Proceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS'09)

The Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS) is held alternately in France and in Germany. The conference of February 26-28, 2009, held in Freiburg, is the 26th in this series. Previous meetings took place in Paris (1984), Saarbr¨ucken (1985), Orsay (1986), Passau (1987), Bordeaux (1988), Paderborn (1989), Rouen (1990), Hamburg (1991), Cachan (1992), W¨urzburg (1993), Caen (1994), M¨unchen (1995), Grenoble (1996), L¨ubeck (1997), Paris (1998), Trier (1999), Lille (2000), Dresden (2001), Antibes (2002), Berlin (2003), Montpellier (2004), Stuttgart (2005), Marseille (2006), Aachen (2007), and Bordeaux (2008). ..

Reliable many-to-many routing in wireless sensor networks using ant colony optimisation

A wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of many simple sensor nodes gathering information, such as air temperature or pollution. Nodes have limited energy resources and computational power. Generally, a WSN consists of source nodes that sense data and sink nodes that require data to be delivered to them; nodes communicate wirelessly to deliver data between them. Reliability is a concern as, due to energy constraints and adverse environments, it is expected that nodes will become faulty. Thus, it is essential to create fault-tolerant routing protocols that can recover from faults and deliver sensed data efficiently. Often studied are networks with a single sink. However, as applications become increasingly sophisticated, WSNs with multiple sources and multiple sinks become increasingly prevalent but the problem is much less studied. Unfortunately, current solutions for such networks are heuristics based on specific network properties, such as number of sources and sinks. It is beneficial to develop efficient (fault-tolerant) routing protocols, independent of network architecture. As such, the use of meta heuristics are advocated. Presented is a solution for efficient many-to-many routing using the meta heuristic Ant Colony Optimisation (ACO). The contributions are: (i) a distributed ACObased many-many routing protocol, (ii) using the novel concept of beacon ants, a fault-tolerant ACO-based routing protocol for many-many WSNs and (iii) demonstrations of how the same framework can be used to generate a routing protocol based on minimum Steiner tree. Results show that, generally, few message packets are sent, so nodes deplete energy slower, leading to longer network lifetimes. The protocol is scalable, becoming more efficient with increasing nodes as routes are proportionally shorter compared to network size. The fault-tolerant variant is shown to recover from failures while remaining efficient, and successful at continuously delivering data. The ACO-based framework is used to create Steiner Trees in WSNs, an NP-hard problem with many potential applications. The ACO concept provides the basis for a framework that enables the generation of efficient routing protocols that can solve numerous problems without changing the ACO concept. Results show the protocols are scalable, efficient, and can successfully deliver data in numerous different topologies

Strategies in Addressing Psychological Injuries at Work in Economically Transitioning Societies

Work-related mental health issues, also known as psychological injuries (such as burnout, stress, fatigue or depression as a result of long working hours, high work pressure and bullying or even violence), have become substantive workplace and social concerns due to the adverse effect on employees and peer workers. Consequentially, employers often face costs due to psychologically injured employee’s long periods of absence or productivity loss. People suffering from such injuries may also face challenging family and social relations and some of them would have to resort to public resources for treatment and support. Employers and governments in developed countries have put great efforts on addressing these issues. In contrast, in developing countries, the focus of work injuries mostly lays on physical injuries. Mental health problems resulting from employment have attracted far less attention. It is urgent to identify: how work-related mental health issues have evolved; the determinants of the issues; and, the key strategies/practices that mitigate them. More specifically, in economies undergoing rapid changes, such as radical structural transformation (e.g. industrialization, globalization, digitalization), economic recession or even crisis, or changing management culture (privatization, performance targets, casualization), mental health of the labour force can be seriously affected. However, how these macro-economic or work cultural changes have shocked labour force and resulted in new mental health issues, and how employers and policy makers should respond to such pressures, still remain to be resolved. This Research Topic calls for new empirical research on the strategies in addressing mental health issues at work. We aim to 1) provide new evidence on the impact of economic changes on labour force mental health; 2) identify innovative market or community solutions to mental health issues at work; 3) identify and evaluate employer interventions to address or prevent work-related mental health issues; 3) understand government policy responses and their effectiveness

