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Communication is fundamental to the transfer of information between individuals, agencies and organizations, and therefore, it is crucial to planning and decision-making particularly in cases of uncertainty and risk. This paper brings forth some critical aspects of communication that need to be acknowledged and considered while managing risks. Most of the previous studies and theories on natural hazards and disaster management have limited perspective on communication, and hence, its implication is limited to awareness, warnings and emergency response to some selected events. This paper exposes the role of communication as a moderator of not just risk interpretation and action but also various factors responsible for shaping overall response, such as individual decision-making under uncertainty, heuristics, past experiences, learning, trust, complexity, scale and the social context. It suggests that communication is a process that influences decision-making in multiple ways, and therefore, it plays a critical role in shaping local responses to various risks. It opens up the scope for using communication beyond its current use as a tool to manage emergency situations. An in-depth understanding of ongoing communication and its implications can help to plan risk management more effectively over time rather than as a short-term response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the internet of things (IoT) to fully emerge, it is necessary to design a suitable system architecture and specific protocols for this environment. The former to provide horizontal solutions, breaking away the current paradigm of silos solutions, and thus, allowing the creation of open and interoperable systems; while the latter will offer efficient and scalable communications. This paper presents the latest standards and ongoing efforts to develop specific protocols for IoT. Furthermore, this paper presents a new system, with the most recent standards for IoT. Its design, implementation and evaluation will be also described. The proposed system is based on the latest ETSI M2M specification (ETSI TC M2M in ETSI TS 103 093 V2.1.1. , 2013b) and the MQTT protocol (IBM, Eurotech in MQTT V3.1 Protocol Specification pp 1-42, , 2010). With this solution it is possible to show how we can create new applications to run over it and the importance of designing specifically tailored for IoT communication protocols in order to support real-time applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chat applications are being used for more than one decade in learning environments as a useful computer-supported collaborative learning tool. However, some of the chat applications used are not appropriated for learning purposes. On the other hand, previous studies have detected that unfortunately nowadays some students still face accessibility barriers when using chat applications, and, as a result, they cannot learn under the same conditions and equality opportunities than their classmates. This paper presents a comparison of chat applications' features and functionalities of the top three most used and non-commercial learning content management systems nowadays, namely Moodle, Edmodo, and Instructure. The paper studies which of them provide advantage in learning environments based on UDL guidelines. In addition, a heuristic accessibility evaluation of the chat applications was carried out based on the WCAG 2.0 guidelines. Finally, some recommendations are provided to improve or build new inclusive chat applications for learning environments. After conducting the study, it can be concluded that the application that includes most learning characteristics is the Edmodo chat application. In contrast, the application that includes most features to avoid accessibility barriers is Moodle chat application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since voters are often swayed more by the charisma, personal image and communication skills of the individual candidates standing for election than by the parties' political manifestos, they may cast votes that are actually in opposition to their policy preferences. Such a type of behavior, known as 'irrational voting', results in the election of representatives who do not correspond exactly to the voters' own views. The example of the 2013 German Bundestag shows that the method used to elect it results in inadequate policy representation. The analysis of these elections (see, Tangian, 2016) led to an alternative method which is discussed in this paper. In the alternative method the voters' policy preferences are taken into account explicitly by means of embedded referenda, testing the matching of the candidates' policy profiles with that of the electorate. Then the parties are indexed, not with respect to the percentage of votes received but with respect to their representativeness indices of popularity (the average percentage of the population represented) and universality (frequency in representing a majority), as introduced in the previous paper mentioned. The method is then hypothetically applied to redistribute the Bundestag seats among the party factions, producing a considerable gain in the representativeness of the Bundestag. Finally, we discuss mixed election procedures combining the elements of traditional voting schemes with the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Though text messages are increasingly used in health promotion, the current understanding of text message-based interventions to increase screening mammography in low-income African American women is limited. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a text message-based intervention to increase screening mammography in low-income African American women. Materials and Methods: A 15-item, self-administered, paper-based survey on cell phone ownership, text messaging practices and preferences for future breast health information was administered to 120 female patients at an urban family medicine office. Descriptive analyses and demographic correlates of text messaging practices and preferences were examined. Results and Discussion: The majority of respondents (95%) were cell phone owners of whom 81% reported texting. Prior receipt of a text message from a doctor's office was reported by 51% of cell phone owners. Mammography appointment reminders were the most desired content for future breast health text messages. Age (≥ 70 years old) was found to have a significant negative relationship with text messaging practices and perceptions. Implications: The use of text messages to promote mammography was found to be acceptable in this patient population. In addition to age, variables such as the frequency, timing and subject content of text messages also influence their acceptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improved public understanding of the ocean and the importance of sustainable ocean use, or ocean literacy, is essential for achieving global commitments to sustainable development by 2030 and beyond. However, growing human populations (particularly in mega-cities), urbanisation and socio-economic disparity threaten opportunities for people to engage and connect directly with ocean environments. Thus, a major challenge in engaging the whole of society in achieving ocean sustainability by 2030 is to develop strategies to improve societal connections to the ocean. The concept of ocean literacy reflects public understanding of the ocean, but is also an indication of connections to, and attitudes and behaviours towards, the ocean. Improving and progressing global ocean literacy has