Search

This article reviews and critically assesses the "cost coordination" theory of harm developed in a recent eponymous article, Harrington (2022), and its application to the EU trucks case. We conclude that, while the cost coordination theory is a valuable and interesting contribution to the academic literature, it assumes a number of market features that may not be present in the EU trucks case—in particular that list price coordination is persistent rather than occasional, that transaction prices are sufficiently transparent to implement an effective monitoring and retaliation mechanism, and that list price changes are interpreted by local price setters as reflecting changes in cost rather than changes in other variables. We also note that, compared with standard price coordination, cost coordination generally tends to be both harder to sustain and less effective at raising prices if it is sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissipative structure refers to a self-organized and orderly structure that exists far from equilibrium. The human body, considered a classical example, generates negative entropy through the exchange of matter, energy, and information with the environment to counteract the increase in entropy. In this paper, we organized theories and related research on dissipative structure and entropy, discussing their significance in regulating various aspects such as the human body, cancer, aging, and more. By selecting the special population of pregnant women, focusing on the information dimension, developing the corresponding information exchange scale (Cronbach's α>0.9), and proposing the information exchange index, we preliminarily explored the influence of the dissipative structure's information dimension on pregnancy health. The results showed a negative correlation between the information exchange index and anxiety scores during pregnancy (r = -0.35, P<0.001), with an OR value of 0.26 (95%CI:0.08~0.80), preliminarily confirming the feasibility of conducting empirical research based on dissipative structure theory. If further relevant empirical studies are conducted, it is expected that new disease prevention strategies will be developed and new theories and methods will be provided for the field of public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the development of a web-based academic platform designed to discuss and find answers to academic questions, where users can create topics in various admin-approved categories, comment on topics created by other users, and customize their profile with a biography, photo, and free text description. To achieve this goal, the logical processes of creating and managing a discussion forum were studied, the existing techniques and technologies for creating web apps were analysed, tools for the implementation were chosen, the database was built, and the client interface was made, as well as the functionality of the system and numerous tests and experiments. The application has been tested by students and teachers and the conducted experiments demonstrate the main functionalities of the application and prove its reliability. The research facilitates and encourages research partnerships at personal and university levels; disseminates ideas and solutions to a wider audience; creates a network of scholars and trainees for interaction and discusses research problems, experiences, and good practices; encourages collaboration on common projects; supports young scholars in achieving their academic goals, and offers open-access resources for reading, downloading, sharing, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In New Zealand egg donation is identity-release, and donors may be known to recipients, e.g. family members/friends, or previously unknown e.g. clinic-recruited or sourced through advertising. In the case of unknown donors, New Zealand practice allows donors and recipients to meet face-to-face prior to donation in a joint counselling meeting. While contact details may not necessarily be exchanged in counselling, information-exchange and contact expectations are usually addressed. In previous papers, we explored donors' motivations and experiences of donation. In this paper, we explore donors' ideas around their role in relation to the donor-conceived person (DCP) and their expectations and experiences of information-exchange and contact. While donors did not see themselves as parents and were aware of appropriate boundaries, they described a sense of ongoing connection to DCP, often framing this in extended family terms. They desired to be kept informed about DCP, considered themselves 'on standby' for information requests or in-person contact and valued the opportunity for connection between their children and DCP. Donors were, however, cognisant of the limits to their ability to ensure information-exchange and contact and sometimes struggled with their perceived disempowered position. Meeting prior to donation may both clarify and reinforce expectations of information-exchange and contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAs an emerging collaboration platform based on web 2.0 technologies, enterprise social media can provide opportunities and challenges for information acquisition and creativity development. However, existing research on the ways in which enterprise social media use affects employee creativity from both internal and external team perspectives is rather limited. Using communication visibility theory (CVR), this paper proposes a research model for investigating the relationship between enterprise social media (ESM) usage and employee creativity. Drawing on an analysis of 218 employees’ data, this study found that ESM, when used for both work and social purposes, has a positive effect on internal information exchange within teams and external knowledge acquisition across teams, which further contributes to employee creativity. Innovative culture can weaken the relationship between work-related ESM usage and internal team information exchange, and strengthen the relationship between social-related ESM usage and internal team information exchange. The findings suggest means of using enterprise social media for specific purposes to increase creativity and innovation in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental protection and sustainable development have become the consensus of all countries in the world. Enterprises must pay attention to the impact on the environment in their operations. Therefore, the selection of green suppliers has become a crucial issue for companies. Supplier selection is a dynamic and complex multi-attribute group decision-making process. The decision results have the tripartite characteristics of "accepted", "rejected" and "pending further investigation", and experts need to constantly negotiate in the decision-making process to achieve consensus. In view of the above characteristics, this study constructs a sequential group three-way decision making (TWDM) method to support green supplier selection. Firstly, we review the existing literature on the evaluation criteria and selection methods of green suppliers. In this process, we construct an evaluation attribution system including the following four aspects: product formation, service level, development capability, and green level. Secondly, combining with the sequential and group characteristics of decision making, we propose a multiple-attribute sequential group TWDM method based on a multi-level granularity structure. The weight of each decision maker is determined by his influence weight and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy entropy weight. The attribute weight is determined by entropy weight and subjective weight. By using the VIsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method improved by grey relation analysis (GRA), we calculate conditional probabilities. Since the cumulative prospect theory can reflect the risk attitude of decision makers, we apply it to calculate the decision thresholds. Finally, we apply a case of Q automobile manufacturer to verify the effectiveness, applicability and feasibility of the method. The innovation of this study is to construct social networks at each granularity level and introduce an expert information