NOIRS 2011

"The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), in partnership with the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety (LMRIS) and the National Safety Council (NSC), hosted the fifth National Occupational Injury Research Symposium (NOIRS) on October 18-20, 2011 at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown, West Virginia. NOIRS is the only national forum focused on the presentation of occupational injury research findings, data, and methods. This symposium served numerous objectives aimed at preventing traumatic occupational injury through research and prevention. They included: presenting current research findings; fostering collaboration among researchers from a broad range of disciplines, perspectives, and topic areas; identifying 'best practices' for the prevention of work-related injuries; exploring the cost-effectiveness of injury prevention strategies and interventions; showcasing innovative and high technology approaches to research and prevention; and continuing to promote the implementation of the National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA). Questions addressed included: What are the latest traumatic occupational injury research findings? What are emerging problems and research areas in workplace trauma? How is prevention through design being applied to occupational injury research and prevention? What activities are being done to implement research to practice in the area of traumatic occupational injury? What are the best practice intervention and prevention strategies? What are the economic costs of traumatic occupational injuries and are the prevention strategies cost-effective? What are the trends in traumatic occupational injury and fatality incidence? In research tools, techniques, and methods? In prevention? What specific workplace risks are faced by adolescents, older adults, foreign-born workers, non-English-speaking workers, low-literacy workers, and other special populations? How can researchers and practitioners in different sectors and disciplines better collaborate and coordinate their activities to reduce traumatic occupational injuries? What methods are available to assess, quantify, and compare traumatic occupational injury risks? Occupational injury researchers from all disciplines attended and shared their research. We encouraged participation by all interested individuals, including: safety researchers; safety practitioners; health care professionals; administrators; epidemiologists; engineers; manufacturers; communication researchers; regulators; employers; policy makers; insurers; students; advocates; workers; educators and trainers; and others interested in attending. The symposium consistd of contributed oral presentations in concurrent sessions and a poster session." - NIOSHTIC-2Welcome -- Symposium information -- Agenda at a glance -- Meeting facilities-main floor -- Acknowledgements -- Full agenda -- List of opening and closing plenary speakers -- List of pre-registered participants -- Abstracts -- Poster abstracts -- Abstract reviewers"October 2011.""This year's symposium theme, Future directions in occupational injury prevention research. NOIRS would not be possible without the support of our co-sponsors: the National Safety Council and the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety." - p. [1]Available via the World Wide Web as an Acrobat .pdf file (1.64 MB, 190 p.)

Citizen Science and Geospatial Capacity Building

This book is a collection of the articles published the Special Issue of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information on “Citizen Science and Geospatial Capacity Building”. The articles cover a wide range of topics regarding the applications of citizen science from a geospatial technology perspective. Several applications show the importance of Citizen Science (CitSci) and volunteered geographic information (VGI) in various stages of geodata collection, processing, analysis and visualization; and for demonstrating the capabilities, which are covered in the book. Particular emphasis is given to various problems encountered in the CitSci and VGI projects with a geospatial aspect, such as platform, tool and interface design, ontology development, spatial analysis and data quality assessment. The book also points out the needs and future research directions in these subjects, such as; (a) data quality issues especially in the light of big data; (b) ontology studies for geospatial data suited for diverse user backgrounds, data integration, and sharing; (c) development of machine learning and artificial intelligence based online tools for pattern recognition and object identification using existing repositories of CitSci and VGI projects; and (d) open science and open data practices for increasing the efficiency, decreasing the redundancy, and acknowledgement of all stakeholders

Antecedents and outcomes of a strategic digital marketing approach

The new digital era requires firms to be explorative by experimenting with new tools, channels and online market trends, and remain focused on customers’ current needs by exploitatively refining existing digital marketing activities. Despite the substantial research on the digital marketing field and the tremendous developments in digital marketing practice, empirical research on strategic digital marketing issues is limited, with no available holistic examinations of the digital marketing strategy and minimal efforts in studying the strategic approaches of exploration, exploitation and ambidexterity within this field. Consequently, marketing managers lack the guidance to effectively implement digital marketing strategies. Therefore, this thesis examined how explorative, exploitative and ambidextrous digital marketing strategic approaches can be effectively adopted within retail organisations competing in today’s fast-changing digital context. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities theory and the organisational learning theory, a comprehensive model outlining the drivers and outcomes of a digital marketing strategic approach was developed. A cross-sectional study design and a large-scale online survey were used to empirically test the model among 242 large retailers in the UK. The hypothesised direct, moderating and control effects were examined using structural equation modelling. The results confirmed the positive associations of sensing and integrating capabilities with the explorative digital marketing strategic approach and of responding and coordinating capabilities with the exploitative digital marketing strategic approach. The explorative approach was found to associate positively with the differentiation-based competitive advantage, and the exploitative approach was found to associate positively with the cost-reduction-based competitive advantage. Differentiation-based and cost-reduction-based advantages were related to online customer engagement, which was positively associated with the firm’s market and financial performance. Results also demonstrated that market dynamism negatively moderates the exploitative approach–cost-reduction-based advantage link. These findings have important implications for marketing theory and practice. Limitations and future research directions were also considered

A summary of the users perspective of LANDSAT-D and reference document of LANDSAT users

There are no author-identified significant results in this report