ was identified as one of the main research priorities for the road map and within this the challenge to monitor inequalities across Europe. To be able to address this challenge demands not only a concerted collection of truly harmonised measures across Europe, but also that they are appropriate at a country or regional level.