exchange model to promote group consensus. The sequential group TWDM method provides a new reference and idea for the selection of green suppliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction Methods Results Discussion and Conclusions This paper examines the acquisition and dissemination of harm reduction information among people who inject drugs, as well as preferred sources of information.Data were obtained from 862 people who inject drugs, recruited from Australian capital cities for the 2021 Illicit Drug Reporting System. Multivariable regression analyses were performed to assess potential factors associated with knowledge sharing.Almost two‐fifths (37%) reported that they had received information about how to keep themselves safe when using drugs within the past 6 months. Reporting on their last occasion of receiving information, participants stated that it was commonly about injecting practices (56%), overdose prevention (26%) and injection‐related injuries (22%), and was mostly received from an alcohol and other drug worker (54%), followed by other health professional (24%) and social network (18%). Among those who reported receiving information, 50% shared this information with other people, predominantly with their social network: no factors were found to be significantly associated with sharing information. The majority reported that peer workers and/or people with lived experience would be the first person they would talk to for information about a range of topics (e.g., injecting/harm reduction practices, overdose prevention).Two in five participants had recently obtained information about how to keep themselves safe while using drugs, with half sharing this information with their social network. Peer workers were the preferred source of information, suggesting that the peer educator workforce should be expanded to embrace the capacities and expertise of people who inject drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information-sharing social networks support the adaptive capacity of small-scale fishers in the face of social and environmental change by allowing them to increase access to unique knowledge critical to their fishing success. The facilitation of information exchange may be supported and influenced by persons in key positions. Within these networks, centralized actors often control the flow and access to information. We take a descriptive approach to explore the relationship between fishing role and actor prominence within information-sharing networks in Jamaica. We hypothesized that fishing captains – given their perceived legitimacy and formal and informal authority – would be more prominent in information-sharing networks, and the information they shared would be perceived as more trustworthy and influential than that of non-captains. We collected personal social networks of fishers (n = 353) on 20 fishing beaches across four parishes in Jamaica using structured questionnaires. We found low centralization and density scores across the parishes, suggesting an even distribution of actor centrality. Our results show that non-captains play a more prominent role in information sharing than fishing captains in one parish suggesting that captains and non-captains play similar roles in facilitating information, and that differences lie in whether fishers perceive the shared information as trustworthy and influential in their fishing decisions and not the prominence of the actor. These findings contribute to understanding the various adaptive strategies fishers develop to meet growing social-ecological changes in small-scale fisheries. Identifying key informants in prominent positions can also support the development of more effective strategies to communicate and share information across communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2012, the National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education has worked with over 70 sites implementing over 100 interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPECP) programs in the United States (U.S.). Program leaders have contributed data and information to the National Center to inform an approach to advancing the science of interprofessional practice and education (IPE), called IPE Knowledge Generation. This paper describes how the evolution of IPE Knowledge Generation blends traditional research and evaluation approaches with the burgeoning field of health informatics and big data science. The goal of IPE Knowledge Generation is to promote collaboration and knowledge discovery among IPE program leaders who collect comparable, sharable data in an information exchange. This data collection then supports analysis and knowledge generation. To enable the approach, the National Center uses a structured process for guiding IPE program design and implementation in practice settings focused on learning and the Quadruple Aim outcomes while collecting the IPE core data set and the contribution of contemporary big data science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers algorithm unions (portfolios and teams) of optimization algorithms, their properties, and their impact on the acceleration of the optimization process. The authors have investigated the application of unions of global equilibrium search algorithms to specific discrete optimization problems and various information exchange schemes within algorithm teams. They devoted significant attention to experimental research of developed portfolios and algorithm teams in real-time mode using the multi-processor computing complex SCIT-4 at the V. M. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and to their comparative analysis. The authors have obtained estimates of the efficiency of algorithm unions, indicating that the team approach has significant advantages over algorithm portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of support communities on social media platforms like Facebook has opened up new avenues for individuals dealing with cancer to connect, share information and find emotional support. This study aimed to explore how Facebook support groups in Romania contribute to the well-being of cancer patients by providing them with information and assistance. Through qualitative research methods and a multimodal discourse analysis of forms of communication we examined the exchange of information within four public and private Romanian cancer support groups on Facebook. Our findings indicate that although there is still some misinformation present these groups serve as platforms for sharing advice, alternative treatment options coping strategies, personal experiences and emotional support. This research emphasizes the significance of Facebook support groups for cancer patients in Romania but also the need to address misinformation while promoting evidence-based practices within these communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process based on sharing common information, establishing milestones and the continuous revision of the main targets that stems from airport collaborative decision making can be an ideal working method at many of the airport's areas and with different stakeholders. This paper analyses various situations where this procedure has been implemented by Aena, with a specific focus on the COVID-19 crisis and the post-recovery context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article covers topical issues of organizing intensive training of artillery cadets in wartime based on the remote use of 3D simulators. In such an educational process, there is a need to coordinate dynamically the speed of developing detailed 3D models with the speed of information perception by cadets. The authors describe the process of information exchange in training system and they propose a mathematical model of information transmission. In addition, they offer a mathematical model of information perception by cadet and conduct a pedagogical experiment. Finally, they draw conclusions regarding the implementation of the developed models within the educational process. The results of the pedagogical experiment confirm theoretical formulations and make it possible to synchronize the speed of 3D models development with the speed of their study, considering the intensity of perception