Search

The direct search for dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMP) is performed by detecting nuclear recoils produced in a target material from the WIMP elastic scattering. The experimental identification of the direction of the WIMP-induced nuclear recoils is a crucial asset in this field, as it enables unmistakable modulation signatures for dark matter. The Recoil Directionality (ReD) experiment was designed to probe for such directional sensitivity in argon dual-phase time projection chambers (TPC), that are widely considered for current and future direct dark matter searches. The TPC of ReD was irradiated with neutrons at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Sud. Data were taken with nuclear recoils of known directions and kinetic energy of 72 keV, which is within the range of interest for WIMP-induced signals in argon. The direction-dependent liquid argon charge recombination model by Cataudella et al. was adopted and a likelihood statistical analysis was performed, which gave no indications of significant dependence of the detector response to the recoil direction. The aspect ratio R of the initial ionization cloud is R < 1.072 with 90 % confidence level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Healthcare portals are becoming increasingly popular with Internet users since they play an important role in supporting interaction between individuals and healthcare organizations with a Web presence. Additionally, many of these organizations make use of knowledge management mechanisms on their healthcare portals to manage the abundance of health-related information, and exchange and share information with their users. Hence, the objective of this study is to evaluate the extent to which knowledge management mechanisms can be supported by healthcare portals. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of knowledge management mechanisms used by 60 healthcare portals to access, create and transfer knowledge. We selected healthcare portals from two geographical regions (i.e. North America and Asia) and three healthcare portal provider categories (i.e. hospital, government, non-government). We found that healthcare portals from different geographical regions and portal provider categories differed significantly on how they used their portals to access, create and transfer knowledge. The results of this study can be used by healthcare portal providers to enhance their knowledge management practices and improve their customer service relationships. (Contains 13 tables and 4 figures.)

The myriad of information communication technologies (ICTs) available today has changed the way students choose and use them. Specifically, individuals are increasingly relying on a mix of ICTs for communication to accomplish tasks. Yet, past studies on ICT use has largely assumed that people use a single ICT per task. We attempt to address this gap by focusing on the influence of individual differences on the choice of communication portfolio (a mix of ICTs) to accomplish learning tasks in school-based settings. Specifically, we focus on two dimensions of individual differences: learning styles and individuals' perceptions. Results suggest that individual differences do have effects on the choice of communication portfolios to accomplish tasks. In particular, we found that students who preferred to learn by hearing tended to choose the complex communication portfolio to accomplish their tasks. Interestingly, our results also indicate that students preferred to use the simple communication portfolio when communication partners were perceived to be unavailable. (Contains 7 tables.)

Within an authentic assessment regime, a student is evaluated in terms of their ability to demonstrate application of a body of knowledge to a scenario situated in an actual, or a near replica of a real-world context. At Universitas 21 Global (U21Global), a completely online graduate school backed by 16 universities from around the world, the entire pedagogical model is founded on such an approach. One unique feature of the U21Global model is its interactive examination instrument which harnesses the power of the various information and communication technologies (ICTs). This instrument, referred to as the Open-Book Open-Web (OBOW) exam, presents students with a description of a simulated business problem using multimedia. They are then asked to assume a particular role and make recommendations about how to go about solving the problem. Feedback to date indicates that students are generally very positive about OBOW exams. On the minus side, the construction of OBOW exams presents a number of challenges. Not least of these is the steep learning curve it presents for exam authors unaccustomed to working within this paradigm. (Contains 3 tables.)