potential to catalyse the behaviour changes necessary for achieving a sustainable future. As part of the Future Seas project (https://futureseas2030.org/), this paper aims to synthesise knowledge and perspectives on ocean literacy from a range of disciplines, including but not exclusive to marine biology, socio-ecology, philosophy, technology, psychology, oceanography and human health. Using examples from the literature, we outline the potential for positive change towards a sustainable future based on knowledge that already exists. We focus on four drivers that can influence and improve ocean literacy and societal connections to the ocean: (1) education, (2) cultural connections, (3) technological developments, and (4) knowledge exchange and science-policy interconnections. We explore how each driver plays a role in improving perceptions of the ocean to engender more widespread societal support for effective ocean management and conservation. In doing so, we develop an ocean literacy toolkit, a practical resource for enhancing ocean connections across a broad range of contexts worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we introduce the Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji's phenomenology of aidagara ("betweenness") and use his analysis in the contemporary context of online space. We argue that Watsuji develops a prescient analysis anticipating modern technologically-mediated forms of expression and engagement. More precisely, we show that instead of adopting a traditional phenomenological focus on face-to-face interaction, Watsuji argues that communication technologies—which now include Internet-enabled technologies and spaces—are expressive vehicles enabling new forms of emotional expression, shared experiences, and modes of betweenness that would be otherwise inaccessible. Using Watsuji's phenomenological analysis, we argue that the Internet is not simply a sophisticated form of communication technology that expresses our subjective spatiality (although it is), but that it actually gives rise to new forms of subjective spatiality itself. We conclude with an exploration of how certain aspects of our online interconnections are hidden from lay users in ways that have significant political and ethical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Network-on-Chip (NoC) with excellent scalability and high bandwidth has been considered to be the most promising communication architecture for complex integration systems. However, NoC reliability is getting continuously challenging for the shrinking semiconductor feature size and increasing integration density. Moreover, a single node failure in NoC might destroy the network connectivity and corrupt the entire system. Introducing redundancies is an efficient method to construct a resilient communication path. However, prior work based on redundancies, either results in limited reliability with coarse grain protection or involves even larger hardware overhead with fine grain. In this paper, we notice that data path such as links, buffers and crossbars in NoC can be divided into multiple identical parallel slices, which can be utilized as inherent redundancy to enhance reliability. As long as there is one fault-free slice left available, the proposed salvaging scheme named as RevivePath, can be employed to make the overall data path still functional. Furthermore, RevivePath uses the direct redundancy to protect the control path such as switch arbiter, routing computation, to provide a full fault-tolerant scheme to the whole router. Experimental results show that it achieves quite high reliability with graceful performance degradation even under high fault rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our editorial model is a collaborative one; the in-house professional team of editors works together with external editors in selecting the papers we publish. Here we discuss how this editorial model is set up and share the thoughts of some of our board members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data torturing, cherry-picking, P-hacking and the invention of tools such as ChatGPT — when it comes to assisting the spread of disinformation science is its own worst enemy, argues a new book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term ambient media was in its beginning used only for ambient advertising. Nowadays it denotes the media environment and the communication of information in ubiquitous and pervasive environments. With the addition of intelligence, the new field of semantic ambient media was established. In recent years, the field of semantic ambient media has spread its span from only a few sub-areas, such as ambient advertising, to new ones, such as ambient-assisted living (AAL) and health-monitoring media, significantly supported by intelligence. The study presented in this paper provides an advanced introduction to the field of semantic ambient media including the solutions for threat issues and illustration of success stories of the field. It conducts a survey of the related work and presents a thorough discussion of it. The related work is grouped according to the coverage of the principles of semantic ambient media. Based on the state-of-the-art research, the future possibilities of the field are demonstrated, especially for the ambient-assisted living, audio-visual rendering of media objects, user design principles and the society impact of the field. The paper provides ideas for impacting ambient media and directions and questions for further research. It also discusses the potential of the combination of several research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major factors that affects the performance of wireless sensor networks (WSN) is its limited battery capacity. Mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSN) are just like WSN except either sensor nodes or sink or both can move. Similar to WSN nodes, in MWSN have limited power resources, so network life depends on battery power consumption. Most of the energy consumed by the network is when transmitting or exchange of control information and data is performed. There are different techniques presented by the researchers to conserve energy like topology control, power management, and data driven methods, etc. In this paper, an adaptive power control strategy for conserving energy in MWSN is presented. The proposed scheme uses variable transmission power to reduce energy usage in the transmission of data and control packets and estimates the energy consumed in unicast and broadcast communication of data and control packets. Sensor nodes adjust their transmission power level at every stage of communication which not only reduces the energy utilization by the sensor nodes but also increases data reception at the sink. This is achieved by limiting unnecessary transmissions within sensing regions where they are not intended to reach or exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Matched filtering has found its way in many diverse applications such as communication, signal processing and more. The emphasis of this paper is on the design and analysis of a sigma-delta (ΣΔ) modulated ternary Matched Filter aimed at digital signal processing. The filter coefficients are made ternary {+ 1, − 1, 0} using the Ternary Quantizer. The performance of the new design is measured on the basis of Probability of error versus Signal-to-noise ratio and it was discovered that the performance curve of the single-bit designed Matched Filter is approximately in agreement with the theoretical SNR versus Probability of error curve and works satisfactorily satisfactorily like a