by cadets of a huge information volume within a short time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development partners and global health initiatives are important actors in financing health systems in many countries. Despite the importance of the health workforce to the attainment of global health targets, the contribution of global health initiatives to health workforce strengthening is unclear. A 2020 milestone in the Global Strategy on Human Resources for Health is that "all bilateral and multilateral agencies have participated in efforts to strengthen health workforce assessments and information exchange in countries." This milestone exists to encourage strategic investments in the health workforce that are evidence-based and incorporate a health labour market approach as an indication of policy comprehensiveness. To assess progress against this milestone, we reviewed the activities of 23 organizations (11 multilaterals and 12 bilaterals) which provide financial and technical assistance to countries for human resources for health, by mapping grey and peer-reviewed literature published between 2016 and 2021. The Global Strategy states that health workforce assessment involves a "deliberate strategy and accountability mechanisms on how specific programming contributes to health workforce capacity-building efforts" and avoids health labour market distortions. Health workforce investments are widely recognized as essential for the achievement of global health goals, and some partners identify health workforce as a key strategic focus in their policy and strategy documents. However, most do not identify it as a key focus, and few have a published specific policy or strategy to guide health workforce investments. Several partners include optional health workforce indicators in their monitoring and evaluation processes and/or require an impact assessment for issues such as the environment and gender equality. Very few, however, have embedded efforts in their governance mechanisms to strengthen health workforce assessments. On the other hand, most have participated in health workforce information exchange activities, including strengthening information systems and health labour market analyses. Although there is evidence of participation in efforts to strengthen health workforce assessments and (especially) information exchange, the achievement of this milestone of the Global Strategy requires more structured policies for the monitoring and evaluation of health workforce investments to optimize the value of these investments and contribute towards global and national health goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Purpose/Significance] With the development of politics and economy, the public's attention to health information has significantly increased. The public's behavior of searching, sharing, avoiding, and collaborating on health information has attracted widespread attention. In the ubiquitous information environment, the impact of information behavior interactivity is also gradually increasing. The conflict and control of interpersonal information behavior are gradually receiving attention. Among various types of interpersonal relationships, conflicts and controls in family health information behavior are more prominent, with intergenerational conflicts and controls being the most typical. Therefore, taking the intergenerational relationship between parents and children as the starting point, this paper explores the causes of intergenerational conflict health information behavior and its mechanism in the implementation/response process of social control. An analysis of intergenerational conflict health information behavior can provide assistance for the public to better handle intergenerational relationships, improve the efficiency of parent-child health information communication, and provide certain reference for research on interpersonal health information behavior based on interactivity. [Method/Process] On the basis of literature review, centering on the interactive characteristics of intergenerational health information behavior, from the perspective of information conflict and social control, and taking the whole process of health information behavior interaction of different subjects as the underlying logic, this paper puts forward five core issues. A questionnaire was designed based on the core questions. From the perspective of parents as implementers of control behavior, we investigated the attitudes and reactions of children towards family conflict health information behavior. From the perspective of children as implementers of control behavior, we investigated parents' attitudes and responses to conflict health information behavior in their families. [Results/Conclusions] It is found that there are differences among family members in the information acquisition situation, information source selection and judgment in the preparatory process of implementing/responding to social control. In the process of implementing/responding to social control, family members will choose different ways to implement/respond to different social control, such as information sharing, information evaluation, information avoidance, and information utilization. After implementing/coping with social control, compared with children, parents' sharing behavior and control behavior are more likely to be affected by children's attitudes. Intergenerational conflict health information behavior plays an important role in the implementation/response process of social control. Based on the analysis, the analysis model of intergenerational conflict health information behavior was constructed, and the causes of intergenerational conflict health information behavior and its mechanism in the implementation of social control were explained to some extent. Interpersonal communication is an important means to alleviate intergenerational health information conflict. In the future, qualitative research methods can be used to supplement and improve the model, and more in-depth research and exploration can be conducted around issues such as intergenerational conflict health information behavior and intergenerational information communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to avoid conflict in interorganizational relationships, and information exchange is critical for resolving conflict. This article reveals a mechanism that shows the separate and joint influences of different dimensions of trust and interdependence on information exchange in the process of conflict resolution. Based on survey data from the construction industry, the empirical results suggest that competence trust, total interdependence, and interdependence asymmetry positively affect information exchange when trust and interdependence act separately. When they act together, in the case of symmetric interdependence, competence trust plays a positive mediating role in the relationship between total interdependence and information exchange, whereas goodwill trust plays a negative mediating role. In the case of asymmetric interdependence, competence trust below the average level strengthens the positive impact of interdependence asymmetry on information exchange. Only when goodwill trust is above, the average level can strengthen the positive effect of interdependence asymmetry on information exchange. This article expands the research on information exchange, trust, and interdependence, which helps practitioners address conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business models (BMs) help firms to translate abstract strategic decisions into their daily operations. Because BMs mediate between strategy and operations, BM innovation involves both high-level strategic experiments and low-level implementation into operations and technologies. However, most existing empirical studies regarding BM innovation focus exclusively on strategic management and marketing theory. This article examines whether the performance implications of BM experimentation are mediated by the time and effort spent on implementing BMs into operating models and enterprise architectures. We adopt an empirical approach, by analyzing the results of a large-scale, representative survey among European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In