Aria is a plant hosting a 350 m cryogenic isotopic distillation column, the tallest ever built, which is being installed in a mine shaft at Carbosulcis S.p.A., Nuraxi-Figus (SU), Italy. Aria is one of the pillars of the argon dark-matter search experimental program, lead by the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration. It was designed to reduce the isotopic abundance of 39 Ar in argon extracted from underground sources, called Underground Argon (UAr), which is used for dark-matter searches. Indeed, 39 Ar is a β -emitter of cosmogenic origin, whose activity poses background and pile-up concerns in the detectors. In this paper, we discuss the requirements, design, construction, tests, and projected performance of the plant for the isotopic cryogenic distillation of argon. We also present the successful results of the isotopic cryogenic distillation of nitrogen with a prototype plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose As an increasing number of users have acquired information across the web and mobile platforms for social question and answering (Q&A), it is of interest to explore whether there are differences in social Q&A usages between the two platforms. The purpose of this paper is to compare web and mobile platforms of a social Q&A service from the user’s perspective in terms of three dimensions, namely, demographics, individual-based constructs, and information-based constructs.Design/methodology/approach Because Zhihu.com is one of the most popular social Q&A sites in China, the authors used online questionnaires to investigate its users’ perceptions of these three dimensions. From January to March 2016, the authors obtained 278 valid responses in total through snowball and convenient sampling. Collected data are analyzed through descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.Findings The results indicate that there exist significant differences between web users and mobile users on Zhihu.com in terms of gender, affinity, and information seeking. More specifically, compared to the male users, more female users rely on the mobile platform to access the information service; mobile users perceive higher affinity with Zhihu.com than web users; and mobile users perceive higher information-seeking intention than web users do.Originality/value Regarding the theoretical aspect, this study proposes a conceptual framework for comparison between the web and mobile platforms of social Q&A from the user’s perspective. Regarding the practical aspect, the comparative results of this study could give social Q&A service providers useful information about users’ differences between web and mobile platforms of social Q&A services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose In the wake of a rumor outbreak, individuals exchange three types of messages: rumor messages, counter-rumor messages, and uncertainty-expressing messages. However, the properties of the three types of messages are relatively unknown particularly in the social media context. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to examine these three types of messages posted on social media in the wake of a rumor outbreak.Design/methodology/approach Data included tweets posted after the outbreak of a rumor that wrongly accused the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) for selling rats instead of chicken. Using a deductive approach, codes were derived via content analysis on the tweets. Volume and exposure of tweets were also examined.Findings Counter-rumor tweets (52 percent) outnumbered rumors tweets (32 percent) and uncertainty-expressing tweets (16 percent). Emotions and personal involvement were abundant in rumor tweets. Expressions of credence and references to URLs were high in counter-rumor tweets. Social ties were found widely in uncertainty-expressing tweets. The high volume and exposure of counter-rumor tweets compared with those of either rumor tweets or uncertainty-expressing tweets highlight the potential of counter-rumors to mitigate rumors.Originality/value This research ventures into a relatively unexplored territory by concurrently examining rumor messages, counter-rumor messages and uncertainty-expressing messages in the wake of a rumor outbreak. It reveals that counter-rumor messages have the potential to mitigate rumors on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to examine the relationships among source credibility, message plausibility, message type (rumor or rumor correction) and retransmission of tweets in a rumoring situation. From a total of 5,885 tweets related to the rumored death of the founding father of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, 357 original tweets without an “RT” prefix were selected and analyzed using negative binomial regression analysis. The results show that source credibility and message plausibility are correlated with retransmission. Also, rumor correction tweets are retweeted more than rumor tweets. Moreover, message type moderates the relationship between source credibility and retransmission as well as that between message plausibility and retransmission. By highlighting some implications for theory and practice, this article concludes with some limitations and suggestions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses linguistic analysis to help users discern the authenticity of online reviews. Two related studies were conducted using hotel reviews as the test case for investigation. The first study analyzed 1,800 authentic and fictitious reviews based on the linguistic cues of comprehensibility, specificity, exaggeration, and negligence. The analysis involved classification