multi-bit Matched Filter and as an extension, the functionality of the above mentioned design is also generated on Xilinx System Generator and is successfully synthesized, simulated and verified on FPGA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the deeply rooted determinants of development, technology and innovation is a very recent strand of the literature. This paper investigates the relationship between technology in 1500 and the ancestral genetic diversity of populations. It shows a strong hump-shaped relationship between genetic diversity and technological developments in 1500. This means that some of the technological achievements may stem from the genetic diversity mostly determined more than a millennium before. Results are robust to the introduction of several controls and to IV estimation. Moreover, our results highlight that agriculture and communication were the technologies most influenced by genetic diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to meet the needs of multimedia communication in multi cloud environment and improve the experience quality of mobile multimedia users, based on multi cloud computing, based on Cooperative cognitive data behavior measurement, this paper proposes an autonomous multimedia cluster computer system and its architecture. First of all, dispersed edge clouds are distributed and integrated, and cooperate to provide multimedia storage and computing functions. In cloudy environment, a hierarchical access service point is designed between edge cloud and core cloud. On this basis, a multimedia cluster computing system suitable for cloudy environment is built. Secondly, a mulch-dimensional mapping mechanism is built between the link management interface array and the task scheduling array in the edge cloud array. Mulch-dimensional multimedia data and real-time task scheduling cooperation cognition, and core cloud are used to interact with DP vectors with dedicated channels. On this basis, we propose an autonomous computer system based on Cooperative Cognition and multimedia data behavior measure. Finally, it is analyzed by three groups of experiments. The resource utilization of the multimedia cluster computing system, the behavior measurement accuracy based on the cooperative cognitive multimedia data behavior measure and the performance of the proposed autonomous multimedia cluster computing (AMC-CCC) in large-scale real-time multimedia communication applications. The results show that the proposed AMC-CCC mechanism has excellent performance in multimedia QoS, resource management and data behavior measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose During return to work (RTW), communication between health care providers and employers largely takes place through standardize paper-based forms. Information technology (IT) platforms may provide advantages in enabling information exchange and decision-making through sharing of guidelines and resources. We investigated stakeholder perspectives on the prospect of IT use for RTW communication in Ontario, Canada. Methods Consistent with the exploratory nature of the questions, qualitative methods were used. Primary data were interviews with health care providers (HCPs), employers, and workers with experience in RTW. The first portion of initial interviews elicited general perspectives and experiences related to RTW communication. Participants were then exposed to a prototype IT communication platform and elicited their feedback. Follow-up interviews with HCP's and EMP's were used to allow further reflection and clarification of data. We used progressive, thematic coding to analyze data. Results 12 HCPs, 7 employers, and 5 workers participated in the study. Five inter-related themes were obtained. Participants expressed no absolute objection to the use of IT for RTW communication but varying degrees of support. Participants revealed how media change depended on a prospective IT innovation's perceived usefulness, fit with current practices, capacity to gain buy-in from other stakeholders, and ability to demonstrate positive performance in actual practice. Conclusions Findings suggest that a transition to an IT-mediated tool for RTW communication is supported in principle; however, major caveats exist in relation to perceived value and fit with stakeholder practice. System support and stakeholder cooperation are likely necessary to adopt the change, yet IT-mediated communication has yet to demonstrate value. To avoid circularity, proof of principal needs to be established through an implementation trial of such technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper puts forward a new skeptical solution to Kripke's Wittgenstein's rule-following paradox, a solution which revolves around the idea that human communication does not require meaning facts - at least as defined by Kripke. After a brief discussion of the paradox, I explain why I think that Kripkenstein's solution needs revision and argue that the main goal of a skeptical solution to the rule-following paradox should be that of showing that communication does not require meaning. After that, I offer two arguments for the thesis that communication does not require meaning. The first argument instantiates a rather direct strategy and focuses on the description of a concrete case of communication without meaning. The second one is more indirect in that I start by describing a world in which, although there are meaning facts, communication does not depend on them. The paper's last section deals with the issue of meaning talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging forms of data offer new opportunities for developing a deeper understanding of poorly understood social and spatial processes. This is no more important than in developing countries, where large-scale data collection and processing has been relatively limited. In this paper, we explore how two new datasets can be used to enhance our understanding of human activity and communication interactions in Dakar, Senegal. Starting from a premise of little contextual knowledge about the setting in which we are working, we explore how much these data, combined with novel quantitative methods, are able to inform us about the urban environment in question. Fine-grained infrastructural data are combined with k-means clustering to produce an 11-class land use classification, distinguishing dense and sparse, single and mixed use regions. Using these classifications and over 1.5 billion mobile phone call records, patterns of activity and interaction within and between land use types are analysed. These analyses reveal strong activity associated with high density commercial, governmental and administrative regions. These regions are also identified as relatively strong 'attractors' of communication, and wider patterns show higher interactions between areas with similar land use characteristics. Analyses of dynamic activity and interaction patterns highlight the movement of people from workplace zones to residential areas. Importantly, these analyses reflect the expected patterns of urban activity, providing some validation of the data, methods, and the empirical approach. The paper concludes in addressing the strengths and potential of these approaches, while recognising current limitations and areas for further work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human activities such as coal mining may cause rapid ground subsidence, which will damage severely on human-built structures such as coal transport railway or buildings, and even kill lives. In coal-mining areas, ground subsidence happens continuously, and its amplitude