line with the existing literature, the research confirms that spending time and effort experimenting with new BMs has a positive impact on the firm performance. An important new finding is that impact is in part mediated by BM implementation (i.e., translating new BMs into operating models and enterprise architectures). This article provides empirical support for the argument that BM innovation is not just a matter of strategic thinking and experimenting with BM components and BM architecture, but that is also involve aligning BMs to operations and enterprise architectures. Our findings call for future research into the process of BM innovation from a business modeling, an enterprise architecting and engineering management perspective, with a focus on information exchange, business processes, and supporting IT applications and infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We utilise a quasi-experimental setup to identify causal effects of having additional peer groups on information exchange in a large online maternity community. The information exchange is a key performance indicator for the community as well as a public good among users. Pregnant users join default peer groups based on estimated due date (EDD). Natural uncertainties of EDD can lead to multiple peer groups. Using EDD as an instrumental variable, we find that additional peer group(s) reduces information exchange in both default peer group and total peer groups. Having more advanced groups mitigates the reduction, likely due to information spillovers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structures of hospitals have evolved to make them centre on patients and their pathologies, with care procedures that are both interprofessional and interorganisational. This has given rise to work environments made up of teams obliged to collaborate in their problem-solving, with an essential focus on proper collaborative information behaviour (CIB). The aim was to study this behaviour in a clinical service of a hospital in relation to two aspects: information culture (IC) and the exchange of information. This entailed designing a two-part descriptive study. The first step was to administer a survey based on the information orientation model to know more about the service’s IC. The second phase focussed on the exchange of information from the perspective of an analysis of social networks. The main characteristic of IC was its proactive nature, especially in the use of information to improve one’s own work (mean = 4.58) and to respond to changes and new developments relating to work (mean = 4.18). The factor that least characterised IC was control, particularly in relation to knowledge of the objective of the activity itself (mean = 2.67) and the dispersion of information about hospital processes (mean = 2.64). On social networks, factors contrary to an interprofessional CIB were identified, such as homophily and low reciprocity in terms of relationships. In practice, the results identified a need to reinforce the perception of information as a resource, the proper use of which benefits job performance at both an individual and group level. A need to reinforce flows of internal hospital-related information was likewise evident. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, a useful tool is made available for diagnosing the collaborative information behaviour of an organisation and designing strategies to improve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As needs of families with social and behavioral health problems often exceed the expertise and possibilities of a single professional, service or organization, cross-service collaboration is indispensable to adequately meeting those needs. Despite the progressive focus on organizing integrated care, service fragmentation and service duplication remain persistent problems in child welfare and healthcare service delivery systems. A crucial factor to overcome these problems is information exchange between organizations. This study explores and compares the development over time of structures of information exchange in networks, concerning both material and knowledge-based information. Methods: A comparative case study and social network analysis of three inter-organizational networks of child welfare and healthcare services in different-sized municipalities in the Netherlands. The research population consisted of organizations from various sectors participating in the networks. Data were collected at two moments in time with a mixed method: semi-structured interviews with network managers and an online questionnaire for all network members. Density and degree centralization were used to examine the information exchange structures. Ucinet was used to analyze the data, with use of the statistical tests: Compare Density Procedure and Quadratic Assignment Procedure. Results: This study shows that different structures of information exchange can be distinguished, concerning both material and knowledge-based information. The overall connectedness of the studied structures of the networks are quite similar, but the way in which the involvement is structured turns out to be different between the networks. Over time, the overall connectedness of those structures appears to be stable, but the internal dynamics reveals a major change in relationships between organizations in the networks. Conclusions: Our study yields empirical evidence for the existence of and the differences between structures and dynamics of both material and knowledge-based information exchange relationships. With a loss of more than a half of the relations in a year, the relationships between the organizations in the network are not very stable over time. The contrast between major internal dynamics and the stable overall connectedness is an important point of concern for network managers and public officials, since this impermanence of relations means that long-term integrated care cannot be guaranteed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, an event-triggered distributed state estimation mechanism is proposed for general linear systems that comprise several subsystems. Two distributed moving horizon estimation (MHE) algorithms that can handle constraints on disturbances and noise are proposed. An event scheduler is exploited to govern the evaluation of the estimators and networked information exchange between the plant and the estimators, such that good estimates can be provided while both the usage of processors and networked communication frequency can be reduced. The estimation error provided by the event-triggered estimation mechanism is proven to be convergent and bounded. A numerical example and a chemical process example are used to verify the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of electronic personal health records (EHRs) enables nationwide information exchange and curation among different health-care systems. However, current EHR systems are centrally orchestrated, which could potentially lead to a single point of failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep autoencoder-based approaches have achieved significant improvements on restoring damaged images, yet they still suffer from artifacts due to the inadequate representation and inaccurate regularization of existing features. In this paper, we propose a dual-pyramidal inpainting framework called DPNet to address these two limitations, which seamlessly integrates sufficient feature learning and dynamic regularization within an autoencoder network. Specifically, to exhaustively extract multi-scale features, we adopt layer-wise pyramidal convolution in encoder, which provides an arbitrary combination pool of various receptive fields. Subsequently, to tackle the patch deterioration problem in previous cross-scale non-local schemes, we further propose a Pyramidal Attention Mechanism (PAM) in decoder to acquire finer patches directly from learned layers. Mutually benefited with pyramidal features extraction in encoder, the dissemination space for non-local pixels in our PAM is notably enlarged to pyramidal level, thus significantly benefiting the feature representation. Moreover, to avoid the mask error accumulation in existing works, a dynamic normalization mechanism