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1 – 10 of 32
Article
Publication date: 20 April 2015

Ana Maria de Carvalho Moura, Fabio Porto, Vania Vidal, Regis Pires Magalhães, Macedo Maia, Maira Poltosi and Daniele Palazzi

The purpose of this paper is to present a four-level architecture that aims at integrating, publishing and retrieving ecological data making use of linked data (LD). It allows…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a four-level architecture that aims at integrating, publishing and retrieving ecological data making use of linked data (LD). It allows scientists to explore taxonomical, spatial and temporal ecological information, access trophic chain relations between species and complement this information with other data sets published on the Web of data. The development of ecological information repositories is a crucial step to organize and catalog natural reserves. However, they present some challenges regarding their effectiveness to provide a shared and global view of biodiversity data, such as data heterogeneity, lack of metadata standardization and data interoperability. LD rose as an interesting technology to solve some of these challenges.

Design/methodology/approach

Ecological data, which is produced and collected from different media resources, is stored in distinct relational databases and published as RDF triples, using a relational-Resource Description Format mapping language. An application ontology reflects a global view of these datasets and share with them the same vocabulary. Scientists specify their data views by selecting their objects of interest in a friendly way. A data view is internally represented as an algebraic scientific workflow that applies data transformation operations to integrate data sources.

Findings

Despite of years of investment, data integration continues offering scientists challenges in obtaining consolidated data views of a large number of heterogeneous scientific data sources. The semantic integration approach presented in this paper simplifies this process both in terms of mappings and query answering through data views.

Social implications

This work provides knowledge about the Guanabara Bay ecosystem, as well as to be a source of answers to the anthropic and climatic impacts on the bay ecosystem. Additionally, this work will enable evaluating the adequacy of actions that are being taken to clean up Guanabara Bay, regarding the marine ecology.

Originality/value

Mapping complexity is traded by the process of generating the exported ontology. The approach reduces the problem of integration to that of mappings between homogeneous ontologies. As a byproduct, data views are easily rewritten into queries over data sources. The architecture is general and although applied to the ecological context, it can be extended to other domains.

Details

International Journal of Web Information Systems, vol. 11 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1744-0084

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2023

Jin Fan

This paper aims to summarize the conditions under which participatory art museums and local commercial traditions can have positive and sustained interactions.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to summarize the conditions under which participatory art museums and local commercial traditions can have positive and sustained interactions.

Design/methodology/approach

The methods include studying the quantity and content of exhibitions in the four cities of the Bay Area, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Shunde, to compare their academic positioning and influence on local commercial production. Through interviewing curators, artists and university scholars who are active in the Bay Area and are invited by the museums on a regular basis, it will let us understand the attitudes from the government, public and capital towards the regional art museums and how these attitudes influence the choice of theme in the participatory art museum practice.

Findings

To summarize the findings, the author concludes that a participatory art gallery with commercial production in the Bay Area requires the following: a long tradition of local business and wealth accumulation; a local area is of a size where the community of acquaintances can interact on a regular basis; continued interest of a diverse local elite, including a mix of businessmen and gentry, government officials and various sectors of the public; and museums serving as intermediaries to coordinate the effective integration of the commercial and traditional resources.

Originality/value

Participatory approaches and their impacts are a shared area of interest across urban planning, heritage studies and the creative arts. Crucially, solely relying on either the Latin bottom-up community-oriented approach (Barnes, 2003) or the British top-down policy-oriented approach (Heijnen, 2010) did not maximize benefits, though these distinctive two approaches were convinced that museums should play a larger role in becoming agents of contemporary social change. By contrast, in focusing on Chinese Art Museums, this study will explore participatory practice in the Asian context. In doing so, it will not only diversify the emerging literature on the social and economic impacts of arts and heritage organizations but also challenge the Western lens through which participatory approaches are viewed in the interdisciplinary literature. As Lefebvre acknowledged his lack of non-Western regions in his research, this study will offer new perspectives on museology and its contributions to the Production of Space.

Article
Publication date: 5 July 2022

Stephen Brown

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate researchers’ understanding of place in general and psychogeography in particular.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate researchers’ understanding of place in general and psychogeography in particular.