may be up to 10 cm per day. In order to assure the safety of coal-mining areas, it's necessary to monitor the ground subsidence timely and precisely. This paper presents a continuously operating real-time global navigation satellite system ground subsidence monitoring system, which consists of hardware, data processing algorithms and software, communication link and peripheral equipment. A particular architecture was designed for field operation. For the data processing, the Vondrak filter is proposed to process the monitoring data. We operated the proposed monitoring system on the coal-mining area and verified the performance during the mining period from early July to December 2017. The monitoring results show that the proposed system has an accuracy of 5 mm for ground subsidence monitoring on the basis of precise leveling data that were simultaneously observed. The proposed method can meet the accuracy requirement of ground subsidence monitoring, and it can provide continuous subsidence information in real time, which cannot be achieved by the traditional leveling surveying method. The monitoring system and data processing method can be applied to the monitoring of ground subsidence in subsidence area as well as geological disasters such as landslides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication and cultivation accounts of responsibility (CC accounts) argue that blaming has an important communicative and agency-cultivating function when addressed at someone we consider to be deserving of blame. On these accounts, responsible agents are agents who can understand negative reactive attitudes and are (generally) sensitive to their moral-agency cultivating function. In this paper I examine our reproachful engagements with agents whose moral agency is underdeveloped or compromised. I discuss how these engagements compare to blaming on CC accounts and argue reproachful engagements can have an important communicative and agency-cultivating pointe. I then go on to propose an addition to CC-accounts that explains how underdeveloped and compromised agents can be held responsible. I will show how this addition resolves ambiguities in accounts from McKenna, Vargas and McGeer. I conclude the paper by anticipating an objection CC accounts could raise: that reproach and blame are co-extensive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with robust stochastic stabilization for positive Markov jump systems with actuator saturation. The considered systems contain interval and polytopic uncertainties, respectively. First, a stochastic co-positive Lyapunov functional is constructed for the systems. By virtue of the presented Lyapunov functional, a new controller design approach is addressed using matrix decomposition technique. Under the designed controller, robust stochastic stabilization of the systems with interval and polytopic uncertainties is achieved, respectively. Furthermore, an effective method for estimating the attraction domain is established by solving an optimization problem. An implemental algorithm is provided based on linear programming to solve the corresponding conditions. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the reduced conservatism and effectiveness of the proposed design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interrelated fields of computational creativity and design computing, sometimes also referred to as design science, have been gaining momentum over the past two or three decades. Many frequent international conference series, as well as more sporadic stand-alone academic events, have emerged to prove this. As maturing fields, it is time to take stock of what has come before and try to come up with a cohesive description of the theoretical foundations and practical advances that have been made. This paper presents such a description in the hope that it helps to communicate what the fields are about to people that are not directly involved in them, hopefully drawing some of them in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The atomic register is one of the most basic and useful object of computing science, and its simple read-write semantics is appealing when programming distributed systems. Hence, its implementation on top of crash-prone asynchronous message-passing systems has received a lot of attention. It was shown that having a strict minority of processes that may crash is a necessary and sufficient requirement to build an atomic register on top of a crash-prone asynchronous message-passing system. This paper visits the notion of a fast implementation of an atomic register, and presents a new time-efficient asynchronous algorithm that reduces latency in many cases: a write operation always costs a round-trip delay, while a read operation costs a round-trip delay in favorable circumstances (intuitively, when it is not concurrent with a write). When designing this algorithm, the design spirit was to be as close as possible to the original algorithm proposed by Attiya, Bar-Noy, and Dolev. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine consumer perception toward celebrity diagnoses of major depressive disorder (MDD) in Hong Kong and to provide insights into the effect of various factors on the persuasive effectiveness of MDD communication. A total of thirty-five interviews were conducted in April 2015. Interviewees in general are aware of celebrity MDD diagnoses, but they do not deem MDD as a threat to themselves. Hence, they are not motivated to learn more about the symptoms. Responses to celebrity MDD diagnoses are mixed. Many interviewees are sympathetic toward ill celebrities diagnosed with MDD, but some of the interviewees are dubious about the true intention behind disclosing their diagnoses to the public. Compared to non-fans, fans reported a greater increase in the level of knowledge of MDD after reading related media stories about celebrity MDD diagnoses. Source credibility is perceived as an important factor in MDD communication. This research suggests that the government or NGOs may use credible celebrities whose image can be associated with MDD and cooperate with fan clubs to spread health-related information. The paper represents the first attempt to investigate the effects of celebrity disclosure of MDD diagnoses on the mental disorder-related perceptions of the general public in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceives communities (in this case, partnerships) as being able to become collective informative repositories of individual and collective actions that may better-inform their members. This paper presents one approach for studying if a community has become such an informative repository. The approach used here consists of introducing a formal language (Viable Systems Modelling, VSM) into one of the community nodes (a participant) and tracing if its use is seen in another node (another participant) - indicating the presence of a process of diffusion. This research design has been tested in a crime-reduction partnership in the UK. One of its members was asked to engage in the design and testing of this approach as a co-researcher. As a result, a questionnaire to map communication and control devices inside an organization was jointly developed. In keeping with VSM principles, the questionnaire encouraged participants to reflect on attenuation and amplification processes within their communications channels. To test the quality of the outcomes of this approach, members from another crime-reduction partnership were also invited to answer the survey; this was to confirm that VSM notions were not evident for those outside the development and testing of the questionnaire. The questionnaire indicated also its capability to make visible communication and organizational processes within collectives and its potential to stimulate self-organization, for those individuals who became familiar with VSM. Furthermore, this approach provided the authors with the capability to study information flows inside the two collectives, and contributed to an understanding of these flows as a model for building and maintaining a Community Informative System. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deplores the increasing practice whereby individuals and groups write Igbo with orthographic conventions that deviate from those of the official Igbo (Ọnwụ) Orthography. It warns that these divergent acts are steadily dragging Igbo Orthography into a state of anarchy whose consequences could be more disastrous than those of the earlier orthography controversy of 1929–1961. The paper briefly traces the history of Igbo orthography from the earliest mention of Igbo in the sixteenth century writings of European travelers to the present times. Among its recommendations for the restoration of sanity in Igbo orthography are: the respect of the present official one until new conventions are officially agreed to and sanctioned; the revival of the Igbo Standardization Committee which formerly regulated and supervised developments in the language; the convening of an international workshop on Igbo orthography and the production of an enlarged Pan Igbo orthography for writing in dialects while the present official (Ọnwụ) orthography serves for Standard Igbo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the sociocultural dynamics underlying collaborative research. The article is based on an international collaborative project on the everyday lives of working families in Italy, Sweden and the USA. The aim of this paper is to show that collaborative research does not necessarily produce collaboration: this is possible only with very strong rules between partners. It proposes a distinction between collaboration and cooperation, and uses this distinction to examine intergroup and intragroup joint activity. Through the analysis of the communicative exchanges occurring between researchers, the paper highlights conditions in which cooperation can become fruitful collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When multiple valid solutions are available to a problem, preferences can be used to indicate a choice. In a distributed system, such a preference-based solution can be produced autonomous agents cooperating together, but the attempt will lead to contention if the same resource is given preference by several user-agents. To resolve such contentions, this paper proposes a market-based payment scheme for selling and buying preferences by the contenders, in which the best solution is defined as the one where as many preferences as theoretically possible are globally met. After exploring the nature of preference, the paper develops a preference processing model based on the market based scheme, and presents a theoretical performance model to verify the correctness of the processing model. This verification is provided by a simulation study of the processing model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimum Communication Spanning Tree Problem is a special case of the Network Design Problem. In this problem given a graph, a set of requirements r ij and a set of distances d ij for all pair of nodes ( i, j), the cost of communication for a pair of nodes ( i, j), with respect to a spanning tree T is defined as r ij times the length of the unique path in T, that connects nodes i and j. Total cost of communication for a spanning tree is the sum of costs for all pairs of nodes of G. The problem is to construct a spanning tree for which the total cost of communication is the smallest among all the spanning trees of G. The problem is known to be NP-hard. Hu (1974) solved two special cases of the problem in polynomial time. In this paper, using Hu’s result the first algorithm begins with a cut-tree by keeping all d ij equal to the smallest d ij . For arcs ( i, j) which are part of this cut-tree the corresponding d ij value is increased to obtain a near optimal communication spanning tree in pseudo-polynomial time. In case the distances d ij satisfy a generalised triangle inequality the second algorithm in the paper constructs a near optimum tree in polynomial time by parametrising on the r ij . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to identify and describe the European evidence on opportunities and barriers to access and utilization of palliative care among non- western migrants. A systematic review in accordance with PRISMA guidelines was conducted in June 2020, searching Medline, CINAHL, PsychINFO and EMBASE databases. PROSPERO# CRD42020193651. Studies included empirical research published between 2011 and 2020. Search words were, for example, ethnic groups and palliative care. Thematic analysis was used to analyze data. Twenty nine qualitative and six quantitative studies were included. Four main themes were identified: communication and language; knowledge and awareness; patient preferences, cultural and religious issues; and lack of resources at different levels of palliative care service provision. Migrants' access to palliative care is impeded at system, community and individual levels, yet, recommendations are mostly at the individual level. Closer attention is required to these different levels when designing future palliative interventions for migrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Asians in the US have experienced a spike of racism. The goal of this paper is to examine the association between racial discrimination amid COVID-19 pandemic and depressive symptoms among Asian subgroups and to test whether communications about the incident with various sources moderate this relationship. Data come from an online survey conducted among 245 Asian Americans. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted. COVID-19 racial discrimination was positively associated with depressive symptoms, and this association did not vary between Chinese Americans and other Asian subgroups. Communications with a spouse/partner buffered the mental burden of racial discrimination. Those who shared their experience in online ethnic communities displayed stronger depressive symptoms than who did not. These results suggest the potential benefit of communication with a spouse/partner in mitigating the mental burden of discrimination and call for more online mental health support for Asians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a theoretical model that explains how decision rules and communication jointly affect collective outcomes in a small community under epistemic uncertainty. To see the likelihood of social reform and the probability of sensible decision-making under uncertainty, we compare two types of decision rules: unanimity rule and majority rule with veto. Also, we analyze the role of communication among voters before the voting occurs. We show that there exist equilibria and that once each player's preference is determined, the equilibrium behavior is specified. In addition, we use simulation methods to examine how the precision of group decision and the voters' welfare vary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all countries irrespective of their state of development. In countries with traditional societies, religious leaders have been acknowledged as key stakeholders in community engagement activities, including disease prevention. A community-level prevention