Data, Society and the City: Technology, Territory and Population

The rapidly urbanizing world reflects the dynamism of urban agglomeration and city-centered growth. World cities have been traditionally recognized with the dominant economic models and have traversed from being industrial to Fordist to post-Fordist to the technological to logistical cities of today. These cities are now categorized and conceptualized as ‘intelligent city’, ‘information city’, ‘wired city’, ‘knowledge city’, ‘smart city’ and ‘digital city’. These ideas and articulations share convergent technological perspectives, information and communication centrality, and dependence on cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things (IoT) and modern techniques of data management. Catering spatiality to these processes, cities like Navi Mumbai represent integrated cyber-physical spaces of institutions and strategic meeting points of the extraordinary circulation of technology, operations, logistics, and services, which directly andindirectly caters to governments, businesses and citizens. Through the paper, we explain how specialized landscapes within Navi Mumbai that cater to collection, interpretation, storage, dispersal and control of data and information flows and how it is mediated through dedicated geographies and physiologies of ‘data centers’. The paper explicates how data infrastructures as data centers and cities mutually produce an intensified relationship through which function, administration and governance of one-another is operationalized. Through the trajectory of Navi Mumbai, the paper connects the city’s processes, infrastructure development, patterns of governance, and land use patterns with the genesis of institutionalization, operations, and professional aspects of the data center. How data center, its geographical location, and physiological operation can provoke and influence our understanding of the city, its activities, transformations, social fabric, infrastructure, and overall governance? Additionally, we attempt to explore how the city and its various aspects are intertwined or en-messed in the mega processes of data production, analysis, consumption, and exchange? In an attempt to explore this, we have inquired how the city becomes central to state and corporate governance through processes and operations manifested in the security-finance-governance complex of data infrastructures and how do we make meanings of the emerging forms of governance

Theseus : a 3D virtual reality orientation game with real-time guidance system for cognitive training

Des études soutiennent que l’entraînement cognitif est une méthode efficace pour ralentirle déclin cognitif chez les personnes âgées. Les jeux sérieux basés sur la réalité virtuelle(RV) ont trouvé une application dans ce domaine en raison du haut niveau d’immersionet d’interactivité offert par les environnements virtuels (EV). Ce projet implémente unjeu d’orientation 3D en réalité virtuelle entièrement immersif avec un système pour guiderl’utilisateur en temps réel. Le jeu d’orientation 3D est utilisé comme exercice pour entraînerles capacités cognitives des utilisateurs. Les effets immédiats du jeu d’orientation sur lescapacités de mémoire et d’attention ont été étudiés sur quinze personnes âgées présentant undéclin cognitif subjectif (DCS). Il a été observé que bien qu’il n’y ait pas eu d’améliorationsignificative des résultats pour les exercices d’attention, les participants ont obtenu demeilleurs résultats aux exercices de mémoire spécifiques après avoir joué au jeu d’orientation. Le manque de succès dans la réalisation de l’objectif requis peut parfois augmenter lesémotions négatives chez les êtres humains, et plus particulièrement chez les personnes quisouffrent de déclin cognitif. C’est pourquoi le jeu a été équipé d’un système de guidageavec indices de localisation en temps réel pour contrôler les émotions négatives et aiderles participants à accomplir leurs tâches. Le système de guidage est basé sur des règleslogiques; chaque indice est délivré si une condition spécifique est remplie. Le changement desémotions des participants a montré que les indices sont efficaces pour réduire la frustration,étant donné qu’ils sont facilement compréhensibles et conçus pour donner un retour positif. La dernière partie du projet se concentre sur le système de guidage et met en oeuvre unmoyen pour l’activer entièrement selon les émotions d’une personne. Le problème consisteà identifier l’état des émotions qui devraient déclencher l’activation du système de guidage.Ce problème prend la forme d’un processus de décision markovien (PDM), qui peut êtrerésolu via l’apprentissage par renforcement (AR). Le réseau profond Q (RPQ) avec relectured’expérience (ER), qui est l’un des algorithmes d’apprentissage par renforcement les plusavancés pour la prédiction d’actions dans un espace d’action discret, a été utilisé dans cecontexte. L’algorithme a été formé sur des données d’émotions simulées, et testé sur les données de quinze personnes âgées acquises lors d’expériences menées dans la première partiedu projet. On observe que la méthode basée sur l’AR est plus performante que la méthodebasée sur les règles pour identifier l’état mental d’une personne afin de lui fournir des indices.Studies support cognitive training as an efficient method to slow the cognitive declinein older adults. Virtual reality (VR) based serious games have found application in thisfield due to the high level of immersion and interactivity offered by virtual environments(VE). This project implements a fully immersive 3D virtual reality orientation game with areal-time guidance system to be used as an exercise for cognitive training. The immediateaftereffects of playing the orientation game on memory and attention abilities were studiedon fifteen older adults with subjective cognitive decline (SCD). It was observed that whilethere was no significant improvement in attention exercises, the participants performedbetter in specific memory exercises after playing the orientation game. Sometimes lack of success in achieving the required objective may increase the negativeemotions in humans and more so in people who suffer from cognitive decline. Hence, thegame was equipped with a real-time guidance system with location hints to control negativeemotions and help participants to complete the tasks. The guidance system is based onlogical rules; each hint is delivered if a specific condition is met. Change in emotions ofparticipants showed that hints are effective in reducing frustration, given that the hints areeasily comprehensible and designed to give positive feedback. The final part of the project focuses on the guidance system and implements a way toactivate it entirely based on a person’s emotions. The problem calls for identifying the stateof the emotions that should trigger the guidance system’s activation. This problem takes theform of a Markov decision process (MDP), which can be solved by setting it in a reinforcementlearning framework. Deep Q-Learning network (DQN) with experience replay (ER),which is one of the state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithms for predicting actionsin discrete action space, was used in this context. The algorithm was trained on simulateddata of emotions and tested on the data of fifteen older adults acquired in experimentsconducted in the first part of the project. It is observed that the RL based method performsbetter than the rule-based method in identifying the mental state of a person to provide hints