Design/methodology/approach

Melding hauntology, autoethnography, pseudo-psychogeography and object-orientated ontology, the provocation explores aspects of east Belfast’s “C.S. Lewis Trail”.

Findings

Psychogeography, purportedly, is moribund. This provocation contends that latter-day developments in virtual reality, augmented reality, digital real estate platforms and “imaginary worlds” more generally, open up new horizons, and offer more opportunities, for the psychogeographically inclined.

Originality/value

The provocation’s originality inheres in the approach adopted not the research findings.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 25 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 July 2020

Divine Kwaku Ahadzie, Richard Opoku, Stephen Nana Opoku Ware and Henry Mensah

The use of air-conditioners (ACs) is on the increase in the developing world, with exacerbating compounding effect on carbon footprints. With this development, there is the…

Abstract

Purpose

The use of air-conditioners (ACs) is on the increase in the developing world, with exacerbating compounding effect on carbon footprints. With this development, there is the expectation that developing countries would begin to appreciate and understand occupant behaviours in the use of ACs towards combating climate change, especially as building energy consumption is heavily influenced by the behaviour of its occupants. This study aims to identify occupant behaviours that leads to efficient use of ACs in public buildings so that these can be factored into developing guidelines for improving energy efficiency in buildings.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), survey questionnaire was used to collect data in office buildings in Kumasi, Ghana. Partial least squares–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analysis was employed for the analysis.

Findings

Switching on fan(s) as alternative to ACs has a path coefficient of 0.527, suggesting that it will have the most positive impact on energy consumption as far as AC use is concerned. The second occupant behaviour with a positive impact on energy consumption for AC use is opening windows for natural ventilation accounting for 0.351 significant path coefficient. Wearing of light or heavy clothing as a means of conserving energy achieved 0.174 impact coefficient while occupant behaviour of switching off ACs when leaving the room came last in the ranking, with an impact coefficient of 0.146. TBP is validated in this model, given that all the four occupant behaviours had their perceived behavioural control (PBC) having less impact on the behaviour compared to the behavioural attitude (BA) and the subjective norm (SN).

Research limitations/implications

This research focused on public buildings used as offices, and the findings may not be applicable to private company buildings and also residential properties. Given that Ghana and, for that matter, many developing countries rely heavily on thermal plant for electricity generation, the climate change implications of the findings are discussed.

Practical implications

It is recommended that behaviours of occupants should be considered and factored in building energy predictions to bridge the energy performance gap. Subsequently, project managers, designers and energy consultants are encouraged to provide fans and openable windows in offices, even if there is going to be an air-conditioning provisions.

Originality/value

Originality emanates from the paper being at the forefront of helping to understand occupants' behaviour in the use ACs and associated climate change implications in a developing country context. One of the new variables introduced, switching on fans as an alternative to ACs, achieved the highest path coefficient and has important implication for occupant behaviour in the use of ACs in the literature.

Details

International Journal of Building Pathology and Adaptation, vol. 39 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2398-4708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 29 August 2008

Darius Hedgebeth

The purpose of this paper is to provide information about the extensible markup language (XML) – its history, function, legacy, and contribution to the world wide web and to the

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide information about the extensible markup language (XML) – its history, function, legacy, and contribution to the world wide web and to the discipline of knowledge management. The knowledge worker will better understand how XML supports the codification aspect of the technology pillar of knowledge management.

Design/methodology/approach

The author gives an overview of markup languages, which preceded XML, details XML syntax structure, and discusses techniques for processing XML data. Derivative markup languages which use XML's syntactical structure are listed, and an exercise explaining the process behind generating XML documents from spreadsheets is provided.

Findings

XML has served as an integral part of the world wide web for over a decade, and enables internet applications to transform and exchange data in a very efficient manner. The codification of knowledge is germane to the KM process, and XML provides a very capable means for warehousing knowledge that can later be retrieved from knowledge repositories and relational databases. Additionally, XML‐like markup languages such as ebXML (electronic business for XML) help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of knowledge organizations.

Originality/value

The paper hightlights how the management and valuation of knowledge assets are greatly facilitated by the functionality offered by XML, which enables a knowledge worker to store and retrieve knowledge artifacts in the form of structured data.