model was established in 2020 by the Health Promotion Bureau (HPB), Sri Lanka, which incorporated mobilisation of the clergy to support the prevention and response schemes to COVID-19 with non-governmental stakeholders. This model was part of a more extensive community engagement network established by the HPB in cooperation with the country offices for WHO and UNICEF. Building trust, empowering behavioural traits applicable to minimise risks from COVID-19, leadership and coordination, message dissemination, addressing stigma and discrimination, supporting testing procedures, contact tracing activities and vaccination, building community resilience, spiritual and psychosocial support, and welfare provision are some of the useful factors that were identified in the model. Furthermore, a much broader and holistic approach is needed to focus on health behaviours and social and cultural aspects in a multi-faceted nature. This paper highlights a novel COVID-19 prevention model with active involvement of religious leaders that can be implemented in low resource settings. Our experience from Sri Lanka demonstrates the feasibility of implementing this model to mitigate the disastrous situation following the COVID-19 outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delivery of serious illness communication (SIC) is necessary to ensure that all seriously ill patients receive goal-concordant care. However, the current SIC delivery process contains barriers that prevent the delivery of timely and effective SIC. In this paper, we describe the current bottlenecks of the traditional SIC workflow and explore how a hybrid artificial intelligence-human workflow may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of SIC delivery in busy practice settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is predicted that the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in communication systems will be more extensive in future generations of wireless telecommunication networks, due to their facilitating advantages. In this paper, a UAV-based wireless communication system is considered in which a UAV is employed as a relay to connect two ground users. These two disconnected users make a communication pair. Our aim is to maximize the minimum achievable information rate for the communication link between the transmitter and receiver, by cooperatively optimizing UAV trajectory and transmitter and source power allocation. Motivated by the above, we formulate the optimization problem. The solving process is complicated because of the non-convexity of the formulated problem. To overcome this difficulty, we convert the main problem to some sub-problems by fixing some constraints and solving them with iterative algorithms such as successive convex optimization and reaching the solution for the main problem. Simulation results show the capability of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this research is in the definition of programmable expert Personal Health Systems (PHS) to monitor patients affected by chronic diseases using agent oriented programming and mobile computing to represent the interactions happening amongst the components of the system. The paper also discusses issues of knowledge representation within the medical domain when dealing with temporal patterns concerning the physiological values of the patient. In the presented agent based PHS the doctors can personalize for each patient monitoring rules that can be defined in a graphical way. Furthermore, to achieve better scalability, the computations for monitoring the patients are distributed among their devices rather than being performed in a centralized server. The system is evaluated using data of 21 diabetic patients to detect temporal patterns according to a set of monitoring rules defined. The system's scalability is evaluated by comparing it with a centralized approach. The evaluation concerning the detection of temporal patterns highlights the system's ability to monitor chronic patients affected by diabetes. Regarding the scalability, the results show the fact that an approach exploiting the use of mobile computing is more scalable than a centralized approach. Therefore, more likely to satisfy the needs of next generation PHSs. PHSs are becoming an adopted technology to deal with the surge of patients affected by chronic illnesses. This paper discusses architectural choices to make an agent based PHS more scalable by using a distributed mobile computing approach. It also discusses how to model the medical knowledge in the PHS in such a way that it is modifiable at run time. The evaluation highlights the necessity of distributing the reasoning to the mobile part of the system and that modifiable rules are able to deal with the change in lifestyle of the patients affected by chronic illnesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication is an essential element of good medical practice also in pathology. In contrast to technical or diagnostic skills, communication skills are not easy to define, teach, or assess. Rules almost do not exist. In this paper, which has a rather personal character and cannot be taken as a set of guidelines, important aspects of communication in pathology are explored. This includes what should be communicated to the pathologist on the pathology request form, communication between pathologists during internal (interpathologist) consultation, communication around frozen section diagnoses, modalities of communication of a final diagnosis, with whom and how critical and unexpected findings should be communicated, (in-)adequate routes of communication for pathology diagnoses, who will (or might) receive pathology reports, and what should be communicated and how in case of an error or a technical problem. An earlier more formal description of what the responsibilities are of a pathologist as communicator and as collaborator in a medical team is added in separate tables. The intention of the paper is to stimulate reflection and discussion rather than to formulate strict rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an increasing number of firms adopt customer satisfaction (CS) scores as one of their performance measures, they tend to invest in diverse activities to enhance their CS scores. Educating and rewarding employees and investing in marketing research are considered genuine efforts by firms to serve their customers better. However, there are some activities for which one should question the motivation behind them. Increasing media advertising prior to conducting CS surveys in the hope of positively affecting prospective survey respondents is one such example. While this practice has been observed at least in some parts of the world, there has been little, if any, research on whether such a practice could indeed lead to higher CS ratings for the firm. Drawing on Feldman and Lynch's framework, extant research on contextual factors in the CS survey, and the assimilation-contrast effect, this paper develops a set of hypotheses and tests them in two experiments. We find that advertising exposure prior to conducting a CS survey enhances a firm's CS ratings, while the same advertisements may backfire for those respondents who displayed complaining behavior towards the firm. This paper concludes by providing implications for marketers keen on obtaining higher CS scores and third-party organizations releasing CS scores in public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an interview study in which 11 academics as interviewees participated for the purpose of revealing common collaborative writing practices, with particular focus on reviewing documents. First, we present the findings obtained concerning the issues of co-operating strategies underlying the reviewing process, how people revise their documents and comment on them, what they use the previous revision history for, and to what extent current technology is used in the reviewing process. Second, we also discuss aspects of the design of collaborative writing tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the survival and further development of the languages of small nations such as Slovenia. Role of speech technology in the survival of small nations' languages; Status of language development in Europe; Introduction of papers on speech technology research in Slovenia.

