Introductory programming: a systematic literature review

As computing becomes a mainstream discipline embedded in the school curriculum and acts as an enabler for an increasing range of academic disciplines in higher education, the literature on introductory programming is growing. Although there have been several reviews that focus on specific aspects of introductory programming, there has been no broad overview of the literature exploring recent trends across the breadth of introductory programming. This paper is the report of an ITiCSE working group that conducted a systematic review in order to gain an overview of the introductory programming literature. Partitioning the literature into papers addressing the student, teaching, the curriculum, and assessment, we explore trends, highlight advances in knowledge over the past 15 years, and indicate possible directions for future research

Air Quality Modeling for the Urban Jackson, Mississippi Region Using a High Resolution WRF/Chem Model

In this study, an attempt was made to simulate the air quality with reference to ozone over the Jackson (Mississippi) region using an online WRF/Chem (Weather Research and Forecasting–Chemistry) model. The WRF/Chem model has the advantages of the integration of the meteorological and chemistry modules with the same computational grid and same physical parameterizations and includes the feedback between the atmospheric chemistry and physical processes. The model was designed to have three nested domains with the inner-most domain covering the study region with a resolution of 1 km. The model was integrated for 48 hours continuously starting from 0000 UTC of 6 June 2006 and the evolution of surface ozone and other precursor pollutants were analyzed. The model simulated atmospheric flow fields and distributions of NO2 and O3 were evaluated for each of the three different time periods. The GIS based spatial distribution maps for ozone, its precursors NO, NO2, CO and HONO and the back trajectories indicate that all the mobile sources in Jackson, Ridgeland and Madison contributing significantly for their formation. The present study demonstrates the applicability of WRF/Chem model to generate quantitative information at high spatial and temporal resolution for the development of decision support systems for air quality regulatory agencies and health administrators

Moving along the Belt and Road: Implications of China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategies on Chinese migration

Along with the flows of China’s foreign direct investment following the newly implemented “One Belt, One Road” strategy by the Chinese government comes movement of state employees, entrepreneurs, workers and accompanying family members to respective countries along the Belt and Road. It is not clear how large the Chinese migration flows into these countries will be, who they will be comprised of, how the public reception of the host society will be and how well the migrants will be integrated in the destination country. Based on extant data and literature on current Chinese migration, this paper describes trends and patterns of recent Chinese migration in Africa and Asia, analyzes host country public perceptions on China, and investigates integration patterns of Chinese migrants. Given that the “One Belt, One Road” strategy was officially endorsed in 2015, it is still early to analyze its impacts on Chinese migration in the respective countries. Considering earlier Chinese overseas migration of the past decades, this paper presents potential migration and integration patterns one may expect following the Belt and Road initiative

Geoinformatics in Citizen Science

The book features contributions that report original research in the theoretical, technological, and social aspects of geoinformation methods, as applied to supporting citizen science. Specifically, the book focuses on the technological aspects of the field and their application toward the recruitment of volunteers and the collection, management, and analysis of geotagged information to support volunteer involvement in scientific projects. Internationally renowned research groups share research in three areas: First, the key methods of geoinformatics within citizen science initiatives to support scientists in discovering new knowledge in specific application domains or in performing relevant activities, such as reliable geodata filtering, management, analysis, synthesis, sharing, and visualization; second, the critical aspects of citizen science initiatives that call for emerging or novel approaches of geoinformatics to acquire and handle geoinformation; and third, novel geoinformatics research that could serve in support of citizen science

#Halal Culture on Instagram

Halal is a notion that applies to both objects and actions, and means permissible according to Islamic law. It may be most often associated with food and the rules of selecting, slaughtering, and cooking animals. In the globalized world, halal can be found in street corners of New York and beauty shops of Manila. In this study, we explore the cultural diversity of the concept, as revealed through social media, and specifically the way it is expressed by different populations around the world, and how it relates to their perception of (i) religious and (ii) governmental authority, and (iii) personal health. Here, we analyze two Instagram datasets, using Halal in Arabic (325,665 posts) and in English (1,004,445 posts), which provide a global view of major Muslim populations around the world. We find a great variety in the use of halal within Arabic, English, and Indonesian-speaking populations, with animal trade emphasized in first (making up 61% of the language's stream), food in second (80%), and cosmetics and supplements in third (70%). The commercialization of the term halal is a powerful signal of its detraction from its traditional roots. We find a complex social engagement around posts mentioning religious terms, such that when a food-related post is accompanied by a religious term, it on average gets more likes in English and Indonesian, but not in Arabic, indicating a potential shift out of its traditional moral framing

Identifying a Criminal's Network of Trust

Tracing criminal ties and mining evidence from a large network to begin a crime case analysis has been difficult for criminal investigators due to large numbers of nodes and their complex relationships. In this paper, trust networks using blind carbon copy (BCC) emails were formed. We show that our new shortest paths network search algorithm combining shortest paths and network centrality measures can isolate and identify criminals' connections within a trust network. A group of BCC emails out of 1,887,305 Enron email transactions were isolated for this purpose. The algorithm uses two central nodes, most influential and middle man, to extract a shortest paths trust network.Comment: 2014 Tenth International Conference on Signal-Image Technology & Internet-Based Systems (Presented at Third International Workshop on Complex Networks and their Applications,SITIS 2014, Marrakesh, Morocco, 23-27, November 2014

Routing for analog chip designs at NXP Semiconductors

During the study week 2011 we worked on the question of how to automate certain aspects of the design of analog chips. Here we focused on the task of connecting different blocks with electrical wiring, which is particularly tedious to do by hand. For digital chips there is a wealth of research available for this, as in this situation the amount of blocks makes it hopeless to do the design by hand. Hence, we set our task to finding solutions that are based on the previous research, as well as being tailored to the specific setting given by NXP. This resulted in an heuristic approach, which we presented at the end of the week in the form of a protoype tool. In this report we give a detailed account of the ideas we used, and describe possibilities to extend the approach

Living Innovation Laboratory Model Design and Implementation

Living Innovation Laboratory (LIL) is an open and recyclable way for multidisciplinary researchers to remote control resources and co-develop user centered projects. In the past few years, there were several papers about LIL published and trying to discuss and define the model and architecture of LIL. People all acknowledge about the three characteristics of LIL: user centered, co-creation, and context aware, which make it distinguished from test platform and other innovation approaches. Its existing model consists of five phases: initialization, preparation, formation, development, and evaluation. Goal Net is a goal-oriented methodology to formularize a progress. In this thesis, Goal Net is adopted to subtract a detailed and systemic methodology for LIL. LIL Goal Net Model breaks the five phases of LIL into more detailed steps. Big data, crowd sourcing, crowd funding and crowd testing take place in suitable steps to realize UUI, MCC and PCA throughout the innovation process in LIL 2.0. It would become a guideline for any company or organization to develop a project in the form of an LIL 2.0 project. To prove the feasibility of LIL Goal Net Model, it was applied to two real cases. One project is a Kinect game and the other one is an Internet product. They were both transformed to LIL 2.0 successfully, based on LIL goal net based methodology. The two projects were evaluated by phenomenography, which was a qualitative research method to study human experiences and their relations in hope of finding the better way to improve human experiences. Through phenomenographic study, the positive evaluation results showed that the new generation of LIL had more advantages in terms of effectiveness and efficiency.Comment: This is a book draf