Details

VINE, vol. 38 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0305-5728

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2014

Jennifer L. Eagan

Using Marcuse and the 2008 economic crisis as a starting point, this work proposes a feminist critical theory for public administration that could inform how public…

Abstract

Using Marcuse and the 2008 economic crisis as a starting point, this work proposes a feminist critical theory for public administration that could inform how public administrationists can see themselves as defenders of human values against a status quo which favors masculine and market forces. Through an exploration of Marcuse's concepts of one-dimentionality, foreclosure, masculinization, and feminist socialism, this work asserts the need for a feminist critical theory for public administration theory and praxis that responds to current social injustices and explores a more complex analysis of the subject as subjugated and dispossessed. The conclusion proposes some directions that such a theory might take in the future.

Details

International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, vol. 17 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1093-4537

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1992

John Conway O'Brien

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balanceeconomics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary toman′s finding the good life and society enduring…

1163

Abstract

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 19 no. 3/4/5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 November 2011

Anna Marie Johnson, Claudene Sproles and Robert Detmering

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

4602

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Findings

Information about each source is provided. The paper discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

Originality/value

The information in the paper may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Details

Reference Services Review, vol. 39 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0090-7324

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 August 2022

Jingqi Zhang, Hui Zhao and Ziliang Guo

This paper improves the evaluation index system of green building operation effect and establishes the evaluation model of green building operation effect. It is expected to…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper improves the evaluation index system of green building operation effect and establishes the evaluation model of green building operation effect. It is expected to promote energy saving and emission reduction and provide a more scientific evaluation method for green building operation effect evaluation.

Design/methodology/approach

First, 20 key evaluation indexes are selected to establish the operation effective evaluation index system. Then, the combined weight method is proposed to determine the weight of each evaluation index. Next, the gray clustering-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method is used to construct the green building operation effective evaluation model. Finally, the feasibility and validity of the selected model were verified by taking Shenzhen Bay One green building in Shenzhen as an example.

Findings

This paper establishes the evaluation system of green building operational effect, and evaluates green building from the angle of operational effect. Taking Shenzhen Bay One project as an example, the rationality and applicability of the model are verified.

Originality/value

In this paper, for the first time, relevant indexes of user experience are included in the evaluation system of green building operational effect, which makes the evaluation system more perfect. In addition, a more scientific fuzzy gray clustering method is used to evaluate the operational effect of green building, and a new evaluation model is established.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 52 no. 12
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 September 2021

John S. Seberger

This paper theorizes ubiquitous computing as a novel configuration of the archive. Such a configuration is characterized by shifts in agency underlying archival mechanics and a…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper theorizes ubiquitous computing as a novel configuration of the archive. Such a configuration is characterized by shifts in agency underlying archival mechanics and a pronounced rhythmic diminution of such mechanics in which the user's experiential present tense is rendered fundamentally historical. In doing so, this paper troubles the relationship between: archival mechanics such as appraisal, accession and access; the archive as a site of historical knowledge production and the pervasiveness of data-driven daily life.

Design/methodology/approach

By employing conceptual analysis, I analyze a classic vision of ubiquitous computing to describe the historicization of the present tense in an increasingly computerized world. The conceptual analysis employed here draws on an interdisciplinary set of literature from library and information science, philosophy and computing fields such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and ubiquitous computing.

Findings

I present the concept of the data perfect tense, which is derived from the future perfect tense: the “will have had” construction. It refers to a historicized, data-driven and fundamentally archival present tense characterizing the user's lived world in which the goal of action is to have had created data for future unspecified use. The data perfect reifies ubiquitous computing as an archive, or a site of historical knowledge production predicated on sets of potential statements derived from data generated, appraised, acquisitioned and made accessible through and by means of pervasive “smart” objects.

Originality/value

This paper provides foundational consideration of ubiquitous computing as a configuration of the archive through the analysis of its temporalities: a rhythmic diminution that renders users' experiential present tenses as fundamentally historical, constructed through the agency of smart devices. In doing so, it: contributes to ongoing work within HCI seeking to understand the relationship between HCI and history; introduces concepts relevant to the analysis of novel technological ecologies in terms of archival theory; and constitutes preliminary interdisciplinary steps towards highlighting the relevance of theories of the archive and archival mechanics for critiquing sociotechnical concerns such as surveillance capitalism.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

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