Indicators of Information and Communications Technologies Impact in the New Society

The Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) affect every activity and suppose changes in all domains: in administration (e-government), in business (electronic commerce), in education (long distance education), in culture (multimedia centers and virtual libraries) and in the manner of working (long distance working). Information and Communications Technologies facilitate communication, processing, and transmission of information by electronic means and this plays a capital role.Information Society, ICT, domain indicators, locality development, economical development

The social networks and the new social order between the individualized socialization and the socialized individualism: Empirical study on the case of Morocco

The new Social Networks (SN) evolved very quickly. They conquered of wide population as well in the cities as in the campaigns. They pushed aside values, attitudes, behavior…; In countries with strong social culture, they modified these values and modified the social rules formerly considered as unchanging.In this paper, an empirical study concerned the case of the Moroccans and their behavior with regard to the social networks in numerous domains as those of society, economy, consumption, social and societal relationships, information and communication, politics, etc. The traditional conventional social order is today in deep transformation. This paper contributes to the understanding of behavior change currently facing Moroccan society at all levels.The designers of software or applications bound to the social networks have to integrate these new behavior in their strategies

The Bottom-up and Horizontal Spillovers of Quality of Life from Continued ICT Use: The Case of Community Technology Centers

The ability to access and create knowledge through the use of ICT is critical in the global information society. ICT use should enhance a process of social inclusion by enabling individuals to fully participate in society across a variety of domains related to health, education, recreation, and culture, among others. However, not everyone has access to ICTs. Recently, community technology centers have developed to be an appealing solution to promote social inclusion. Following the social inclusion framework, this research examines how continued ICT use improves quality of life (QoL) with particular emphasis on the extent of bottom-up spillover effects from domain QoL to overall QoL and horizontal spillover effects among various domain QoL. The context of our study is the Thai community technology centers supported by the Microsoft Unlimited Potential grants. The results suggest that (1) the bottom-up spillover and the horizontal spillover effects simultaneously contribute to the overall QoL, (2) the satisfaction from continued use of ICT contributes to domain QoL and domain QoL, particularly the family, self, and community domains, contributes to overall QoL, and (3) the horizontal spillover effects exhibit complex relationships that involve direct one-to-one spillover effects, domain interaction effects, and reciprocal spillover effects. The work, education, leisure, and community domains influence QoL in other domains. Implications for research and practice are discussed

Preface

In the current information era, most aspects of life depend on and are driven by data, information, knowledge, user experience, and culture. The infrastructure of an information-dependent society relies on the quality of data, information and analysis of such entities for short to long term as well as past to future activities. Information Visualisation, Visual Analytics, Business Intelligence, Machine Learning and Application domains are just a few of the current state of the art developments that effectively enhance understanding of these driving forces

The right to information in Egypt and prospects of renegotiating a new social order

The right to information is the public\u27s right to know through having access to public information held by state bodies. Recognized as a cornerstone in transparent, participatory and open democracies, the right to information is increasingly perceived today as an emerging human right on the international level. While this right is conceptualized in a range of different contexts, the thesis focuses on its conceptualization as a force for socio-economic change for disadvantaged groups. The thesis\u27s goal is to study the instrumental capacity of this right in empowering disadvantaged groups to access state-held information pertinent to their socio-economic rights. In this regard, the thesis views the right to information as an inclusionary tool that is capable of spurring inclusion for individuals excluded from the ambit of both: public participation and social justice. For exploring this, the thesis examines the advocacy role played by civil society groups in furthering this instrumental capacity, through their ability to politically act on public information disclosed. In particular, the thesis presents a focused account on the Egyptian case. While Egypt has recently adopted its constitutional provision on access to information, doubts arise on Egyptian citizens\u27 genuine ability to access information held by state bodies. The politico-economic environment, long term culture of bureaucratic secrecy, and legal framework incite instead politics of exclusion with regard to access to public information. Within the particular context of the Egyptian case, this thesis questions the extent to which civil society in Egypt is capable of instrumentally employing the political opportunity offered by the constitutional right to information to resist this exclusion. Strategically, through four lawsuits brought by civil society groups in Egypt to request information disclosure, the thesis argues that the right to information has instrumentally provided civil society actors with new domains of mobilization for renegotiating a new social order lining the relationship between the Egyptian state and its citizens