Degenerated fibroid: a diagnostic dilemma

Leiomyoma is one of the most commonly encountered benign gynaecological neoplasms. With a wide range of symptoms, sometimes even asymptomatic, these tumors are easy to diagnose and treat, unless there are degenerative changes, which makes them difficult to diagnose and differentiating them from other serious conditions including malignancy, thereby, complicating their management also. Here, the case present to you a case of 48-year-old women with symptoms and clinical examination suggesting fibroid uterus but imaging studies inconclusive to differentiate fibroid uterus with ovarian malignancy, thus, creating a diagnostic dilemma. Ultimately, patient underwent exploratory laparotomy, keeping possibility of ovarian malignancy. Histopathological examination of the specimen of total abdominal hysterectomy with bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy concluded extensive cystic degeneration of leiomyoma and no evidence of malignancy

Application of Simulated Annealing in Water Resources Management: Optimal Solution of Groundwater Contamination Source Characterization Problem and Monitoring Network Design Problems

[Extract] Estimating various characteristics of an unknown groundwater pollutant source can be formulated as an optimization problem using linked simulation-optimization. Meta-heuristics based optimization algorithms such as Simulated Annealing (SA), Genetic Algorithm (GA), Tabu Search etc. are now being accepted as reliable, faster and simpler ways to solve this optimization problem. In this chapter we discuss the suitability of a variant of traditional Simulated Annealing (SA) known as the Adaptive Simulated Annealing (ASA) in solving unknown groundwater pollutant source characterization problem

Survey and Analysis of Production Distributed Computing Infrastructures

This report has two objectives. First, we describe a set of the production distributed infrastructures currently available, so that the reader has a basic understanding of them. This includes explaining why each infrastructure was created and made available and how it has succeeded and failed. The set is not complete, but we believe it is representative. Second, we describe the infrastructures in terms of their use, which is a combination of how they were designed to be used and how users have found ways to use them. Applications are often designed and created with specific infrastructures in mind, with both an appreciation of the existing capabilities provided by those infrastructures and an anticipation of their future capabilities. Here, the infrastructures we discuss were often designed and created with specific applications in mind, or at least specific types of applications. The reader should understand how the interplay between the infrastructure providers and the users leads to such usages, which we call usage modalities. These usage modalities are really abstractions that exist between the infrastructures and the applications; they influence the infrastructures by representing the applications, and they influence the ap- plications by representing the infrastructures

