Where are my followers? Understanding the Locality Effect in Twitter

Twitter is one of the most used applications in the current Internet with more than 200M accounts created so far. As other large-scale systems Twitter can obtain enefit by exploiting the Locality effect existing among its users. In this paper we perform the first comprehensive study of the Locality effect of Twitter. For this purpose we have collected the geographical location of around 1M Twitter users and 16M of their followers. Our results demonstrate that language and cultural characteristics determine the level of Locality expected for different countries. Those countries with a different language than English such as Brazil typically show a high intra-country Locality whereas those others where English is official or co-official language suffer from an external Locality effect. This is, their users have a larger number of followers in US than within their same country. This is produced by two reasons: first, US is the dominant country in Twitter counting with around half of the users, and second, these countries share a common language and cultural characteristics with US

Enhancing smart environments with mobile robots

Sensor networks are becoming popular nowadays in the development of smart environments. Heavily relying on static sensor and actuators, though, such environments usually lacks of versatility regarding the provided services and interaction capabilities. Here we present a framework for smart environments where a service robot is included within the sensor network acting as a mobile sensor and/or actuator. Our framework integrates on-the-shelf technologies to ensure its adaptability to a variety of sensor technologies and robotic software. Two pilot cases are presented as evaluation of our proposal.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Similar Districts with Different Results: Using The Baldrige Scale To Understand Outcome Differences in Rural School Districts in The Lower Rio Grande Valley

The research for this study describes the organizational characteristics and the personnel behaviors distinctive to high-achieving rural school districts. A comparison between two rural school districts, one high-achieving and the other low-achieving was completed using a survey instrument. The Baldrige National Quality Program instrument was administered used as the instrument from which seven dependent variables were utilized: (a) leadership, (b) strategic planning, (c) student, stakeholder, and market focus, (d) measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, (e) faculty and staff focus, (f) process management, and (g) perceptions of organizational performance. Fifty-eight teachers and administrators were sampled from two rural school districts in the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The survey used had been modified from the Baldrige National Quality Program to meet the needs of rural school districts. The modifications were made by Dr. Philip Meissen and the modified version was renamed the “Meissen-Are We Making Progress?” The statistical analysis employed consisted of checking reliability of the instrument, providing descriptive, exploratory, and confirmatory analyses. Significant differences were revealed between two districts in the sub-constructs of leadership and process management. Univariate analyses were performed which confirmed differences, p, is used for the proportion of variance in the dependent variable that is attributed to an effect size. Each respective effect size, measured by eta squared, was: .09, .08, .07, and .20. This shows that (1) leadership district mission=9% of the total variability, (2) leadership\u27s academic values=8% of the total variability, (3) work environment=7% of the total variability, and (4) leadership communication=20% of the total variability for the sub-construct leadership. Process management sub-construct had two questions which indicated significance for both high- and low-achieving school districts. Each respective effect size measured by eta squared was: .14, and .09. This means that the total variability for this sub-construct was 14% due to educational materials and 9% was due to control of the teaching process. No significant differences were found with regards to strategic planning, student, stakeholder, and market focus, measurement, analysis, and knowledge management, faculty and staff focus, and business results. The results of this study indicate that leadership and process management are different between high and low achieving school districts. Educational leaders in low-performing rural school districts may want to focus their attention on improving aspects of leadership and process management

Accurate Stereo Visual Odometry with Gamma Distributions

Point-based stereo visual odometry systems typically estimate the camera motion by minimizing a cost function of the projection residuals between consecutive frames. Under some mild assumptions, such minimization is equivalent to maximizing the probability of the measured residuals given a certain pose change, for which a suitable model of the error distribution (sensor model) becomes of capital importance in order to obtain accurate results. This paper proposes a robust probabilistic model for projection errors, based on real world data. For that, we argue that projection distances follow Gamma distributions, and hence, the introduction of these models in a probabilistic formulation of the motion estimation process increases both precision and accuracy. Our approach has been validated through a series of experiments with both synthetic and real data, revealing an improvement in accuracy while not increasing the computational burden.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech. Project "PROMOVE: Advances in mobile robotics for promoting independent life of elders", funded by the Spanish Government and the "European Regional Development Fund ERDF" under contract DPI2014-55826-R

Group Ministry for New Converts in Puerto Rico

Problem. The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Puerto Rico is in need of programs to strengthen newly baptized converts. Method. Much literature related to disciple-building and small groups was researched in order to lay a spiritual foundation and find ways to meet the needs of new believers. Results/Conclusions. This study concludes that disciple-building is as much a rich biblical issue as any other subject of the sacred Book. However, this subject remains almost a virgin field from the standpoint of pragmatics. Although the problem is recognized both inside the Seventh-day Adventist Church and in other Christian bodies, very few plans have been developed to strengthen and retain new believers in the fold. In other words, much more time, money, and energy should be invested to keep these new believers in the church. This study establishes that the New Testament bears witness to the facts of (1) the relevance of disciple-building and (2) the involvement of Christ and the apostles in this particular ministry. It is not daring to say that the New Testament was and is a canon for disciple-building. After studying a large portion of the literature dealing with the field of small groups, it seems that, properly used, the strategy could be a means to offer new members both a support group and a small fellowship community to facilitate their integration into the larger church fellowship. Practical ideas as well as a curriculum is suggested in order to nurture new believers in the church through small group-ministry