utilizing the spatial mask information updated in encoder is introduced, which further ensures the feature integrity and consistency. Such a dual-pyramidal structure along with dynamic normalization significantly improve the inpainting quality, outperforming existing competitors. Comprehensive experiments conducted on three benchmark datasets demonstrate that our DPNet performs favorably against the state-of-the-arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study is structured around the narrative analysis of the lived experience of four mothers who survived through the COVID 19 Pandemic in Istanbul. The narratives gathered through semi-structured interviews indicate a strong mistrust towards governmental authorities and private enterprises active in the provision of healthcare services. The professional organization of doctors in Turkey, TTB (The Turkish Medical Association), complained multiple times during the pandemic about the absence of intraprofessional official networks to share or receive information, lack of administrative coordination and few channels for direct communication with the public. Another problem as expressed by the Medical Association was the lack of active participation of medical experts working in healthcare facilities in the public health decisions taken during the pandemic. Did these organizational and political shortcomings as expressed by the doctors’ professional association overlap with the attitudes, approaches, and survival strategies of Turkish families in the daily homesetting? This study argues that a stronger cooperation and a more transparent exchange of information between government agencies, the public and professional organizations of medical professionals is needed to reduce fear and anxiety among the population and increase compliance to healthcare policies, especially during times of big scale public health emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to explore question and answer (Q&A) participation and behavioral patterns on academic social networking sites (ASNSs) from the perspective of multiple subjects such as academic, corporate and government institutions. Design/methodology/approach: Focused on the Q&A service of ASNSs, this study chooses ResearchGate (RG) as the target ASNS and collects a large-scale data set from it, involving a sample of users and a Q&A sample about academic, corporate and government institutions. First, it studies the law of Q&A participation and the distribution of the type of user according to the sample of users. Second, it compares question-asking behavior and question-answering behavior stimulated by questions among the three types of institutions based on the Q&A sample. Finally, it discusses the Q&A participation and behavioral patterns of the three types of institutions in academic Q&A exchanges with full consideration of institutional attributes, and provides some suggestions for institutions and ASNSs. Findings: The results show that these three types of institutions generally have a low level of participation in the Q&A service of RG, and the numbers of questions and answers proposed by institutional users conform to the power-law distribution. There are differences in Q&A participation and Q&A behavioral patterns among academic, corporate and government institutions. Government and academic institutions have more users participating in the Q&A service and their users are more willing to ask questions, while corporate institutions have fewer users who participate in the Q&A service and their users are inclined to provide answers. Questions from corporate institutions attract much more attention than those from the other two types of institutions. Originality/value: This study reveals and compares the Q&A participation and the behavioral patterns of the three types of institutions in academic Q&A, thus deepening the understanding of the attributes of institutions in the academic information exchange context. In practice, the results can help guide different institutions to use the Q&A service of ASNSs more effectively and help ASNSs to better optimize their Q&A service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: As needs of families with social and behavioral health problems often exceed the expertise and possibilities of a single professional, service or organization, cross-service collaboration is indispensable to adequately meeting those needs. Despite the progressive focus on organizing integrated care, service fragmentation and service duplication remain persistent problems in child welfare and healthcare service delivery systems. A crucial factor to overcome these problems is information exchange between organizations. This study explores and compares the development over time of structures of information exchange in networks, concerning both material and knowledge-based information.Methods: A comparative case study and social network analysis of three inter-organizational networks of child welfare and healthcare services in different-sized municipalities in the Netherlands. The research population consisted of organizations from various sectors participating in the networks. Data were collected at two moments in time with a mixed method: semi-structured interviews with network managers and an online questionnaire for all network members. Density and degree centralization were used to examine the information exchange structures. Ucinet was used to analyze the data, with use of the statistical tests: Compare Density Procedure and Quadratic Assignment Procedure.Results: This study shows that different structures of information exchange can be distinguished, concerning both material and knowledge-based information. The overall connectedness of the studied structures of the networks are quite similar, but the way in which the involvement is structured turns out to be different between the networks. Over time, the overall connectedness of those structures appears to be stable, but the internal dynamics reveals a major change in relationships between organizations in the networks.Conclusions: Our study yields empirical evidence for the existence of and the differences between structures and dynamics of both material and knowledge-based information exchange relationships. With a loss of more than a half of the relations in a year, the relationships between the organizations in the network are not very stable over time. The contrast between major internal dynamics and the stable overall connectedness is an important point of concern for network managers and public officials, since this impermanence of relations means that long-term integrated care cannot be guaranteed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the problem of synchronization of impulsive networks with switching topologies. A new synchronization framework is established with an emphasis on settling time estimation. The impulsive networks consist of physical nodes and cyber modules. For physical nodes, states are changed impulsively at discrete time instants due to some switching phenomena or unexpected sudden noises. For cyber modules, two cases of switching scenarios are considered for information exchange patterns during specific time intervals. In the first case, cyber modules lose all the communication links with others, resulting in disconnected topologies. Then, a distributed controller is proposed for nodes without intrinsic nonlinear dynamics. A distinguished feature of this controller is its capability to estimate a bound for settling time, beyond which the synchronization with respect to a virtual target is guaranteed. In the second case, cyber modules lose some communication links but build other new ones with the help of a smart communication center to form connected topologies. A distributed controller is further designed for nodes in the presence of intrinsic nonlinear dynamics. Accordingly, a sufficient condition is derived to achieve synchronization with an estimated settling time bound. For both cases, the estimated bounds are able to reveal the relationship between the impulsive strength and the synchronization performance. Finally, numerical examples including a case study on a modified IEEE 34 bus test feeder are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controllers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development