Communication Technology Research Research Articles

Online Calibration of Glucose Sensors From the Measured Current by a Time-Varying Calibration Function and Bayesian Priors.

Minimally invasive continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) sensors measure in the subcutis a current signal, which is converted into interstitial glucose (IG) concentration by a calibration process periodically updated using fingerstick blood glucose (BG) references. Though important in diabetes management, CGM sensors still suffer from accuracy problems. Here, we propose a new online calibration method improving accuracy of CGM glucose profiles with respect to manufacturer calibration. The proposed method fits CGM current signal against the BG references collected twice a day for calibration purposes, by a time-varying calibration function whose parameters are identified in a Bayesian framework using a priori second-order statistical knowledge. The distortion introduced by BG-to-IG kinetics is compensated before parameter identification via nonparametric deconvolution. The method was tested on a database where 108 CGM signals were collected for 7days by the Dexcom G4 Platinum sensor. Results show the new method drives to a statistically significant accuracy improvement as measured by three commonly used metrics: mean absolute relative difference reduced from 12.73% to 11.47%; percentage of accurate glucose estimates increased from 82.00% to 89.19%; and percentage of values falling in the "A" zone of the Clark error grid increased from 82.22% to 88.86%. The new calibration method significantly improves CGM glucose profiles accuracy with respect to manufacturer calibration. The proposed algorithm provides a real-time improvement of CGM accuracy, which can be crucial in several CGM-based applications, including the artificial pancreas, thus providing a potential great impact in the diabetes technology research community.

Impact of Information Communication Technology in Implementation of Integrated Marketing Communication at Fast Food Outlet

Information and Communication Technology in 21st century is an ancillary tool for several aspects in business area. Most company of fast food industry in developing countries regards this kind of Technology as a cost and tries to reduce their use. In fast food industry, marketing is one of the important parts to propagate information products sold by the company; this information must be able to reach these consumers and the corresponding target desired by the company. Integrated Marketing Communication can be use for fast food industry to increase brand awareness, customer satisfaction, greater profitability, and increase the sale. This paper discusses how to use Information and Communication Technology with limited cost as a tools for company in fast food industry to ancillary their Integrated Marketing Communication process to increase sales and profit. The methodology used by this paper are using literature for gather preliminary information and using limited data from fast food company that runs limited Integrated Marketing Communication process. The result of this limited study is company can run Integrated Marketing Program using limited cost in Information and Communication Technology, and Fast Food Company can differentiate marketing program within company outlets. Using web analysis, this paper can be use for deeper research in implementation Low Cost Information and Communication Technology in fast food industry, especially as an ancillary tools for run more accurately Integrated Marketing Communication program within outlets in company.

Congruence Between the Intended, Implemented, and Attained ICT Curricula in Sub-Saharan Africa

AbstractThe PanAfrican Research Agenda on the Pedagogical Integration of information and communication technology (ICT; PanAf) research project was initiated in 2006 to support initiatives in African countries to integrate ICT into teaching and learning through the frequent collection and analysis of data on ICT usage. The article examines the congruence between the intended and implemented ICT curricula in six African countries (Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa) that participated in the study. Data obtained from the PanAf observatory (at www.observatoiretic.org) on these countries’ use of ICT in education revealed that the national curricula documents (intended curricula) and teachers’ classroom practices (implemented curricula) both emphasize ICT as the subject of learning rather than as a means of learning.

An overview of new media research in public relations journals from 1981 to 2014

A 34-year review of communication technology research published in six public relations journals reveals applications and perceptions studies far outnumber investigations focused on usability, concerns, or theoretical contributions related to scholarly and practitioner understanding of new media. Six trends observed in the 321-article dataset are noted, along with suggestions for theory building and other areas for future research.

Performance evolution of trellis coding in Multiple Input Multiple Output communication systems—A review

In recent years, it has been realized that the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) communication system is inevitable in accelerating the evolution of high data rate applications. Also the latest research in Information and Communication Technology has told that considerable gains in capacity of wireless communication are feasible in MIMO systems. MIMO with Space Time Trellis Code (STTC) offers both diversity gain and coding gain. This paper discusses the evolutional variants of Space Time Trellis Code developed over a decade. The performance of New Trellis code for STTC, STTC for 4-PSK, Space Frequency Trellis code (SFTC), Space Time Bit Trellis Code, and Silver STTC have been studied and discussed. STTC with Trellis Coded Modulation creates a bandwidth efficient system with coding gain.