algorithms followed by feature selection and statistical tests. A filtered set of variables that helped discern review authenticity was identified. The second study incorporated these variables to develop a guideline that aimed to inform humans how to distinguish between authentic and fictitious reviews. The guideline was used as an intervention in an experimental setup that involved 240 participants. The intervention improved human ability to identify fictitious reviews amid authentic ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: to build a theoretical model that identifies textual cues to distinguish between authentic and fictitious reviews, and to empirically validate the theoretical model by examining reviews of positive, negative as well as moderate polarities.Design/methodology/approach Synthesizing major theories on deceptive communication, the theoretical model identifies four constructs – comprehensibility, specificity, exaggeration and negligence – to predict review authenticity. The predictor constructs were operationalized as holistically as possible. To validate the theoretical model, 1,800 reviews (900 authentic + 900 fictitious) evenly spread across positive, negative and moderate polarities were analyzed using logistic regression.Findings The performance of the proposed theoretical model was generally promising. However, it could better discern authenticity for positive and negative reviews compared with moderate entries.Originality/value The paper advances the extant literature by theorizing the textual differences between authentic and fictitious reviews. It also represents one of the earliest attempts to examine nuances in the textual differences between authentic and fictitious reviews across positive, negative as well as moderate polarities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant literature suggests that authentic and fictitious online reviews could be distinguished by leveraging on their textual characteristics. However, nuances in textual differences between authentic and fictitious reviews across different categories of hotels remain largely unknown. Therefore, this paper analyzes textual differences between authentic and fictitious reviews across three hotel categories, namely, luxury, budget, and mid-range. It leverages on four possible textual characteristics – comprehensibility, specificity, exaggeration, and negligence – that could offer clues to ascertain review authenticity. Using a dataset of 1800 reviews (900 authentic + 900 fictitious), the results suggest that differences between authentic and fictitious reviews are largely inconsistent across hotel categories. This generally points to the difficulties in ascertaining review authenticity, which in turn offer implications for both research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify motivations that drive communication of IC (CIC); and second, to investigate content and format used in CIC from three perspectives, namely, human capital information, relational capital information and structural capital information. Design/methodology/approach – A global survey was conducted with 200 banks’ senior executives responsible for annual report (AR), followed by content analysis of each bank’s AR. Findings – The study found four motivations of CIC, namely, management responsibility to stakeholders, collective behavior, corporate responsibility and compliance. Content analysis of banks’ AR found structural capital information most prevalent, followed by human capital and relational capital. Five types of formats were analyzed to show the different presentation used in the CIC. Research limitations/implications – Current data source was limited to banking and focussed on English language publications. Practical implications – The study provides regulators insights to forces that either compel or hinder CIC, and updates literature on management’s thinking and priorities in CIC. Originality/value – This study is possibly the first paper that investigates the motivation of CIC for reporting, where IC is an important asset to organizations. The findings on the content and format used in CIC extend existing studies to a wider, global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some questions posted in community question answering sites (CQAs) fail to attract a single answer. To address the growing volumes of unanswered questions in CQAs, the objective of this paper is two-fold. First, it aims to develop a conceptual framework known as the Quest-for-Answer to explain why some questions in CQAs draw answers while others remain ignored. The framework suggests that the answerability of questions depends on both metadata and content. Second, the paper attempts to empirically validate the Quest-for-Answer framework through a case study of Stack Overflow. A total of 3000 questions divided equally between those answered and unanswered were used for analysis. The Quest-for-Answer framework yielded generally promising results. With respect to metadata, asker’s popularity, participation and asking time of questions were found to be significant in predicting if answers would be forthcoming. With respect to content, level of details, specificity, clarity and the socio-emotional value of questions were significant in enhancing or impeding responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Businesses often use Facebook to create brand pages and disseminate brand-related posts. However, not all brand-posts equally draw users' attention. In this vein, this paper identifies three factors--incentives, vividness and interactivity--that are potentially related to users' attention toward