The periodic reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are announced each time by a strategic document in the form of a Communication by the European Commission (EC). The content of the last Communication differs from previous ones, which raises the questions of what frames the EC has employed with respect to its CAP reforms and how these frames have been modified over the past 26 years (from 1991 to 2017) in order to legitimise the preservation of the CAP. This paper tries to fill the gap in the research of frames in the main strategic documents on the CAP by employing comparative historical framing analysis. The results show consistent use of five frames: the policy mechanism frame, farmers' economic frame, foreign trade frame, budgetary frame, and the societal concerns frame. While they have all remained in use, most have been changed significantly over the years. Throughout the analysed period, the farmers' economic frame has retained its primacy and continuity, demonstrating the power of the farmers' lobbies and conservative member states. If in the initial Communications the environment was barely present within the societal concerns frame, it has gained importance in the recent Communications, in addition to other general societal issues, such as climate change, food security and quality, health, digitalisation, innovation, and even migration. By marginalising the policy mechanism frame and replacing it with the implementation model and increasingly emphasising the societal concerns frame with social justifications of the CAP, the EC is trying to legitimise the CAP after 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to understand genetics within the context of health. This paper assesses (a) genetic knowledge among Mexican-born farmworker and non-farmworker adults; (b) their interpersonal and device sources of genetic knowledge; and (c) the association between their genetic knowledge and the sources of this genetic knowledge. Interviews were conducted with Mexican-born farmworkers (100) and non-farmworkers (100) in North Carolina. Participants answered 15 questions to assess genetic knowledge, and sources from which they had seen or heard about genes and genetics. Results show limited knowledge of genetics, with farmworkers and non-farmworkers providing a similar level of correct responses (6.6 versus 7.3), but with farmworkers providing more incorrect responses (4.0 versus 2.7). Important sources of genetic information for farmworkers were promotoras (47%), compared to teachers (49%) for non-farmworkers. This study demonstrates a need for increased dissemination of genetic information to Mexican-origin farmworkers and non-farmworkers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses secondary analysis to understand how COVID-19 shaped people's experiences with psychosocial support services in Australia. Data are drawn from questionnaires (n = 66) and semi-structured interviews (n = 62), conducted for a national service evaluation, with 121 people living with enduring mental health conditions and using psychosocial support services. Data relating to COVID-19 were inductively coded and analysed using constant comparative analysis. Most people's experiences included tele-support. While some people described minimal disruption to their support, many reported reduced engagement. People's wellbeing and engagement were influenced by: their location, living situation and pre-COVID lifestyles; physical health conditions; access to, comfort with, and support worker facilitation of technology; pre-COVID relationships with support workers; and communication from the organisation. The findings can help services prepare for future pandemics, adjust their services for a 'COVID-normal' world, and consider how learnings from COVID-19 could be incorporated into a flexible suite of service delivery options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "full commitment" assumption in the Bayesian persuasion literature might not always hold: the sender might be tempted to deviate from an information structure to which he commits. To incorporate this possibility, I study a model in which the sender's commitment to an information structure binds with an exogenously given probability less than one. This gives rise to a novel mode of communication which is between cheap talk and Bayesian persuasion. I focus on the welfare implication of partial commitment. Not surprisingly, the sender's ex ante payoff weakly increases as the commitment probability increases. Then I show that, in the uniform-quadratic setting, both the sender and the receiver can be strictly better off as the mode of communication changes from cheap talk through communication under partial commitment to Bayesian persuasion. This Pareto-ranking holds for any level of the conflict of interests between two players. The sender's opportunistic behavior under partial commitment undermines Pareto-optimal welfare achievable under Bayesian persuasion. The sender under partial commitment can improve upon the highest welfare under cheap talk via two contrasting classes of information structures: (1) one which involves truth-telling or (2) one which involves a pure noise-generating process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans first appeared on the planet about 3.5 million years ago and like most biota, they settled near wetlands because of the availability of food and water. The ancestors of our species understood and knew that water, wetlands, and healthy landscapes were essential for life. In Taiwan, the indigenous people have a long history being a part of and managing the natural resources, including wetlands in their respective habitats. Water and wetlands still play a substantial and significant role in the manner that the Tayal, an indigenous group of people in Taiwan use, preserve, care, protect, respect, and share the habitats and natural resources within which they live. The evolution of Taiwan’s tribal cultures, and probably most cultures on the planet are closely entwined with the resources present in each tribe’s habitat, especially water and wetlands. DNA results indicate 2 lineages of people migrated to Taiwan between 11,000 and 26,000 years ago and gave rise to 9 ethnic groups (Tajima et al. 2003). Today 16 indigenous cultures/tribes are recognized with each occupying different regions of Taiwan’s diverse landscape. Each tribe has its own language and culture and occupies its own geographic region, which contributes to Taiwan’s rich cultural history and diversity. The Tayal tribe is one of the larger tribes with about 88,000 people and the Smangus people are a subset of the Tayal tribe with a culture that is at least 6,000 years old. Culturally, the Tayal people consider themselves to be an element of the environment and their culture is defined by their relationship and interactions with the environment, including all of the other biotic, abiotic elements