Editorial: Digital systems supporting cognition and exploratory learning in 21st century

Digital systems and digital technologies are globally investigated for their potential to transform learning and teaching towards offering unique learning experiences to the 21st century learners. This Special Issue on Digital Systems supporting Cognition and Exploratory Learning in 21st Century aims to contribute to the dialogue between the educational technology and educational psychology research community and the educational practitioners on current issues towards large scale take-up of educational technology.

Corporate control, location and complexity of ICT R&D: A network analysis at the city level

We study the global system of information and communication technology (ICT) research and development (R&D) locations at city level by applying network analysis and profiling R&D locations with respect to technological complexity. We analyse how the position of a city in the network interacts with the level of its technological complexity. The results show that the ownership and location of R&D activities are concentrated. However, cities with high levels of R&D-centre ownership are not necessarily the most important locations of R&D activity. Instead, cities where the corporate control of R&D activities is concentrated play the role of the network hubs. We find that there is a clear relationship between the level of technological complexity and the choice of a city as a location for R&D activity and its role as a network hub. Along with the already established global cities, Chinese cities now occupy key positions in the ICT R&D network.

Experiences in the dissemination and utilisation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) research findings from three southern African Universities

The dissemination and utilisation of research knowledge produced at universities has been debated in recent times. Recent changes and developments at universities suggest an entrepreneurial model of academic research production in which universities have the responsibility not only to carry out research and teaching but also to disseminate research outputs directly to the users for economic growth of the society. In this paper, we present findings on the nature of ICT research studies conducted, the dissemination and utilisation of the research findings in the past five years at the three universities in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. A major finding of the study was that many ICT studies conducted at these universities did not target particular community groups for dissemination of knowledge generated and consequently, research outputs from these projects were not delivered to their potential end-users. The ICT research knowledge findings remained located mostly in university departments, libraries, and donor or government ministry offices. The main challenge was that of effective dissemination and utilisation of research knowledge outputs by these academic institutions. The main recommendation emerging from the study was on policies and strategies to monitor research outputs and to intensify dissemination and utilisation of academic knowledge produced.

Blending online asynchronous and synchronous learning

<p>In this article I will share a qualitative self-study about a 15-week blended 100% online graduate level course facilitated through synchronous meetings on Blackboard Collaborate and asynchronous discussions on Blackboard. I taught the course at the University of Tennessee (UT) during the spring 2012 semester and the course topic was online learning environments. The primary research question of this study was: How can the designer/instructor optimize learning experiences for students who are studying about online learning environments in a blended online course relying on both synchronous and asynchronous technologies? I relied on student reflections of course activities during the beginning, middle, and the end of the semester as the primary data source to obtain their insights regarding course experiences. Through the experiences involved in designing and teaching the course and engaging in this study I found that there is room in the instructional technology research community to address strategies for facilitating online synchronous learning that complement asynchronous learning. Synchronous online whole class meetings and well-structured small group meetings can help students feel a stronger sense of connection to their peers and instructor and stay engaged with course activities. In order to provide meaningful learning spaces in synchronous learning environments, the instructor/designer needs to balance the tension between embracing the flexibility that the online space affords to users and designing deliberate structures that will help them take advantage of the flexible space.</p>

Infrastructure for Intelligent Automation Services in the Smart Grid

The electricity grid is undergoing a radical transformation from a production-driven to a demand-driven energy delivery platform known as the smart grid. The integration of a large amount of renewable and distributed energy resources, together with new patterns of electricity production, accentuates the need for research in information and communication technologies to control bi-directional energy flows. The European FP7 project: "Energy Demand Aware Open Services for Smart Grid Intelligent Automation" is contributing to this research by providing an intelligent infrastructure for service deployment for the smart grid. The project defines a system architecture that provides interoperability between wireless sensors in home area networks connected over the Internet to a service provider function deployed in a cloud infrastructure. A key component in this infrastructure is the Home Energy Controlling Hub that, on the one hand, provides a platform for monitoring and aggregation of electricity consumption data from devices and appliances and, on the other hand, is the link between the deployed intelligent automation services and the home. To ensure openness and simplicity, the proposed infrastructure is based on the representational state transfer style architecture. This is adopted by implementing the emerging ZigBee IP and Smart Energy Profile 2.0 standards that to a wide extend conform with the Internet Protocol suite and state-of-the art web services development.

