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One of the major public health measures to manage and contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic was to engage in systematic contact tracing, which required gastronomy, community and sporting venues to keep patron registers. Stand-alone and web-based applications, developed by a range of private IT providers, soon replaced pen-and-paper lists. With the introduction of a uniform, state-wide, mandatory data collection system, these private applications became obsolete. Although only active for four months, these applications paved the way for the public acceptance of state-administered collection systems that allowed for an unprecedented, centralized tracking system of the movements of the entire population. This paper discusses the cultural significance of these applications as a game changer in the debate on civil liberties, and addresses the question of how the materiality, or lack thereof, of this digital heritage affects the management of ephemeral smartphone applications, and its preservation for future generations.

Annually, there are between 2500 and 3000 Christmas markets in Germany. While claiming to be rooted in century-old tradition, the current concept of the markets, shaped in the 1930s, gradually transformed from primarily mercantile operations to experiential events. In contemporary times, these markets also have quantifiable social and experiential dimensions. The last of these, the experiential dimension, is a mélange of visual, auditory, and olfactory components that create a compound sensory response—the “Christmas atmosphere”. There are copious intangible elements of these markets, which combined create a sum greater than the addition of each of the individual constituent components. We find the recognition of such collections of entwined intangible heritage is novel, warranting further research and documentation, as standard approaches to the identification and management of intangible cultural heritage are too limiting.

To successfully promote his products, the small-scale paint manufacturer Louis Viard employed a range of strategies. These ranged from the true and tried media of newspaper advertisements, product packaging and advertising cards to more innovative modes of promotion, such as mobile advertising on delivery carts as well as flamboyant street processions, to clever and engaging use of billboards and product placement in plays. In addition, he maintained a workforce of loudly attired roaming painters, who combined promotion and marketing at the same time.

Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM) focuses on the documentation and visualization of heritage properties which are confined in their permanent terrestrial space. This paper extended the concept of Heritage Building Information Modeling to the airspace above the sites. It presented a methodology for the 3D spatial visualisation of the aerial space controlled by anti-aircraft (AA) guns, taking into account the masking effects of the underlying terrain and the technological capabilities of the guns (rate of fire, projectile weight, etc.). The tool permits a nuanced analysis of the interplay between attacking aircraft and the siting of anti-aircraft guns and thus, allows for the analysis of the cultural landscape of World War II-era battle fields, which has to take into account the influence of aerial warfare. The applicability was illustrated by the case example of the Japanese WWII base on Kiska (Aleutian Islands).

Participant attrition is a major concern for the validity of longer or complex surveys. Unlike paper-based surveys, which may be discarded even if partially completed, multi-page online surveys capture responses from all completed pages until the time of abandonment. This can result in different item response rates, with pages earlier in the sequence showing more completions than later pages. Using data from a multi-page online survey administered to cohorts recruited on Reddit, this paper analyses the pattern of attrition at various stages of the survey instrument and examines the effects of survey length, time investment, survey format and complexity, and survey delivery on participant attrition. The participant attrition rate (PAR) differed between cohorts, with cohorts drawn from Reddit showing a higher PAR than cohorts targeted by other means. Common to all was that the PAR was higher among younger respondents and among men. Changes in survey question design resulted in the greatest rise in PAR irrespective of age, gender or cohort.

The authors would like to make the following corrections in relation to the published paper (Parker and Spennemann 2020) [...]

For centuries, religious buildings have been using bells to call the faithful to prayer. Bell-ringing activity on church premises does not serve a purely religious function, however, as people in the community may perceive this activity secularly, attributing their own meanings and significances towards these sounds. If bell ringing (or the actual sound) were found to have great significance to a specific community, denomination, or a regionality bracket, this may have future implications in any management of these resources. There is a need to hear the voices of the actual practitioners and their perceptions regarding what they, their congregations, and their host communities feel. This paper represents the first large-scale assessment of the views of practitioners of five major Christian denominations with regards to bell-ringing practice and its role in contemporary society.

Purpose ? Many researchers require access to computer facilities beyond those offered by desktop workstations. Traditionally, these are offered either through partnerships, to share the cost of supercomputing facilities, or through purpose-built cluster facilities. However, funds are not always available to satisfy either of these options, and university departments are under increasing pressure to obtain the maximum return on investment. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a low-cost cluster computing facility using existing workstations in undergraduate computing laboratories. Design/methodology/approach ? Drawing on a previous feasibility study, experiments were conducted with cluster configurations of increasing size to determine the benefits and drawbacks. This was followed by identification and resolution of problems, and assessment of effects upon existing users of the computers. Findings ? A working cluster was built to supply the needs of researchers, with almost no impact upon existing users and at very little cost. Research limitations/implications ? At present, the workstations can only be used as a ?processor farm? and it is unclear how MPI type processing may be achieved, because there is no guarantee of the number of workstations available at any specific time. Practical implications ? Any institution requiring access to high performance computing can build a useful resource from existing computers at minimal cost. The usefulness of the resource depends on existing computers being under utilised. Originality/value ? The novel aspect of this work is that the facility was built using existing student computing laboratories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details a longitudinal study into the e-mail habits of first year students at Charles Sturt University. This study is part of ongoing research investigating the factors and barriers that can influence the successfully adoption of technology into the learning environment. The findings from this study illustrate that e-mail applications are very popular in terms of both useage as well as the high level of confidence that students exhibit. The survey identified two main areas that need to be addressed, namely the disadvantage of rural students in accessing e-mail and second that male students tend not to be as frequent users of e-mail compared to their female counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]