Search results

The purpose of this study is to discuss the concept of information in relation to temporality within the context of climate change communication. Furthermore, the paper aims to highlight the empirical richness of information as a concept by analysing its use in context.

The discussion is based on 14 semi-structured interviews with initiators and collaborators of 6 open letters on climate change published in 2018–2019. By taking three specific notions the interviewees introduced—fast food information, information quality and information gap–as the analytical point of departure, the study aims for a contextual understanding of information grounded in temporal sensitivity.

The paper finds that information in the context of open letters is informed by different, and at times contradicting, temporalities and timescapes which align with various material, institutional and discursive practices. Based on this finding, the paper argues that notions of information are intrinsically linked to the act of communicating, and they should be viewed as co-constituting each other.

The paper contributes with an empirically informed discussion regarding the concept of information as it is used in a specific context. It illustrates how “information” is far from being understood in a singular fashion, but is made up of multifaceted and at times contradictory understandings. Ultimately, they correspond to why and how one communicates climate change information.

Edgar Schein (2004) proposed that leading was in the midst of an evolutionary shift in which the primary challenge would be to sustain a culture of learning in an emerging “age of perpetual learning and change. What learning is required through leadership education to address this challenge? What design will assure that these learning outcomes are attained? What practice would demonstrate that the outcomes persist and have meaning? In distinguishing the process of “education” from the process of “learning”, what are the implications of the reciprocity of development, learning, education and the practice of leading for the design of a theory of leadership education able to assure necessary outcomes for leadership in a context that is perpetually volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous?

The purpose of this article is to phenomenologically explore the reflective practices of leaders in public organisations amidst a complex societal context in combination with rapid changes. In this article, the authors specifically explore the lived experiences of public leaders to generate new hypotheses concerning their reflective practices.

The phenomenological methodology consists of analysing the lived experiences of 13 public leaders, collected in an in-depth interview and written reflections.

The thick data offer new and up-to-date insights into the daily experiences of public leaders concerning their challenges, the effect of the addictive and alienating forces, their reflex to withdrawal when facing emotional incidents and the effects of their contradictory mindsets.

The practical implication is a critical approach towards reflective practices of public leaders. The risk is that reflectivity is approached as a socially desirable instrumental ritual. Considering the needs and desires the public leaders shared, the authors wonder: Is there a growing importance of reflective time and space – or, above all, meaningful relations and resonant moments amidst the alienation forces?

The phenomenological exploration offers concrete insights into the daily experience of public leaders', as opposed to the often-abstract theory. The new hypotheses provide a new starting point for further critical phenomenological research.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analytical review of the educational innovation field in the USA. It outlines classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system.

The paper is based on a literature survey and author research.

US education badly needs effective innovations of scale that can help produce the needed high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parents, community, society, and its culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. One of the critical areas of research and innovation can be cost and time efficiency of the learning.

Several practical recommendations stem out of this paper: how to create a base for large-scale innovations and their implementation; how to increase effectiveness of technology innovations in education, particularly online learning; how to raise time and cost efficiency of education.

Innovations in education are regarded, along with the education system, within the context of a societal supersystem demonstrating their interrelations and interdependencies at all levels. Raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit the whole society.

Originality is in the systemic approach to education and educational innovations, in offering a comprehensive classification of innovations; in exposing the hurdles to innovations, in new arguments about effectiveness of technology applications, and in time efficiency of education.

This paper examines how the macroeconomic environment affects the determinants of prepayment of mortgage loans from October 2004 to February 2020. For more accurate analysis, the authors define the timing of prepayment not only before the loan maturity but also at the time when 50% or more of the loan principal is repaid. The results show that, during the global financial crisis as well as the recent period of low interest rates, macroeconomic variables such as interest rate spreads and housing prices have a different effect compared to the normal situation. Also, significant explanatory variables, such as debt to income (DTI) ratio, loan amount ratio and poor credit score, have different effects depending on the macroenvironment. On the other hand, in all periods, the possibility of prepayment increases as comprehensive loan to value (CLTV) increases, and the younger the age, the shorter the loan maturity. The results suggest that, in the case of ultralong (40 years) mortgage loans recently introduced to support young people purchasing houses, the prepayment risk can be, at least partially, migrated by offsetting the increase in prepayment by young people and the decrease in prepayment due to long loan maturity. In addition, this study confirms that the accelerated time failure model compared to the logit model and COX proportional risk model has the potential to be more appropriate as a prepayment model for individual borrower analysis in terms of the explanatory power.

The article introduces selected theoretical approaches to time and temporality relevant to the field of library and information science, and it briefly introduces the papers gathered in this special issue. A number of issues that could potentially be followed in future research are presented.

The authors review a selection of theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of time that originate in or are of particular relevance to library and information science. Four main themes are identified: (1) information as object in temporal perspectives; (2) time and information as tools of power and control; (3) time in society; and (4) experiencing and practicing time.