Understanding societal impact through productive interactions: ICT research as a case

Universities are increasingly expected to fulfill a third mission in addition to those of research and education. Universities must demonstrate engagement with society through the application and exploitation of knowledge. As societal impact of research is uncertain, long term and always dependent on other factors, we argue here that evaluation should focus on the conditions under which societal impact is generated rather than on the impact itself. Here we focus on a specific set of those conditions: the interactions between academic researchers and societal actors. Instead of speculating about potential impacts of research, we argue that current productive interactions of researchers with societal stakeholders improve the probability that future societal impact will occur. This article supports this idea by examining in detail several, mainly retrospective examples. As productive interactions are field specific, we restrict ourselves to ?professional adhocracy fields?, especially to information and communication technologies (ICT) research. We address the patterns of productive interactions that result in societal impact within this field and we discuss whether differences are observed in contrast to other fields, such as social sciences and humanities (fragmented adhocracies). We end by discussing the implications that these patterns have for societal impact assessment. Shifting the focus to interactions allows assessment of short-term knowledge transfer and other collaborative efforts with stakeholders that contribute to long-term societal impact.

Identifying international research cooperation capabilities in information and communication technologies

This paper presents a methodological approach to the identification of potential priority areas to support the creation of policies for research cooperation. The analysis of national research capabilities is an important prerequisite in the development of research policies, in particular for developing strategies for international collaboration. In the past, the identification of a country’s research capabilities was often based on only a few indicators. Here a methodology is presented that takes a broad view of a country’s research and technology base and applies it to Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. The methodology for the identification of research capabilities is based on a multi-dimensional approach that takes into account existing information and communication technologies research and technology development groups based on their size and quality, the interests of the researchers based on interviews and national industry characteristics to identify the economic collaboration potential in thematic areas.

Designing dependable and sustainable Smart Grids – How to apply Algorithm Engineering to distributed control in power systems

In this work, we present the Smart Grid Algorithm Engineering (SGAE) process model for application-oriented research and development in information and communication technology (ICT) for power systems. The SGAE process model is motivated by the main objective of contributing application-oriented research results for distributed control concepts on a sound methodological background. With this process model, we strive for an engineering aspiration within the domain of Smart Grids. The process model is set up with an initial conceptualisation phase followed by an iterable cycle of five phases with both analytical and experimental parts, giving detailed information on inputs and results for each phase and identifying the needed actors for each phase. Simulation of large-scale Smart Grid scenarios is a core component of SGAE. We therefore elaborate on tooling and techniques needed in that context and illustrate the whole process model using an application example from a finished research and development project.

The methodological illumination of a blind spot: information and communication technology and international research team dynamics in a higher education research program

This self-ethnography complements the other articles in this special issue by spotlighting a set of key challenges facing international research teams. The study is focused on the relationship between information and communication technology (ICT)-based collaboration and research team dynamics. Our diverse team, drawn from researchers in five countries and three projects, argues that an ironic casualty of the powerful, global phenomena we study, is a lack of insight into what happens to generic research team dynamics, when groups are ‘stretched’ in terms of geographical distance, generations, cultural beliefs, values and norms, as well as disciplinary/specialist traditions. Good intentions are not sufficient to cope with these challenges. This is because of the emerging complexity inherent in many types of international, interdisciplinary fields of study and the complexity of the career trajectories needed to make these studies a reality. Our study underlines that there are no beliefs, values, norms and practices linked to research team dynamics, that hold across the current territory, generations, disciplines, cultures, organizations and individuals leading and conducting comparative studies—and even less reflection on the implications of this fact. Compounding this lack of awareness is a less-than-perfect understanding of the way in which ICT-based collaboration bears on research team dynamics. We assert that a holistic, critical, long-term approach to emerging insights into the global division of academic labor, serves our field better than folk psychology or the methodological parochialism that sustains convention at the expense of creativity. Careful consideration of emergent processes, relationships and linkages that explain how short-term cooperation—within projects—begins to make sense—over careers—illuminates key focal points, which, in turn qualitatively illuminates the way forward concerning conceptualization and problematization of our practice; and novel methodological routes available for those interested in attaining better outcomes, over the long term.

Applying Ethical Principles to Information and Communication Technology Research: A Companion to the Menlo Report

Researchers are faced with time-driven competitive pressures to research and publish, to achieve tenure, and to deliver on grant funding proposals. That ethical considerations can be incongruent with these incentives is neither novel nor unique to information and communication technology (ICT) research. Those conducting ICT research (ICTR) do, however, face a different breed of tensions that can impact research ethics risks. Unfortunately, institutionalized guidance on the protection of research subjects has not kept pace with the rapid transformations in information technology and infrastructure that have catalyzed changes in research substance and mechanics.The Menlo Report summarizes a set of basic principles to guide the identification and resolution of ethical issues in research about or involving ICT. It illuminates a need to interpret and extend traditional ethical principles to enable ICT researchers and oversight entities to appropriately and consistently assess and render ethically defensible research. The framework it proposes can support current and potential institutional mechanisms that are well served to implement and enforce these principles, such as a research ethics board (REB). The Menlo Report is not an official policy statement of the Department of Homeland Security, but rather, offers guidance primarily for ICT researchers in academia and the private sector who may be funded by the government, as well as corporate and independent researchers, professional societies, publication review committees, and funding agencies.This Companion is a complement to the Menlo Report that details the principles and applications more granularly and illustrates their implementation in real and synthetic case studies. It is fundamentally intended for the benefit of society, by illuminating the potential for harm to humans (either directly or indirectly) and by helping researchers understand and preempt or minimize these risks in the lifecycle of their research. This document integrates comments received after the December 28, 2011 publication of the Menlo Report in the Federal Register.