Para uma comunicação mais inclusiva

O autor salienta a importância da cultura como móbil essencial da inclusão, reflectindo, para o efeito, a intercompreensão, a tolerância e a solidariedade nos domínios cultural e comunicacional. Preconiza o valor universal da inclusão numa sociedade em que prevaleça uma equidade no acesso aos espaços culturais, à informação e à cultura. Salienta a acessibilidade à informação e à cultura por parte das pessoas em situação de fragilidade social e carências culturais, como imperativo ético de progresso aos mais diversos níveis para promover a sua independência e autonomia, interactividade social e cultural.ABSTRACT: The author emphasizes the importance of culture as an essential element of inclusion, offering a reflection on the relation on inter-understanding, tolerance and solidarity in the cultural and communicational domains. It praises the universal value of inclusion in a society where equity in the access to spaces, information and culture should prevail. Accessibility to information and culture by people who are socially frail and in need of culture, as ethical imperative of progress at various levels namely to promote their independence and autonomy, interaction in society and culture, is enhanced.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The contemporary challenges facing college of education students as future educational leaders at Sultan Qaboos University from their view points : Survey study

The contemporary challenges of young people are matter of high priority, and one of the crucial issues since they are considered as a major part of human capital in Arab States and over the entire world. This study was conducted to investigate the contemporary challenges facing young people as perceived by faculty of education students at Sultan Qaboos University in Sultanate of Oman. Also, the study aimed to determine the extent to which students view points facing contemporary challenges according to their gender, study area, residency, academic year, and grade point average. The main instrument was a questionnaire consisted of (55) items represented the contemporary challenges to gather data from (403) randomly selected participants. The reliability co-efficient of the questionnaire (Chronbach- Alpha) was (0.90) for total items. Means, standard deviation, t-test and analysis of One Way ANOVA were used to analyze data. The result of the study reveled significant differences at (=0.05) level due to gender variable in cultural, humanity and information and media domains for the benefit of females. The findings also show statistically significant differences in students' responses in the culture and humanity domain according to the study year variable in favor of forth-year-student compare with the first-year-student. Concerning the contemporary challenges facing young people, the sequence ranks of students' responses begin with the highest mean (4.12) for the information and media, fellow by consuming(3.95), economical (3.89), humanity (3.75) and culture (3.54) respectively. Depending on the results of the study, several recommendations were concluded and suggested

Political, religious and occupational identities in context: Placing identity status paradigm in context

This study critically contrasts global identity with domain-specific identities (political, religious and occupational) and considers context and gender as integral parts of identity. In a cross-sectional survey, 1038 Greek Cypriot adolescents (449 boys and 589 girls, mean age 16.8) from the three different types of secondary schools (state, state technical and private) and from different SES completed part of the Extended Objective Measure of Ego-Identity Status-2 (EOMEIS-2). The macrocontext of Greek Cypriot society is used to understand the role of context in adolescents’ identities. Results showed that Greek Cypriot young people were not in the same statuses across their global, political, religious and occupational identities. This heterogeneity in the status of global identity and of each identity domain is partially explained by differences in gender, type of school and SES (Socio-Economic Status). The fact that identity status is found to be reactive to context suggests that developmental stage models of identity status should place greater emphasis on context

Unique growth pattern of human mammary epithelial cells induced by polymeric nanoparticles.

Due to their unique properties, engineered nanoparticles (NPs) have found broad use in industry, technology, and medicine, including as a vehicle for drug delivery. However, the understanding of NPs' interaction with different types of mammalian cells lags significantly behind their increasing adoption in drug delivery. In this study, we show unique responses of human epithelial breast cells when exposed to polymeric Eudragit® RS NPs (ENPs) for 1-3 days. Cells displayed dose-dependent increases in metabolic activity and growth, but lower proliferation rates, than control cells, as evidenced in tetrazolium salt (WST-1) and 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) assays, respectively. Those effects did not affect cell death or mitochondrial fragmentation. We attribute the increase in metabolic activity and growth of cells culture with ENPs to three factors: (1) high affinity of proteins present in the serum for ENPs, (2) adhesion of ENPs to cells, and (3) activation of proliferation and growth pathways. The proteins and genes responsible for stimulating cell adhesion and growth were identified by mass spectrometry and Microarray analyses. We demonstrate a novel property of ENPs, which act to increase cell metabolic activity and growth and organize epithelial cells in the epithelium as determined by Microarray analysis