Ecodriving and Carbon Footprinting: Understanding How Public Education Can Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Fuel Use

Ecodriving is a collection of changes to driving behavior and vehicle maintenance designed to impact fuel consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in existing vehicles. Because of its promise to improve fuel economy within the existing fleet, ecodriving has gained increased attention in North America. One strategy to improve ecodriving is through public education with information on how to ecodrive. This report provides a review and study of ecodriving from several angles. The report offers a literature review of previous work and programs in ecodriving across the world. In addition, researchers completed interviews with experts in the field of public relations and public message campaigns to ascertain best practices for public campaigns. Further, the study also completed a set of focus groups evaluating consumer response to a series of websites that displayed ecodriving information. Finally, researchers conducted a set of surveys, including a controlled stated-response study conducted with approximately 100 University of California, Berkeley faculty, staff, and students, assessing the effectiveness of static ecodriving web-based information as well as an intercept clipboard survey in the San Francisco Bay Area. The stated-response study consisted of a comparison of the experimental and control groups. It found that exposure to ecodriving information influenced people’s driving behavior and some maintenance practices. The experimental group’s distributional shift was statistically significant, particularly for key practices including: lower highway cruising speed, driving behavior adjustment, and proper tire inflation. Within the experimental group (N = 51), fewer respondents significantly changed their maintenance practices (16%) than the majority that altered some driving practices (71%). This suggests intentionally altering driving behavior is easier than planning better maintenance practices. While it was evident that not everyone modifies their behavior as a result of reviewing the ecodriving website, even small shifts in behavior due to inexpensive information dissemination could be deemed cost effective in reducing fuel consumption and emissions

Information-Driven Housing

This paper suggests a new information-driven framework is needed to help consumers evaluate the sustainability of their housing options. The paper provides an outline of this new framework and how it would work

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Antitrust and restrictions on privacy in the digital economy

We present a model of a market failure based on a requirement provision by digital platforms in the acquisition of personal information from users of other products/services. We establish the economic harm from the market failure and the requirement using traditional antitrust methodology. Eliminating the requirement and the market failure by creating a functioning market for the sale of personal information would create a functioning market for personal information that would benefit users. Even though market harm is established under the assumption that consumers are perfectly informed about the value of their privacy, we show that when users are not well informed, there can be additional harms to this market failure

Identifying Potentiality Online Sales In Malaysia: A Study On Customer Relationships Online Shopping

Understanding of consumers buying pattern through internet and motivation of consumers to online shopping and what product has potential of online sales are critical questions. The purpose of this study was to identify the potential of online sales. The study started with verifying consumer online behavior and model of potential of online sales. The results showed only two factors, gender and family income was significant relationship with overall attitudes towards online shopping. In addition, results indicated that weekly internet use, having experience in e-shopping, and willingness to shopping online in the future have significant relationship with overall attitude towards online shopping. Moreover, results   proved that there is significant difference between human senses in online decision-making process and it is explored to customers who experienced shopping a product or they were satisfied previously, which have stronger confidence to do online shopping. The estimation of Logistic model shows that potential of online sales is affected significantly by consumer overall attitudes towards online shopping, product type, familiarity and confidence

An Examination of the Impact of Attending an Electronic Technology Rich Program on the Teaching Styles of Senior Student Teachers

The purpose of this study was to determine whether attending an electronic technology rich program had an impact on the teaching styles of senior student teachers. It is clear from this research that senior student teachers have benefits from attending such a program. Three research questions were used to guide this study: what ways teachers are currently using technology; how are teachers in this study using technology in their planning of the learning experience; how teachers\u27 technology attitudes, understandings and skills change over time. A web based survey tool, which was delivered electronically to senior student teachers both in elementary and secondary environments. The survey instrument consisted of 34 questions and was comprised of four parts and designed to have two measurement properties, labeled categories (nominal scale) and variable differences (interval scale). Collected data showed a willingness on the part of the senior student teachers to use electronic technologies, as well as a possessing a strong comfort level using multiple electronic technologies and software applications such as Word and PowerPoint. While the two software applications least likely to be used by senior student teachers were spreadsheet applications such as Excel and databas applications like Access. The infusion of electronic technologies into lessons and curriculum was quite strong but data showed varied results as to how senior student teachers view the effect of such infusion. Nearly all respondents agreed that PowerPoint is an effective tool in both lesson planning and presentation by both students and teachers alike. Recommendations for future research include should take place on either an annual of semi-annual basis, in addition to extending the participant audience to include junior pre-service teaching candidates

An Examination of the Impact of Attending an Electronic Technology Rich Program on the Teaching Styles of Senior Student Teachers