SaC‐FRAPP: a scalable and cost‐effective framework for privacy preservation over big data on cloud

SUMMARYBig data and cloud computing are two disruptive trends nowadays, provisioning numerous opportunities to the current information technology industry and research communities while posing significant challenges on them as well. Cloud computing provides powerful and economical infrastructural resources for cloud users to handle ever increasing data sets in big data applications. However, processing or sharing privacy‐sensitive data sets on cloud probably engenders severe privacy concerns because of multi‐tenancy. Data encryption and anonymization are two widely‐adopted ways to combat privacy breach. However, encryption is not suitable for data that are processed and shared frequently, and anonymizing big data and manage numerous anonymized data sets are still challenges for traditional anonymization approaches. As such, we propose a scalable and cost‐effective framework for privacy preservation over big data on cloud in this paper. The key idea of the framework is that it leverages cloud‐based MapReduce to conduct data anonymization and manage anonymous data sets, before releasing data to others. The framework provides a holistic conceptual foundation for privacy preservation over big data. Further, a corresponding proof‐of‐concept prototype system is implemented. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that scalable and cost‐effective framework for privacy preservation can anonymize large‐scale data sets and mange anonymous data sets in a highly flexible, scalable, efficient, and cost‐effective fashion. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Intangible investment in people and productivity

Organizational activity, information and communication technology work, and research and development (R&D) can be classified as work that creates intangible capital. We measure the returns to these three types of labor input by accounting for differences in their productivity compared with other labor inputs using Finnish firm-level data from 1998 to 2008. We apply a novel idea to use hiring as one proxy for productivity and demand shocks. We find that organizational workers increase total factor productivity and improve the profitability of high-productivity firms. R&D workers account for a large share of intangible capital; however, the returns to R&D are low. Investments in organizational competence are more likely to result in more rapid productivity growth. Firms with performance-related pay or domestically owned firms with extensive foreign activities have been among the highest performers with respect to the use of organizational work.

An Investigation of the Energy Consumption by Information Technology Equipments

The World Wide Web and the rise of servers and PC's data centers have become a major position in the overall power consumption of the world. In order to prevent global warming and ensuing disasters, already Internet-service providers, hosting providers on green power have changed. Even household energy suppliers offer green electricity from renewable energy such as wind , solar, biomass and hydro, which emits no carbon dioxide, to stand against global warming. Only a global change for the information technology can prevent the global -warming. The switch to renewable energy is the beginning of our future and must be pursued as well as the research and development in information and communication technology.

Measuring Dynamic Sales Impacts of LBA Using Wireless Communication Technology

Because of rapid development of wireless communication technology, there is an increasing adoption of mobile advertising, such as location based advertising (LBA). To what extent can LBA improve advertising effectiveness is an important topic in the field of wireless communication technology research. Most researches quantify long term impacts of advertisings by VAR (Vector Autoregressive) model. However, compared to VAR model, VECM (Vector Error Correction Model) is a better method in that it allows one to estimate both a long-term equilibrium relationship and a short-term dynamic error correction process. In this study, we employ VECM to explore LBA’s (Location Based Advertising) and PUA’s (Pop-up Advertising) sales impact in both short and long terms. The developed VECM reveals that LBA’s sales impact is about more than2 times as big as PUA’s in short dynamic term and nearly 6 times bigger than PUA’s in long equilibrium term. These findings add to advertising and VECM literatures. These results can give managers more confident to apply wireless communication technology to advertising.

The Research of Shared Memory Communication Technology Based on Avalon Bus

This paper researches the system of shared memory technology based on Avalon bus. According to the Avalon bus feature, combination of mailbox components and shared memory is adopted to build a hardware system for multi-processor communication. Then ucos-ii is transplanted to build a software environment of inter-process communication. Furthermore, in the level of process communication, system is to exchange data through operation system or mailbox core by checking processes’ physical location. The features of software communication convenience and hardware communication efficiency in the whole system are combined to realize the communication between two processors by shared memory.