Reducing Cognitive Overheads in a Web Warehouse using Reverse-Osmosis

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of reducing cognitive overheads in a Web warehouse using an important class of operation called reverse osmosis. The analysis is used to examine two different cognitive overheads of locating relevant nodes or information and display time of a Web table. A reverse-osmosis operation enables us to eliminate in relevant information from a collection of Web documents stored in the form of a Web table. We call such an operation reverse-osmosis because it is analogous to the reverse osmosis process in the field of water purification. We discuss a formal algorithm of the reverse-osmosis operatio

SMART - IWRM - Sustainable Management of Available Water Resources with Innovative Technologies - Integrated Water Resources Management in the Lower Jordan Rift Valley : Final Report Phase II (KIT Scientific Reports ; 7698)

SMART was a multi-lateral research project with partners from Germany, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories. The overall goal was to develop a transferable approach for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the water shortage region of the Lower Jordan Valley. The innovative aspect addressed all available water resources: groundwater and surface waters, but also wastewater, brackish water and flood water that need to be treated for use

Seasonal power peaking and the diffusion of demand-side technologies : modelling socio-economic & technical dynamics in the Greek Islands

Imperial Users onl

Household-based water treatment for the prevention of diarrhoeal disease

Unsafe drinking water, together with poor hygiene and sanitation, are the main contributors to diarrhoeal disease, a leading cause of mortality and morbidity especially among young children in low-income settings. While the Millennium Development Goals seek to halve the portion of the population without access to safe water by 2015, the high cost of piped-in supplies has led the World Health Organization to call for alternative approaches, including household water treatment. This thesis describes the results of certain research concerning the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and field implementation of household water treatment for the prevention of diarrhoeal disease. In a systematic review of interventions to improve water quality for the prevention of endemic diarrhoea, 30 studies covering 38 intervention trials were identified and meta- analyzed. The studies varied considerably in design, setting, type of intervention and point of intervention. The evidence suggests that in settings with sufficient water quantity, interventions to improve the microbiological quality of drinking water are effective in preventing diarrhoea, and that household-based interventions are about twice as effective as conventional improvements at the water source. The costs of such water quality interventions was compiled and combined with the effectiveness data from the systematic review to determine the cost-effectiveness of interventions to improve water quality. In most settings, household water treatment meets established criteria for "highly cost effective" health interventions. In a six-month pilot programme in Colombia, household-based water filters were associated with a substantial improvement in microbial water quality and a 60% reduction in the prevalence of diarrhoea (OR = 0.40,95% CI = 0.25,0.63, P<0.0001). In a study to assess the drinking water response to the Indian Ocean tsunami, household water treatment had only a limited role, suggesting the need to consider under what circumstances such interventions can contribute to the delivery of safe drinking water in the immediate aftermath of an emergency. The thesis concludes with some thoughts on the challenge of implementing household water treatment and the need for further research.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Movement: Journey of the Beat

Movement: Journey of the Beat addresses the trajectory and transition of popular culture through the modality of rhythm. It configures fresh narratives and new histories necessary to understand why auditory cultures have become increasingly significant in the digital age. Atomised and mobile technologies, which utilise sonic media through streaming, on-line radio and podcasts, have become ubiquitous in a post-work environment. These sonic media provide not merely the mechanisms of connection but also the contexts for understanding changing formations of both identity and community. This research addresses, through rhythm, how popular music culture, central to changing perceptions of ‘self’ and ‘others’ through patterns of production and consumption, must also be viewed as instrumental in shaping new platforms of communication that have resonance not only through the emergence of new social networks and cultural economies but also in the development of media literacies and pedagogic strategies. The shift to online technologies for cultural production and global consumption, although immersed in leisure practices, more significantly alludes to changing dynamics of power and knowledge. An online ecology represents a significant shift in the role of place and time in creative production and its subsequent access. Popular music invariably provides an entry point and subsequent platform for such shifts and this thesis looks to the rhythms within this popular culture in as much as they encode these transformations. This doctoral research builds on the candidate’s established career as music producer, broadcaster, journalist and teacher to construct an appropriate theoretical framework to indicate how the construction, transmission and consumption of popular music rhythms give an understanding of changing social contexts. The thesis maps the movement of commonly recognised popular rhythms from their places of construction to the spaces of reception within broader political, socio-economic and cultural frameworks. The thesis probes the contribution of place and time in transforming global cultures, via social geography and memory, positioning such changes within readings of mobility, stasis, modernity and technology. By consciously addressing multiple disciplines, from populist to academic, Movement provides evidence of how wider structural changes have become reified within the beat and how in turn rhythm provides an appropriate modality through which change can be negotiated and understood

Spatial and Temporal Sentiment Analysis of Twitter data

The public have used Twitter world wide for expressing opinions. This study focuses on spatio-temporal variation of georeferenced Tweets’ sentiment polarity, with a view to understanding how opinions evolve on Twitter over space and time and across communities of users. More specifically, the question this study tested is whether sentiment polarity on Twitter exhibits specific time-location patterns. The aim of the study is to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of georeferenced Twitter sentiment polarity within the area of 1 km buffer around the Curtin Bentley campus boundary in Perth, Western Australia. Tweets posted in campus were assigned into six spatial zones and four time zones. A sentiment analysis was then conducted for each zone using the sentiment analyser tool in the Starlight Visual Information System software. The Feature Manipulation Engine was employed to convert non-spatial files into spatial and temporal feature class. The spatial and temporal distribution of Twitter sentiment polarity patterns over space and time was mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Some interesting results were identified. For example, the highest percentage of positive Tweets occurred in the social science area, while science and engineering and dormitory areas had the highest percentage of negative postings. The number of negative Tweets increases in the library and science and engineering areas as the end of the semester approaches, reaching a peak around an exam period, while the percentage of negative Tweets drops at the end of the semester in the entertainment and sport and dormitory area. This study will provide some insights into understanding students and staff ’s sentiment variation on Twitter, which could be useful for university teaching and learning management

Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages Research

ca. 200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms. [There is ever more research on smart cities and new interdisciplinary approaches proposed on the study of smart cities. At the same time, problems pertinent to communities inhabiting rural areas are being addressed, as part of discussions in contigious fields of research, be it environmental studies, sociology, or agriculture. Even if rural areas and countryside communities have previously been a subject of concern for robust policy frameworks, such as the European Union’s Cohesion Policy and Common Agricultural Policy Arguably, the concept of ‘the village’ has been largely absent in the debate. As a result, when advances in sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) led to the emergence of a rich body of research on smart cities, the application and usability of ICT in the context of a village has remained underdiscussed in the literature. Against this backdrop, this volume delivers on four objectives. It delineates the conceptual boundaries of the concept of ‘smart village’. It highlights in which ways ‘smart village’ is distinct from ‘smart city’. It examines in which ways smart cities research can enrich smart villages research. It sheds light on the smart village research agenda as it unfolds in European and global contexts.