The purpose of this study was to determine whether attending an electronic technology rich program had an impact on the teaching styles of senior student teachers. It is clear from this research that senior student teachers have benefits from attending such a program. Three research questions were used to guide this study: what ways teachers are currently using technology; how are teachers in this study using technology in their planning of the learning experience; how teachers\u27 technology attitudes, understandings and skills change over time. A web based survey tool, which was delivered electronically to senior student teachers both in elementary and secondary environments. The survey instrument consisted of 34 questions and was comprised of four parts and designed to have two measurement properties, labeled categories (nominal scale) and variable differences (interval scale). Collected data showed a willingness on the part of the senior student teachers to use electronic technologies, as well as a possessing a strong comfort level using multiple electronic technologies and software applications such as Word and PowerPoint. While the two software applications least likely to be used by senior student teachers were spreadsheet applications such as Excel and databas applications like Access. The infusion of electronic technologies into lessons and curriculum was quite strong but data showed varied results as to how senior student teachers view the effect of such infusion. Nearly all respondents agreed that PowerPoint is an effective tool in both lesson planning and presentation by both students and teachers alike. Recommendations for future research include should take place on either an annual of semi-annual basis, in addition to extending the participant audience to include junior pre-service teaching candidates

Geospatial Informational Security Risks and Concerns of the U.S. Air Force GeoBase Program

Technological advancements such as Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and the Internet have made it easier and affordable to share information, which enables complex and time sensitive decisions to be made with higher confidence. Further, advancements in information technology have dramatically increased the ability to store, manage, integrate, and correlate larger amounts of data to improve operational efficiency. However, the same technologies that enable increased productivity also provide increased capabilities to those wishing to do harm. Today’s military leaders are faced with the challenge of deciding how to make geospatial information collected on military installations and organizations available to authorized communities of interest while simultaneously restricting access to protect operational security. Often, these decisions are made without understanding how the sharing of certain combinations of data may pose a significant risk to protecting critical information, infrastructure or resources. Information security has been an area of growing concern in the GeoBase community since, by definition, it is required to strike a balance between competing interests, each supported by federal policy: (1) the availability of data paid for by tax dollars and (2) the protection of data as required to mitigate risks. In this research we will explore the security implications of the US Air Force GeoBase (the US Air Force’s applied Geospatial Information System) program. We examine the rapid expansion of the use of GeoBase to communities outside of the civil engineering field; examine the intrinsic and extrinsic security risks of the unconstrained sharing of geospatial information; explore difficulties encountered when attempting to rate the sensitivity of information, discuss new policies and procedures that have been implemented undertaken to protect the information, and propose technical and managerial control measures to facilitate sharing geospatial information sharing while minimizing the associated operational risks

A Zebra\u27s Trust: How Rare Disease Communities\u27 Participation in Data Trusts\u27 Governance Builds Trust and Drives Research

Data sharing plays an increasingly prominent role in society, but it remains a necessary component of rare disease research. Because rare diseases are--as the name indicates-- rare, researchers have only a small number of patients from whom to collect data, and the expense of cross-border data sharing to increase research data is significant. Nevertheless, the rise of artificial intelligence and precision medicine increases the need for usable rare disease data. Current legislation and regulations aimed at addressing rare diseases fall short in addressing these data sharing needs for rare disease research. While the European Union (EU) has invested in rare disease data sharing more than most of the world, its programs are fragmented and limited to the rare disease community. Simultaneously, data is becoming increasingly viewed as a necessary component of a competitive economy, driving interest in data sharing platforms and initiatives, including the EU\u27s new Trusted Secure Data Sharing Space (TRUSTS) initiative. Perhaps the most promising instrument for data sharing is the data trust, but it suffers from an undefined and uncertain legal structure. This Note suggests that the rare disease community should embrace these broader data sharing initiatives in order to ensure the representation of rare disease data in these data sets and to harness the power of large-scale data sharing. Simultaneously, data trusts should look to rare disease communities for representation in their governance structures in order to establish the patient-centricity and public trust necessary for data trusts to thrive in an uncertain legal environment

A Location Aware Service to Minimize Travel Costs Using Dynamic Information

Automotive navigation systems have become common accessories in vehicles manufactured today. However, the information provided by these systems is quite limited in that many systems only provide static information. As a result, manufacturers of such systems have not been able to fully capitalize from the potential applications for mobile commerce (mcommerce) which is critically dependent on providing consumers with dynamic information. The objective of this paper is to discuss a novel method, known as Dynamic Location Cost Minimization (DLCM), which can be used with a vehicle’s navigation system to determine the optimum location to purchase gas. With the increasing cost of gas and the possibility of higher prices due to proposed gas price taxes, providing a means for consumers to minimize their costs to travel could prove to be very beneficial, and potentially help drive down prices due to increased competition. In addition, the proposed method could also be used in conjunction with mobile phones to facilitate real-time decisions for other services or purchases. Anecdotal evidence presented in this paper merits further investigation into the usability and acceptance of this technology