brand-posts. Specifically, the objective of this paper is two-fold. First, it investigates how incentives, vividness and interactivity are separately associated with users' attention toward brand-posts. Second, it investigates how the interplay of the three factors is associated with attention toward brandposts. Facebook brand pages for businesses in Singapore are considered as the test case for investigation. Attention toward brand-posts is conceived as the volumes of likes, comments and shares attracted by the entries. Results suggest that brand-posts without incentives are most likely to draw attention if they arouse visual appeal, and solicit trivial interactions that are not overly time-consuming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While intellectual capital (IC) as an asset is long noted, one area that has begun to attract attention is the communication of IC. The past decade of increasing global competition and economic downturns have enhanced the importance of the communication of IC, in particular, how IC supports organizational performance (OP). Current literature on the communication of IC is limited to reporting metrics, which does not provide sufficient insights on OP. Yet, the need for the communication of IC is growing globally as investors are demanding for more non-financial information to reflect organization's sustainability. Hence, the objectives of this study are three-fold. First is to ascertain the prevalence of the communication of IC, where past studies have reported low occurrence. Secondly, the study aims to examine the communication of IC in terms of content; and finally, to investigate the correlation of the communication of IC with OP. The dataset used in this study was drawn from annual reports and supplementary corporate disclosure (ARS) published for FYE2011 in English by 299 banks listed on the stock exchanges globally. The communication of IC was reviewed from three angles, namely human capital, relational capital and structural capital; and OP encompasses business continuity, risk management and organizational productivity. Content analysis was used to evaluate the communication of IC and to highlight nuances and trends. Findings showed that the communication of IC was prevalent in more than half of the banks in the dataset, where the communication of Human Capital content was most widely reported. Smaller banks, in particular, were found to be lacking in the communication of IC. Three peculiarities were also identified, namely inclusion of information on women, importance of training to organizational productivity, and extensiveness of risk management processes in banks. The significance of this study lies in its effort to highlight relevance of the communication of IC from the perspective of IC components and its correlation to OP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which textual characteristics of online reviews help identify authentic entries from manipulative ones across positive and negative comments. Design/methodology/approach – A theoretical framework is proposed to identify authentic online reviews from manipulative ones based on three textual characteristics, namely, comprehensibility, informativeness, and writing style. The framework is tested using two publicly available data sets, one comprising positive reviews to hype own offerings, and the other including negative reviews to slander competing offerings. Logistic regression is used for analysis. Findings – The three textual characteristics offered useful insights to identify authentic online reviews from manipulative ones. In particular, the differences between authentic and manipulative reviews in terms of comprehensibility and informativeness were more conspicuous for negative entries. On the other hand, the differences between authentic and manipulative reviews in terms of writing style were more conspicuous for positive entries. Research limitations/implications – The findings of this paper are somewhat constrained by the scope of the data sets used for analysis. Originality/value – The paper represents one of the earliest attempts to develop a theoretical framework to identify authentic online reviews. Prior research has shed light on ways to classify reviews as authentic or manipulative. However, literature on specific differences between the two in terms of textual characteristics is relatively limited. Moreover, by suggesting differences between authentic and manipulative reviews across positive and negative comments, the findings offer nuanced insights into a research area that is growing in importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web applications that offer entertainment rarely support knowledge sharing. Conversely, applications that are intended for knowledge sharing rarely offer entertainment. The intent of this paper is therefore to propose the coalescence of knowledge sharing and entertainment in a Web application. The objectives of this paper are twofold: (1) to introduce a prototype called Rendezvous, which serves as a platform for both knowledge sharing and entertainment and (2) to conduct a formative evaluation of Rendezvous by soliciting feedback and its appeal for users' intention to adopt. A two-stage data collection plan was used. First, qualitative feedback was obtained from a group of 38 participants through focus groups. Thereafter, a questionnaire was developed and administered to 124 participants to assess users' intention to adopt. On the whole, the behavioral intention to adopt Rendezvous seems promising. Factors that seemed to influence behavioral intention to adopt included perceived