'Milking the Cow': Young Women's Constructions of Identity, Gender, Power and Risk in Transactional and Cross-Generational Sexual Relationships

This report presents the findings of a qualitative study carried out in Maputo, Mozambique, among women engaged in cross-generational transactional sex. Cross-generational sex is contributing significantly to the spread of HIV/AIDS in Mozambique and as such is a key area for behaviour change interventinos, although few organisations are currently addressing the issue. The study reveals thta young women engaged in cross-generational and transactional sex have a complex sexual network involving multiple partners, including both transactional and non-transactional relationships.The study was carried out between October and November 2004, using the PEER (participatory ethnographic evaluation and research) method. PEER is an innovative approach to programme research, evaluation and design, based upon training members of the target group (peer researchers) to carry out in-depth qualitative interviews among their peers. Twenty young women in the age group 16-25 years, living in and around central Maputo were recruited as peer researchers. Each peer researcher interviewed three peers and conducted three separate interviews with each peer, with a total of 180 interviews carried out

The influence of national culture on the attitude towards mobile recommender systems

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.This study aimed to identify factors that influence user attitudes towards mobile recommender systems and to examine how these factors interact with cultural values to affect attitudes towards this technology. Based on the theory of reasoned action, belief factors for mobile recommender systems are identified in three dimensions: functional, contextual, and social. Hypotheses explaining different impacts of cultural values on the factors affecting attitudes were also proposed. The research model was tested based on data collected in China, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Findings indicate that functional and social factors have significant impacts on user attitudes towards mobile recommender systems. The relationships between belief factors and attitudes are moderated by two cultural values: collectivism and uncertainty avoidance. The theoretical and practical implications of applying theory of reasoned action and innovation diffusion theory to explain the adoption of new technologies in societies with different cultures are also discussed.National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean governmen

Adoption of Mobile Money Transfer Technology: Structural Equation Modeling Approach

In recent years, rapid spread of mobile phones use in the developing countries is as a consequence ofthe introduction of prepaid cards and the fallen prices of mobile handsets. One of such uses is the useof mobile phones in financial services industry. This study investigates the key factors that influencethe Ghanaian consumers' acceptance and use of mobile money transfer technology using keyconstructs from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Diffusion of Innovation (DoI) theory.We analyzed the data using a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to evaluate the strength of therelationship between the constructs. The results were consistent with the key TAM and DoI constructs.Keywords: Technology Acceptance Model, Adoption, Mobile Money Transfer Technology, Diffusionof Innovation theory, Ghana

64-bit architechtures and compute clusters for high performance simulations

Simulation of large complex systems remains one of the most demanding of high performance computer systems both in terms of raw compute performance and efficient memory management. Recent availability of 64-bit architectures has opened up the possibilities of commodity computers accessing more than the 4 Gigabyte memory limit previously enforced by 32-bit addressing. We report on some performance measurements we have made on two 64-bit architectures and their consequences for some high performance simulations. We discuss performance of our codes for simulations of artificial life models; computational physics models of point particles on lattices; and with interacting clusters of particles. We have summarised pertinent features of these codes into benchmark kernels which we discuss in the context of wellknown benchmark kernels of the 32-bit era. We report on how these these findings were useful in the context of designing 64-bit compute clusters for high-performance simulations

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

AN ANALYSIS OF TRANSACTIONS IN E-PAYMENT SYSTEM USING MOBILE AGENTS

Commercial interactions between merchants and customers pose a significant concern as they are associated with a large volume of data and complex information, especially when there is a need for switching requirements. This paper presents an agent-based analysis of e-payment transactions with the switching operations. The model adopts an inter-bank transaction network and consists of a terminal point of sale (POI) and three essential players in e-payment: customer, bank (merchant), and the Switch. This study analyses the various payment interactions using agent technology. The agent coordinates movement while the negotiation protocol serves as an internal control of the payment agreements, while the interactive hosts are the platforms that determine the status of transactions. Each agent host is equipped with a Certification Authority (CA) to secure communication between the merchant and the customer. Different transactions that agents could make are examined with formal descriptions. The implementation is achieved in Jade and compares with the object serialization mechanism. The simulation results show higher quality adaptation of agent systems and evidence of agentisation of e-transaction with Switch.     &nbsp

Analysis of designed and emergent consequences of mobile banking usage by SME’s in Kenya using ethnographic decision tree modeling

Includes bibliographical references.Evaluating the impact of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) has been a challenge both in terms of theoretical and methodological approaches. It has been pointed out in extant literature that ICT4D impact studies are few compared to those that investigate determinants of adoption. Knowledge of this scarcity and the theoretical and methodological limitations led to the conception of this study. This study set out to investigate the decision criteria evaluated by Kenyan micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) when making the initial mobile banking adoption and usage decisions with a view to unearth the designed and emergent consequences. Ethnographic decision tree modelling (EDTM) which is a cognitive research methodology was feasibly employed to obtain the adoption and usage decision criteria from which quantifiable and non-quantifiable consequences were then inferred. Structuration theory was used as a theoretical lens to view the complex context in which mobile banking is embedded and adopted by MSMEs. The analysis of the empirical data obtained from the MSMEs led to the construction and testing of three decision models from which the study’s theory was developed. The derived theory demonstrates the existence of structurational interactions among decision criteria, antecedents of technology adoption, behavioural intention to adopt, and the designed and emergent consequences of actual usage. The study further reveals that contrary to popular belief and argument that adoption of mobile banking technology lowers financial services cost, Kenyan MSMEs adopt the technology not because of its affordability but because of other factors such as perceived usefulness, accessibility, safe custody of daily income, limited organizational capabilities, perceived ease of use, social capital and trust structures. The derived explanatory-predictive theory provides findings that may have significant implications for fiscal and monetary policymakers, development experts and mobile banking technology designers

Designing Chatbots for Crises: A Case Study Contrasting Potential and Reality

Chatbots are becoming ubiquitous technologies, and their popularity and adoption are rapidly spreading. The potential of chatbots in engaging people with digital services is fully recognised. However, the reputation of this technology with regards to usefulness and real impact remains rather questionable. Studies that evaluate how people perceive and utilise chatbots are generally lacking. During the last Kenyan elections, we deployed a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to help people submit reports of violence and misconduct experienced in the polling stations. Even though the chatbot was visited by more than 3,000 times, there was a clear mismatch between the users’ perception of the technology and its design. In this paper, we analyse the user interactions and content generated through this application and discuss the challenges and directions for designing more effective chatbots