that is taking place,especially in what is known as these sciences and knowledge,has facilitated the exchange and transmission of information in recent times,which has become one of the main pillars of the development of societies,which is indispensable in order to catch up with the advanced universities in advancing progress and achieving a positive and comprehensive development view in all fields and It is no secret for all the extent of the rapid and tremendous development in the amount of information and the speed of its circulation .For developments,particularly the acquisition of modern knowledge in vast information .Therefore, there must be what is known as methods to control this huge amount of information and how to access the required information,which is undoubtedly the basis for the development and progress of industry or craft or otherwise depends in its construction and development based on the quantity available From information in this field or industry and in the light of these developments comes the role of information technology in the operation and qualification of that role of information in the light of these developments and made it more access or able than paper archiving and also safer for information What is required for deliberation or knowledge and more in the most vulnerable to spatial space and this technology has different forms,including the rules of the statements,which are the subject of our study .This study reviews the role played by the rules of religion in public libraries as a source of information that allows a huge amount of data, particularly information and knowledge,in a small and secure place of damage and research through what is known as a computer,by calculating the importance of the rules of the data in making information available to the investors and the seriousness of their use in the public office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed stabilization problem is studied in this article for multiple heterogeneous agents in the uncertain strong–weak competition network with exogenous disturbances, where the agents are modeled by the second-order systems with different nonlinear intrinsic dynamics, and the network uncertainty is characterized by unknown nonzero parameters, which contains three different relationships among agents: 1) cooperation; 2) strong competition; and 3) weak competition. To achieve distributed stabilization, the whole network is first divided into two parts: 1) identifiable part and 2) unidentifiable part, and a new distributed robust integral sign of the error (RISE) controller is designed for each agent, where the selection rules of the corresponding parameters are given. It is shown that the heterogeneous multiagent system (MAS) can achieve distributed stabilization no matter whether the identifiable part is structurally balanced or not. Furthermore, it is proved that the global distributed stabilization is achieved for the heterogeneous agents provided that the partial derivatives of the nonlinear intrinsic dynamics are bounded. Finally, two numerical examples are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed controller. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a crucial part of the communication-based train control (CBTC) system, the wireless communication subsystem is responsible for transmitting safety-critical information, which directly affects the safe and efficient operation of the urban rail transit. The dependability analysis method for wireless communication in CBTC is critical and necessary to ensure the stable transmission of safety-critical information. However, most of the existing researches in CBTC lack a unified evaluation index to analyze the wireless communication dependability. In this paper, the dependability of wireless communication system in CBTC is established. To be specific, timeliness, integrity, security, and safety are used to describe the dependability of CBTC wireless communication system in our definition. The age of information (AoI) is used to quantitatively analyze the dependability in the CBTC wireless communication system. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed dependability analysis method, we quantitatively introduce the dependability of wireless communication system in CBTC with different scenarios, including packet-drop, re-transmission, handoff, and cyber-attack. Simulation results show that the designed dependability analysis method with quantized AoI can efficiently describe the dependability of CBTC wireless communication system in different scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Information management and information exchange today, as one of the important concerns of developed countries, is at the forefront of planning in these societies. This study was conducted with the aim of the role of information exchange management in the process of preventing cybercrime among FATA employees in Tehran. Methods: The method of this study is a quantitative and cross-sectional survey that was conducted in 2021 and the statistical population of this study includes FATA police officers in Tehran, using Cochran's formula, 90 of them as a sample. were chosen. To ensure the indexing of variables in the questionnaire, the validity of the questionnaire, face validity, content validity and construct validity were examined and data analysis was performed using SPSS software. Results: The research findings showed that the correlation coefficient between the independent variables and the dependent variable is 0.539, which shows that there is a relatively strong correlation between the set of independent and dependent variables of the research. However, the value of the adjusted coefficient of determination is equal to 0.421, indicating the statistical fact that 42% of the total rate of cybercrime prevention depends on 6 independent variables; Operational capability, speed utility, accuracy utility, automation, information, transformation. In other words, independent variables estimate (predict) 42% of the variance of the dependent variable of cybercrime prevention. Conclusion: The development of information in today's world has affected many life processes and changed many life processes. In the field of criminology, information management components can also play a constructive role in the prevention of cybercrime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building Information Modeling (BIM) plays a pivotal role in the construction management of dam engineering projects, which face challenges in data interoperability due to the absence of standardized data formats. While Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) offer a standardized digital representation of the built environment, it lacks the capability to accurately model the semantics of roller-compacted concrete dams. Therefore, this paper presents an extended IFC-based information exchange for the construction management of roller-compacted concrete dams, incorporating the development and validation of a prototype through a case study. The results indicate a significant enhancement in standardized information exchange for construction management compared to traditional practices. The approach facilitates BIM-assisted information exchange automation among stakeholders involved in roller-compacted concrete dam construction projects. The findings of this study provide valuable insights into dam construction management system prototyping and cross-platform collaboration. [Display omitted] • Requirements for the exchange of construction management information are identified for roller-compacted concrete dam. • The IFC schema is extended to enhance data interoperability as an information exchange standard. • A prototype system is developed to demonstrate the possibility of exchanging construction information with IFC. • The feasibility of IFC-based information exchange is validated through a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care coordination is both a well-known concept discussed in a wide range of multidisciplinary health care literature and a familiar nursing role in clinical practice; however, the definition of care coordination lacks role clarity across disciplines