utility, perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use and social influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigate the interplay between answer quality and answer speed across question types in community question-answering sites ( CQAs). The research questions addressed are the following: (a) How do answer quality and answer speed vary across question types? (b) How do the relationships between answer quality and answer speed vary across question types? (c) How do the best quality answers and the fastest answers differ in terms of answer quality and answer speed across question types? (d) How do trends in answer quality vary over time across question types? From the posting of 3,000 questions in six CQAs, 5,356 answers were harvested and analyzed. There was a significant difference in answer quality and answer speed across question types, and there were generally no significant relationships between answer quality and answer speed. The best quality answers had better overall answer quality than the fastest answers but generally took longer to arrive. In addition, although the trend in answer quality had been mostly random across all question types, the quality of answers appeared to improve gradually when given time. By highlighting the subtle nuances in answer quality and answer speed across question types, this study is an attempt to explore a territory of CQA research that has hitherto been relatively uncharted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

his paper compares CQAs from two popular languages used on the internet, English and Chinese, on the basis of four dimensions, namely, answer quality, answer speed, corpus scope and interface usability. To enhance granularity, answers are compared separately in terms of their content quality, cognitive quality and socio-emotional quality. Results indicate that the English CQAs fared better than the Chinese CQAs in terms of answer quality and answer speed, while the Chinese CQAs outperformed the English counterparts in terms of corpus scope and interface usability. However, the English CQAs and the Chinese CQAs did not differ significantly in terms of content quality of answers. The implications of the findings are discussed. Finally, the paper concludes with notes on limitations and directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of tags in facilitating resource discovery through machine learning and user-centric approaches. Drawing our dataset from a popular social tagging system, Delicious, we conducted six text categorization experiments using the top 100 frequently occurring tags. We also conducted a human evaluation experiment to manually evaluate the relevance of some 2000 documents related to these tags. The results from the text categorization experiments suggest that not all tags are useful for content discovery regardless of the tag weighting schemes. Moreover, there were cases where the evaluators did not perform as well as the classifiers, especially when there was a lack of cues in the documents for them to ascertain the relationship with the tag assigned. This paper discusses three implications arising from the findings and suggests a number of directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Applications that use games to harness human intelligence to perform various computational tasks are increasing in popularity and may be termed human computation games (HCGs). Most HCGs are collaborative in nature, requiring players to cooperate within a game to score points. Competitive versions, where players work against each other, are a more recent entrant, and have been claimed to address shortcomings of collaborative HCGs such as quality of computation. To date, however, little work has been conducted in understanding how different HCG genres influence computational performance and players' perceptions of such. In this paper we study these issues using image tagging HCGs in which users play games to generate keywords for images. Three versions were created: collaborative HCG, competitive HCG, and a control application for manual tagging. The applications were evaluated to uncover the quality of the image tags generated as well as users' perceptions. Results suggest that there is a tension between entertainment and tag quality. While participants reported liking the collaborative and competitive image tagging HCGs over the control application, those using the latter seemed to generate better quality tags. Implications of the work are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to investigate the use of tags in iReport to detect breaking news in terms of coverage and immediacy. Coverage refers to the extent to which news reported in mainstream media can also be detected in iReport, while immediacy refers to the promptness of news reported in mainstream media vis-à-vis those detected in iReport. A total of 10 ground truth events were identified from mainstream media between 1 April 2008 and 31 December 2008. Additionally, 481,455 tags from 118,545 postings were drawn from iReport in the same period. Relative frequencies of the top 200 most frequently-used tags were analysed to check for spikes and bursts. Based on the results, four main findings emerged. First, the performance of using spikes and bursts to detect news events was found to be comparable. Next, news events detected via spikes and bursts were found to lag ranging from a few days to more than a week compared to the dates reported by mainstream media. Third, news events deemed to be significant by professional journalists did not always attract a high level of interest from iReport contributors. Finally, even though citizen journalism