Unruptured unilateral twin ectopic pregnancy: a rare case report

Unilateral twin ectopic pregnancy is a rare entity with an incidence of 1 in 125,000 pregnancies. This is a case of a 26-year-old primigravida with a spontaneous unilateral twin ectopic gestation, diagnosed on transvaginal ultrasound, treated laparoscopically by doing unilateral salpingectomy and confirmed with histopathology. The doubt for ectopic pregnancy was raised when the serum β-HCG level was constantly >1500 mIU/ml and serum progesterone level was <5 pg/ml and no intrauterine pregnancy was seen. On a follow-up scan, twin gestational sac was noted in right adnexa along with a large haemorrhagic cyst in the right ovary. On post-surgery follow-up, patient was found to have had complete recovery. This case report discusses the incidence and rarity, yet possibility of twin ectopic gestations, the need for early diagnosis and its management

An Empirical Study on Factors Influencing Consumers’ Trust in E-Commerce

In today's business scenario Internet is one of the key contributors in the globalization of markets which have become one of the main sources of capital flows to emerging economies. Internet technology has adopted for various application like E-governance, E-Procurement and E-commerce. E-Commerce has many advantages such as efficiency and flexibility but also disadvantages such as threat, security and fraud. In General Context, the consumer prefers to purchase the product through physical location rather than through E-Commerce. As the approach is based on the trust, there is a need to identify and analyze the factors such as security, privacy and familiarities that are affecting the trust in electronic transactions. Further, this paper provides an overview of role of trust in e-commerce and attempts to answer the questions such as how the trust can be established between the consumer and online vendor so they can purchase the product through E-commerce. In addition, the finding suggests that perceived security of E- transaction on trust is intervened by perceived privacy and perceived familiarities, and consumer’s trust in E- transaction is considerably related with the reliability of E- vendors. Also consumer’s trust is negatively related with perceived risks in E- transactions. However, there is no important impact from perceived privacy, security and familiarities to the trust in E- transactions. Keywords: WWW- World Wide Web,Trust, E-Commerce,

Empirical Investigation of Impact of Organizational Culture, Prosocial Behavior and Organizational Trust on Sharing Mistakes in Knowledge Management Systems

This study is a part of a larger study which looked at the knowledge sharing behavior of employees within work organizations. In this paper we look at the sharing behavior related to a specific type of knowledge: knowledge created through learning from one’s mistake. Learning through mistakes can be potentially a very good way of learning and thus can generate great deal of public good. However, employees may not feel like sharing their mistakes with others as it may generate negative personal gains for them. This study therefore looked at the conditions when employees may feel like sharing their mistakes. The study found that group culture, developmental culture, rational culture, organizational trust and individual’s general compliance behavior support employees mistake sharing. Hierarchical culture is negatively related and individual’s helping behavior is not related to mistake sharing

Performance Evaluation of Quality of Service in Proposed Routing Protocol

Due to the recent developments in the hand-held devices and communication enhancements in wireless networks like mobile ad-hoc network (MANETs), these networks are targeted for providing real time services like video streaming, video conferencing, VOIP etc. Although, the basic design of MANETs is not fully capable to provide multimedia services, therefore some sort of quality-of-service is required in these networks. In this paper, I have proposed a delay-aware routing protocol that discovers routes for a source-destination pair with the application provided delay constraints. The methodology is focused on using a reactive routing approach, AODV, to discover the delay-aware routes during its route discovery phase. In this way, we are able to provide the QoS to the requesting application in terms of delay metric

Formalization, Citizenship and the Challenges of Self-Governance in Mumbai's Slum Relocation Colonies

The city of Mumbai is engaged in large-scale urban restructuring efforts. Foundational to these is the demolition of many of the city's informal settlements and the relocation of residents to newly built housing complexes. Often discussed in terms of dispossession, this process is also one of formalization, with spatial, economic, cultural and sociopolitical implications. This article focuses on formalization's sociopolitical dimension, entailing the registration of residents and the establishment of formal governance provisions and new citizenship expectations. The provision of formal housing and recognized housing tenure has, designedly, been coupled with the establishment of official self-governance mechanisms leading to new civic responsibilities and reshaping the experience of citizenship among former slum dwellers. We explore these governance arrangements, the interaction between formality and informal governance processes and how these arrangements impact residents’ perspectives on citizenship. We also identify several challenges to effective self-governance and the ways in which formal and informal processes shape residents’ experiences of community life, citizenship and urban integration. While residents have benefited from some aspects of formalization (e.g. indoor plumbing and codified tenure rights), it has brought additional burdens, and the challenges of self-governance have, for many relocatees, reproduced a kind of marginalized citizenship within formal structures