present in their habitats. In this paper we provide an overview of Tayal culture and philosophy, which determines how the Tayal people manage and protect their natural resources, especially water and wetlands following the tenets of Utux and Gaga that comprise the entirety of their core cultural values. The cultural and language variations, nuances, environmental interpretations, and management techniques are specific to tribal groups and differences in geographic location and environmental settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances our understanding of the norms of assertion in two ways. First, I evaluate recent studies claiming to discredit an important earlier finding which supports the hypothesis that assertion has a factive norm (i.e. assertions should express truths). In particular, I evaluate whether it was due to stimuli mentioning that a speaker's evidence was fallible. Second, I evaluate the hypothesis that assertion has a truth-insensitive standard of justification. In particular, I evaluate the claim that switching an assertion from true to false, while holding all else objectively constant, is irrelevant to attributions of justification. Two pre-registered experiments provide decisive evidence against each claim. In the first experiment, switching from mentioning to not mentioning fallibility made no difference to assertability attributions, thereby disproving the criticism concerning fallibility. By contrast, switching an assertion from true to false decreased the rate of assertability attribution from over 90% to less than 20%, thereby replicating and vindicating the original finding supporting a factive norm. In the second experiment, switching an assertion from true to false decreased the rate of justification attribution from over 80 to 10%, thereby undermining the hypothesis that assertion's standard of justification is truth-insensitive. The second experiment also demonstrates that perspective-taking influences attributions of justification, and it provides initial evidence that the standard of justification for assertion is stricter than the standard for belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work concentrated confirmation security among the V2V correspondence. The paper anticipates an effectual RTSP protocol that combines the Internet of things, cloud with specialist innovation into one stage where it manages secure correspondence and interfaces between the huge measure of decentralized and heterogeneously conveyed devices in IoT. Subsequently our proposed work is for decreasing blockage, following articles, traffic the executives, directing, and keeping away from clog. This design starts the usage of Road Side Unit (RSU), Central Cloud Layer (CCL), and Vehicular Cloud Layer (VCL), with sensor innovations, IoT based vehicular data frameworks, Vehicular cloud-based Ad-hoc networks where the traffic objects are addressed, followed over the web. In recent years the vehicle AdHoc network plays a vital role in smart vehicles monitoring, tracking, and sharing of location-based information. The VANET communication occurs among the vehicles -to- vehicles(V2V) and Vehicles-to-infrastructure(V2I). The communication message provides information on traffic and critical road events for each vehicle's comfortable driving. Smart transport involves smart sensors and the internet of things vehicles (IoTV). The wide range of data has been outsourced from IoTV for efficient monitoring with a cloud environment adapted for vehicles cloud. There has been plenty of security issues among the VANET and IoTV due to multiuser and open access channel transmission there has been plenty of VANET protocol delivered for secure smart vehicles transmission technology. various security issues have been concentrated, the issues like authentication, integrity, non-reputation, confidentiality, and availability have been the major vulnerable security threads. In this work concentrated authentication security among the V2V communication. This examination offers a useful structure for checking appropriated directing for vehicles, blockage shirking, and traffic the executives, etc. Broad reenactment is done in MATLAB climate, which shows a superior compromise as opposed to traditional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze a new phenomenon that is emerging in the field of social robotics, which we name as "roboid". The roboid is a robot that is still at the prototype stage but claims to be fully functioning. We argue that the roboid has been created to handle a new phase between the prototyping and the commercialization of robots. In this intermediate phase, a wide-spread promotional campaign is organized by robot producers, with the purpose of understanding the desires, needs, and suggestions of potential customers. We present the first case of a a highly human-like roboid named Sophia. We carried out the visual analysis of the content and the content-agnostic factors of a selection of 15 videos uploaded on YouTube on the social robot Sophia and a qualitative analysis of the textual component of these videos to investigate a selected part of the promotional campaign on Sophia. Furthermore, on the 23,810 comments that users have posted on these videos, we applied quantitative analysis to explore the observers' opinions about Sophia. Results highlight that: (1) a powerful but potentially ridiculous narrative has been used to build the rhetoric of Sophia; (2) the comments on the videos are too poor to enable a co-construction of this social robot with the audiences (implicit intention of Hanson Robotics); (3) the introduction of the roboid might be a very good solution to reduce the uncertainties that may occur when a new robot moves directly from the laboratory to the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With recent advances in wireless networks, communication-based train control (CBTC) has become a popular approach to ensure the safe and efficient operation of railway trains. The requirements for train-ground communication in CBTC systems are stringent. Most existing works about train-ground communication systems consider the infrastructure mode without train-train direct communications. Due to unreliable wireless communications and frequent handovers, existing CBTC systems can severely affect train control efficiency and performance, as well as the utility of railway. In this paper, with recent advances in cooperative and cognitive wireless networks, we propose a CBTC system to enable train-train direct communications. In addition, the proposed cooperative and cognitive CBTC system is optimized with the cognitive control method. Unlike the exiting works on cooperative and cognitive wireless networks, in this paper, train control performance in CBTC systems is explicitly used as the performance measure in the design. Reinforcement learning is applied to obtain the optimal handover decision and adaption policy of communication parameters. Simulation result shows that the performance of train control can be improved significantly in our proposed cooperative and cognitive CBTC system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an experimental study of practical realization for the transmission of information using chaotic oscillators is presented. We use a ring of three coupled oscillators (emitter-relay-receiver) to demonstrate some views of chaotic masking. Furthermore, several secure communication lines are discussed in this paper. We take into account the parameters mismatch, and the experimental results are in close accordance with the theoretical ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]