The paper advocates a thorough engagement with how time and temporality shape notions of information more broadly. This includes, for example, paying attention to how various dimensions of the late-modern time regime of acceleration feed into the ways in which information is operationalised, how information work is commodified, and how hierarchies of information are established; paying attention to the changing temporal dynamics that networked information systems imply for our understanding of documents or of memory institutions; or how external events such as social and natural crises quickly alter modes, speed, and forms of data production and use, in areas as diverse as information practices, policy, management, representation, and organisation, amongst others.

By foregrounding temporal perspectives in library and information science, the authors advocate dialogue with important perspectives on time that come from other fields. Rather than just including such perspectives in library and information science, however, the authors find that the focus on information and documents that the library and information science field contributes has great potential to advance the understanding of how notions and experiences of time shape late-modern societies and individuals.

This article analyzes the challenges of infectious disease control under a super-aged society through Japan’s experience with COVID-19.

This article provides an overview of Japan’s COVID-19 measures and their characteristics, discusses their successes and failures, and identifies future challenges.

Japan’s basic strategy for COVID-19 consists of three parts: the border defense (Stage 1), slowing down the spread (Stage 2), and damage control (Stage 3). One key policy feature in Stage 2 and Stage 3 is based on “voluntary restriction”. It had a certain effect, but it was prolonged with each recurring “wave of infection”, resulting in economic exhaustion and people’s dissatisfaction. Thus, the effect of the voluntary restriction has weakened, while the percentage of people who have been vaccinated is improving, making it difficult to predict the damage of the next “wave”. Under the hyper-aged society, it was necessary to identify and protect particularly vulnerable areas, i.e., psychiatry hospitals, chronic care hospitals, and long term care (LTC) facilities. On the other hand, secondary impacts extend to young people. The most serious one is the decrease in births which further accelerates the aging of society.

This study is original as it investigated why Japan’s unique countermeasures against COVID-19 without mandatory lockdown worked well for a considerable period. It also revealed that secondary impacts of the COVID-19 epidemic are broader and more significant than the direct loss of life, and that the social system, especially super-aged society with many vulnerable areas should be reformed in consideration of the threat of infectious diseases. Lessons from the Japanese case may contribute to other countries.

Efficient traffic incident management is needed to alleviate the negative impact of traffic incidents. Accurate and reliable estimation of traffic incident duration is of great importance for traffic incident management. Previous studies have proposed models for traffic incident duration prediction; however, most of these studies focus on the total duration and could not update prediction results in real-time. From a traveler’s perspective, the relevant factor is the residual duration of the impact of the traffic incident. Besides, few (if any) studies have used dynamic traffic flow parameters in the prediction models. This paper aims to propose a framework to fill these gaps.

This paper proposes a framework based on the multi-layer perception (MLP) and long short-term memory (LSTM) model. The proposed methodology integrates traffic incident-related factors and real-time traffic flow parameters to predict the residual traffic incident duration. To validate the effectiveness of the framework, traffic incident data and traffic flow data from Shanghai Zhonghuan Expressway are used for modeling training and testing.

Results show that the model with 30-min time window and taking both traffic volume and speed as inputs performed best. The area under the curve values exceed 0.85 and the prediction accuracies exceed 0.75. These indicators demonstrated that the model is appropriate for this study context. The model provides new insights into traffic incident duration prediction.

The incident samples applied by this study might not be enough and the variables are not abundant. The number of injuries and casualties, more detailed description of the incident location and other variables are expected to be used to characterize the traffic incident comprehensively. The framework needs to be further validated through a sufficiently large number of variables and locations.

The framework can help reduce the impacts of incidents on the safety of efficiency of road traffic once implemented in intelligent transport system and traffic management systems in future practical applications.

This study uses two artificial neural network methods, MLP and LSTM, to establish a framework aiming at providing accurate and time-efficient information on traffic incident duration in the future for transportation operators and travelers. This study will contribute to the deployment of emergency management and urban traffic navigation planning.

This paper aims to review the experience so far of the Spanish labour market during the Covid-19 crisis in the light of the existing institutions, its performance during past recessions and the policy measures adopted during the pandemic. Emphasis is placed on the role of worldwide trends in labour markets because of automation and artificial intelligence, in shaping a potential recovery of this (hopefully) transitory shock through a big reallocation process of employment and economic activity. It also highlights some innovations to employment and social policies needed to smooth the reallocation process and lessen the rise in inequality associated to technological trends.

Theory and empirics.

The Spanish labour market will subject to a great reallocation shock as a result of Covid-19 and secular technological changes. Reforms need to be undertaken.

An overview and some new results.

This research studies the behavior choice of key actors in the construction supply chain and constructs a model which includes the benefit function of the government, contractors and owners, aiming at improving the coverage of green buildings.

In this paper, tripartite dynamic game is studied and simulated based on duplicate dynamic equation. The tripartite game under government intervention is rarely considered, and government punishment measures are seldom introduced into the research.

According to the simulation results, the practical insights in line with the development of green supply chain are put forward. Rewards and punishments affect the development of the supply chain. New technologies and new materials accelerate the development of green supply chain and then improve the coverage of green buildings.

This paper constructs a dynamic model based on complete information rationality, which is difficult to realize in practice, for information is incomplete and human rationality is limited.

In fact, the government has not issued a punishment document to introduce a new variable adjustment model.