and within the nursing profession. Despite variations, defining factors of care coordination practice exist; however, role ambiguity limits the effective implementation of evidence-based care coordination in practice and policy. Following Walker and Avant's eight-step concept analysis method, we aim to further clarify care coordination as a concept and practice role and examine the value that nursing brings to its implementation. The authors clarify care coordination as a concept and practice role and examine the value that nursing brings to its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the distributed optimal observer design, which aims to estimate the discrete-time nonlinear leader state for all followers with optimum online. The communication constraint and no prior knowledge of the leader’s dynamics cause a challenging task about the observer design. To this end, an adaptive critic design-based distributed optimal observer is developed via the actor–critic framework. The critic network is employed to approximate the cost function. The action network produces the optimal correction policy of the observer. Through convergence analysis, the overall estimation error and the weight estimation errors of the critic network and the action network are demonstrated to be all uniformly ultimately bounded (UUB). The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the developed observer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to build a research model to study how the use of different enterprise social media platforms affects employees' relationship capital, and the moderating role of innovation culture is also examined. Design/methodology/approach: Structural equation modeling was performed to test the research model and hypotheses. Surveys were conducted in an electronic commerce company in China that uses different social media platforms, generating 301 valid responses for analysis. Findings: First, private social media used for work-related purposes can contribute to employees' relationship capital, and public social media QQ used for work-related purposes can contribute to employees' communication quality. WeChat used for social-related purposes has a positive effect on employees' information exchange. Second, innovation culture acts as a positive moderator between work-related media use and employees' information exchange, while innovation culture acts as a negative moderator between social-related WeChat use and employees' information exchange. Third, innovation culture acts as a positive moderator between work-related QQ use and employees' trust, while innovation culture acts as a negative moderator between social-related QQ use and employees' trust. Originality/value: First, this paper contributes to the information system (IS) social media literature by studying the effect of the use of different enterprise social media platforms used for different purposes on employees' relationship capital. Second, the authors contribute to relationship capital theory by clarifying that use of public and private social media platforms for social- and work-related purposes is an important driver of the formation of employees' relational capital. Third, the present study also contributes to enterprise social media literature by confirming that innovation culture acts as a different moderator between use of different enterprise social media platforms and employees' relationship capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to limited time, physicians often find it challenging to find the exact answers to their questions among search engine results; however, question and answer (Q&A) systems can facilitate more rapidly identify accurate solutions. This study aims to develop and evaluate a Q&A system for physicians at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Four clinical and informatics experts and the two health information managers agreed on 19 features and themes throughout two focus group meetings. Subsequently, a system was developed on a MySQL database using the PHP web development language and then uploaded to the web. Finally, the system was opened up to 40 users and, over three months, evaluated using a community evaluation questionnaire and the six-dimension Users' Experience Questionnaire. The focus group results in determining the features of the Q&A system consisted of 19 requirements. The average attractiveness, perspicuity, efficiency, dependability, stimulation, and novelty were equal to 1.76, 1.625, 1.9, 1.425, 1.475, and 1.375, respectively. The Q&A system improved the tasks such as share of knowledge, transfer of information, social partnership, and cooperation among users. The physicians were able to obtain the information they required through contact with their co-practitioners over the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To synthesize and analyse the literature on the effects of parent-provider communication during infant hospitalization in the neonatal (intensive) care unit (NICU) on parent-related outcomes.Methods: Systematic review with meta-synthesis and narrative synthesis. Databases (PubMed, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus) were searched in October/November 2019. Studies reporting, observing, or measuring parent-related effects of parent-provider communication in the NICU were included. Study quality was assessed using the Quality Assessment Tool for Studies with Diverse Designs. Qualitative studies were meta-synthesized using deductive and inductive thematic analysis. Quantitative studies were analysed using narrative synthesis.Results: 5586 records were identified; 77 were included, reporting on N = 6960 parents, N = 693 providers, and N = 300 NICUs. Analyses revealed five main (positive and negative) effects of parent-provider interaction on parents' (1) coping, (2) knowledge, (3) participation, (4) parenting, and (5) satisfaction. Communication interventions appeared impactful, particularly in reducing parental stress and anxiety. Findings confirm and refine the NICU Communication Framework.Conclusions: Parent-provider communication is a crucial determinant for parental well-being and satisfaction with care, during and following infant hospitalization in the NICU. R. Practice Implications: Providers should particularly consider the impact on parents of their day-to-day interaction - the most occurring form of communication of all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the cluster event-triggered tracking cooperative and formation control for multivehicle systems with nonlinear vehicles dynamics under switching directed communication topologies and safety missions. By employing the cluster event-triggered control strategy, the assumption of continuous feedback control gains and the condition of information exchange limited in a small domain can be relaxed. By constructing an appropriate tracking cooperative condition, a class of cluster event-triggered tracking cooperative control law with an extended magnification region condition is proposed based on bounded parameters and intermittent event samples. When the safety tasks are activated, it is displayed in terms of linear matrix inequalities that the tracking cooperative control for closed-loop multivehicle systems subject to nonlinear vehicles dynamics will be achieved, if the constructed sampling condition and the dwell time constraint of switching communication scenarios can be held. Furthermore, the proposed method is extended to formation control problem for the multivehicle systems. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relative position coordinated control problem for spacecraft formation flying under an undirected communication graph, whilst considering mass uncertainties, external disturbances, and limited communication resources. A new event-triggered information transmission mechanism is first presented, where each spacecraft only requires accessing to the states of neighbors intermittently. Subsequently, a novel event-based coordinated control scheme is proposed by combining a smooth adaptive projection rule that confines the parameter estimations to well-defined bounded convex hypercubes. Under the proposed control framework, the information exchange among spacecraft occurs only when the specified event is triggered, thereby significantly reducing the communication load and saving the onboard resources. Furthermore, a positive lower bound on interevent time intervals is guaranteed to exclude Zeno behavior. By virtue of Lyapunov stability analysis and graph theory, it is proved that the relative position tracking errors can converge to small invariant sets around the origin, and that all closed-loop signals are bounded, even in the presence of mass uncertainties and external disturbances. Finally, numerical simulations are given to evaluate the effectiveness and highlight the advantages of the developed control algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy companies trading in derivatives which have a value based on an energy product ('energy trading') are subjected to a fragmented regulatory framework. They are supervised by a multitude of authorities on a national and European level. These authorities cooperate horizontally (between EU agencies or between national regulatory authorities – NRAs) or vertically (between EU agencies and NRAs) and in a formal and informal way. They share information on energy trading to detect market abuse. This article aims to provide insight on the effectiveness of supervisory activities within the energy trading landscape. In doing so, the obligation for energy companies to report fundamental data on the derivatives they trade in is used for illustrative purposes and explained in light of the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR), the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation (MiFID II and MiFIR) and the regulation on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency (REMIT). The article finishes with a conclusion which advocates the necessity of information sharing and professional secrecy in the current regulatory landscape and intends to contribute to a discussion on the effectiveness of information sharing within an international context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a distributed compensation approach for the global optimization with separable objective functions and coupled constraints. By employing compensation variables, the global optimization problem can be solved without the information exchange of coupled constraints. The convergence analysis of the proposed algorithm is presented with the convergence condition through which a diminishing step-size with an upper bound can be determined. The convergence rate can be achieved at $O({lnT}/{\sqrt {T}})$. Moreover, the equilibrium of this algorithm is proved to converge at the optimal solution of the global optimization problem. The effectiveness and the practicability of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by the parameter optimization problem in smart building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caching popular contents in advance is an important technique to achieve low latency and reduced backhaul congestion in future wireless communication systems. In this article, a multi-cell massive multi-input-multi-output system is considered, where locations of base stations are distributed as a Poisson point process. Assuming probabilistic caching, average success probability (ASP) of the system is derived for a known content popularity (CP) profile, which in practice is time-varying and unknown in advance. Further, modeling CP variations across time as a Markov process, reinforcement Q-learning is employed to learn the optimal content placement strategy to optimize the long-term-discounted ASP and average cache refresh rate. In the Q-learning, the number of Q-updates are large and proportional to the number of states and actions. To reduce the space complexity and update requirements towards scalable Q-learning, two novel (linear and non-linear) function approximations-based Q-learning approaches are proposed, where only a constant (4 and 3 respectively) number of variables need updation, irrespective of the number of states and actions. Convergence of these approximation-based approaches are analyzed. Simulations verify that these approaches converge and successfully learn the similar best content placement, which shows the successful applicability and scalability of the proposed approximated Q-learning schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimodal medical image fusion (MMIF) is to merge multiple images for better imaging quality with preserving different specific features, which could be more informative for efficient clinical diagnosis. In this paper, a novel fusion framework is proposed for multimodal medical images based on multi-source information exchange encoding (MIEE) by using Pulse Coupled Neural Network (PCNN). We construct an MIEE model by using two types of PCNN, such that the information of an image can be exchanged and encoded to another image. Then the fusion contributions for each pixel are estimated qualitatively according to a logical comparison of exchanged information. Further, the exchanged information is nonlinearly transformed using an exponential function with a functional parameter. Finally, quantitative fusion contributions are produced through a reverse-proportional operator to the exchanged information. Also, particle swarm optimization-based derivative-free optimization and a total vibration-based derivative optimization are used to optimize the PCNN and functional transform parameters, respectively. Experiments demonstrate that our method gives the best results than other state-of-the-art fusion approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sharing data between organizations is difficult due to different database management systems imposing different schemas as well as security and privacy concerns. We leverage two proven NIST technologies to address the problem: Next Generation Database Access Control and the data block matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acquisition and ownership of real estate in Portugal by entities resident in tax haven jurisdictions have been subject to higher tax rates for some years now. The Portuguese State Budget Law for 2021 has now extended the application of these increased tax rates by establishing that they shall apply not only to the acquisition and ownership of Portuguese real estate by entities resident in tax haven jurisdictions but also by any entity "dominated or controlled" by such entities. In our opinion, the free movement of capital, provided for in article 63 TFEU, precludes Portugal from enforcing these increased tax rates and may be relied on before the Portuguese courts to support a claim for the annulment of tax assessments issued by the Portuguese tax authority that entail the enforcement of these increased tax rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations interact with each other for mutual benefits. Federation refers to one such interaction where each organisation functions independently yet is bound by contracts with others. Rural business process outsourcing (RBPO), multi-institution course management system, and video streaming services are a few examples of federations. Security of shared resources is an important concern in such scenarios. Since each organisation is independent, it is difficult to communicate the precise semantics of access control policies to other participating organisations for correct enforcement. Over the years, ontology has been employed across different domains and can be used for sharing access control semantics across organisations. In this work, we describe a network-aware digital object-based access control model (NA-DOBAM) as an extension of the popular role-based access control model to address the specific needs of security in federations. The relationship between web ontology language and NA-DOBAM model is studied. We have used an ontology-based approach for specification and implementation of NA-DOBAM in the context of RBPO where the access control policy depends on the structure of the users and objects along with the network state. We demonstrate the applicability of ontology for RBPO case studies for extracting meaningful access control information using queries as well as for enforcing access control policies including separation of duty and delegation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]