transcends national boundaries via the internet, news posted to iReport seemed to show a proclivity towards local context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The confluence of mobile content sharing and pervasive gaming yields new opportunities for developing novel applications on mobile devices. Yet, studies on users' attitudes and behaviors related to mobile gaming, content-sharing, and retrieval activities (referred to simply as content sharing and gaming) have been lacking. For this reason, the objectives of this article are three-fold. One, it introduces Indagator, an application that incorporates multiplayer, pervasive gaming elements into mobile content-sharing activities. Two, it seeks to uncover the motivations for content sharing within a game-based environment. Three, it aims to identify types of users who are motivated to use Indagator for content sharing. Informed by the uses and gratifications paradigm, a survey was designed and administered to 203 undergraduate and graduate students from two large universities. The findings revealed that perceived gratification factors, such as information discovery, entertainment, information quality, socialization, and relationship maintenance, demographic variables, such as basic familiarity with features of mobile communication devices, and IT-related backgrounds were significant in predicting intention to use mobile sharing and gaming applications such as Indagator. However, age, gender, and the personal status gratification factor were nonsignificant predictors. This article concludes by presenting the implications, limitations, and future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses knowledge management techniques used in Internet portals developed by healthcare associations in North America and in Asia. Particular focus is given to the role of healthcare portals in the creation, transfer, and accessibility of knowledge and of information. The evaluation of Internet portals, comparisons between government and non-government healthcare portals, and the presentation of information are examined. Collaboration, resource sharing, and user support are also explored.

Purpose - This paper introduces the notion of knowledge outsourcing (KU) where external knowledge providers (KP), rather than internal experts, are contracted to provide knowledge services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of KO in knowledge management (KM) and the circumstances under which KO is most likely to be successful. Design/methodology/approach - Using the case study approach, the fieldwork is done at Eduware, an organization that develops and markets e-leaming courseware. Apart from conducting semi-structured interviews with diverse stakeholders in the organization, archival data from Eduware are collected for triangulation purposes. Findings - On the basis of the case data, two distinct types of KO relationships have been identified in Eduware. Furthermore, the risks of KU included both product-related and process-related ones. Three conditions under which KO are most likely to be successful were: first, a lack of in-house expertise; second, the availability of suitable external KP; and finally, a favourable business case. Research limitations/implications - A general process model of KO comprising the following steps is proposed: knowledge needs identification; knowledge sourcing; knowledge services negotiation; knowledge delivery; knowledge services monitoring; and knowledge utilization. Originality/value - The dawning of a fast-growing knowledge services industry raises new opportunities for organizations to support their KM initiatives through KO. Hitherto, there have been few works that examine the role of KO. This paper therefore serves to fill this research gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to the on-going research in knowledge management (KM) by presenting a study conducted in six public service agencies in Singapore. The study was guided by three research foci, namely, (1) to elucidate the nebulous nature of KM initiatives, (2) to uncover the motivation behind KM measurement and (3) to identify the various elements of a KM initiative that can be measured. Data collected from the public service agencies revealed that KM initiatives were generally top-down and technology-focused. Project management and the need to quantify the value of KM initiatives drove KM measurement. The measurement indicators adopted by the agencies encompassed four elements of measurement: activities, knowledge assets, organizational processes and business outcomes. In conclusion, this paper highlights two practical implications for the design of a KM measurement regime and suggests a number of possible directions for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the preparation and response efforts to Katrina and Rita through a knowledge management (KM) perspective. To achieve this objective, a theoretical KM framework is developed to examine the KM processes that underpin disaster management activities. The framework is then used to identify different dimensions along which the two disasters can be compared. The data, totaling some 500 documents, were drawn from a wide variety of news, congressional, and Internet sources. The findings show that the nonchalance towards the disaster's imminence, grossly inadequate preparations, and the chaotic responses seen in Katrina stood in stark contrast to the colossal scale of precautionary measures and response operations primed for Rita. The article concludes by highlighting three KM implications for managing large-scale natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]