An Interactive Web Meeting System Using Multicast Technology

Using a dedicated line for video conferencing is usually costly. A solution to solve this problem is to use a web-based video conferencing technology. However the existing webbased video conferencing technology needs too much bandwidth which makes two-way exchange of images too slow in the web environment. In this paper, a new web-based video conferencing system is introduced which has overcome this problem by using multicast method. The technique called tunneling which can preserve bandwidth enables this system to do multicast with minimum delay. Thus instead of using dedicated line-based video conferencing, web-based two-way multicasting technology is a better alternative

Critical Social Theory and Teledemocracy

Teledemocracy is the relatively new area of research for IS scholars. Most of current research regarding teledemocracy are from political scientists. People have been discussing about teledemocracy for more than a decade. At first, people thought that there could be a teledemocracy implemented through TV and telephones, which turned out to be not very successful(Bowser, 1998). In recent years computers were introduced in creating teledemocracy infrastructure. By utilizing computers, computer-mediated communication can be regarded as the core concept of teledemocracy. Thus nowadays the prospect for successful administration of teledemocracy infrastructure is bright thanks to the advent of computer and telecommunication technology. Now that teledemocracy has become a viable research topic for IS researchers, we need a fundamental theory on this topic besides conducting case studies of numerous teledemocracy infrastructure implementations

Understanding Cyberspace Addictive Behavior with the Critical Social Theory

This paper presents an application of the Critical Social Theory (GST) in understanding cyberspace behavior. CST can be used as one of qualitative methodologies in IS research. However most prior IS research utilized a very narrowly drawn insight from CST without historical and social context considered. This study tries to apply a general concept of CST for the purpose of providing plausible explanation for cyberspace behavior. CST identifies unjust conditions and tries to find the cause through critical reflection, which eventually might lead to emancipation of people. In this paper, a cyberspace behavior case of a relatively developed country where the Confucius tradition dictating people\u27s physical world behavior is defied in cyberspace is investigated. The case deals with compulsive buying behavior of avatars by the teenagers of the country. Empirical data were also collected and the result shows that teenagers were under immense pressure to excel in academics and inclined to immerse themselves into virtual world of avatars in order to relieve stress. This phenomenon indicates that in the unjust condition of the society, members who have no realistic power to fight back might resort to illusionary emancipation in cyberspace. This paper shows that a general CST can be adopted for an IS research method tackling topics relevant to cyberspace behavior. This should be regarded as a meaningful expansion of application areas of CST in IS research

The Automatic Clustering of A Rule Base for Its Maintenance

This paper introduces a way of clustering a rule base for the purpose of aiding any future maintenance. The automatic clustering is done implementing the Hopfield neural net. Clustering rules should facilitate the understanding of a rule base, which makes the maintenance job easie

Utilizing Mobile Phones for Payment

This study introduces a sound-based mobile payment system. Using a mobile phone for payment for mobile commerce is essential for its success. The proposed system will use sound that is generated from the existing mobile phone and the sound can be recognized by the existing credit card reader of the shop with an installation of an ordinary microphone and simple software to process sound input. This system is a better system since it doesn\u27t require customers to buy a new mobile phone and the cost for the microphone and the software is very low

Trump, turbulence, territory

Two years into the Trump administration there remains heated discussion of what exactly his presidency means for contemporary political trends. Much of this debate has focused on two topics in particular: right wing populism and the return of authoritarian forms of politics associated with the early twentieth century. Here commentators have returned to older themes about the nexus between personality and politics (Gordon, 2017; cf.; Löwenthal & Guterman, 1949). Some of this discussion has centered on the President's psychological state and his fitness for office, while another strand of popular commentary has focused on the mass psychology of Trump supporters (Lindén, 2017). At the same time, there has been an ongoing critique of liberal-left fascination with authoritarianism in the Trump era. As Robin (2018) points out, despite Republican control of all three houses into late 2018, the Trump administration has struggled to pass policies or even appear legitimate in the eyes of its own party. But this is not to say that the renewed focus on the intersection of personality and politics has been irrelevant or misguided. Indeed, Trump's personality has had turbulent effects not only on America's domestic politics, but on territorial configurations in other parts of the world that are germane for political geographic analysis..

Wholeness in fragments: Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism

Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism is mostly composed of fragments-sometimes in the form of lectures, sometimes as notes, and sometimes scribbled on the blank leaves of pamphlets. In his lectures from 1808 to 1819 on literature, Coleridge seldom adhered to the prospectus. In many cases they ended up as fragments. Critics are divided between those who insist that Coleridge's criticism is distinguished by the consistency of its principles and methodology and those who insist on its fragmentariness. The purpose of the thesis is to reveal the wholeness of a Shakespearean criticism that consists of fragments. Some critics such as Thomas MacFarland claim that fragmentation is the distinguishing condition of the Romantic era. According to him, a diasperactive form; that is, an actual incompleteness striving toward a hypothetical unity is common in the art of an era in which the fragment functions as the symbol for the whole. Lee Lust Brown argues that Coleridge hypothesised a textual whole which was both more than and prior to its parts and yet his own writing manifests a degree of literal fragmentation. He takes the fragment as a synecdoche of wholeness and claims that textual wholeness is not so much lost as deferred or displaced in the question of its possibility. Agreeing with these critics, I argue for the wholeness of Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism. In so doing, first of all, I deal with the representative schools of Shakespearean criticism before or contemporary with Coleridge, those of his predecessors and of the German Idealists, because these constitute the two main sources informing Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism. Considering that Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism is closely linked to his poetic principles, I try to define his poetic principles-the concept of nature, organicism, and imagination. I deal with Coleridge's criticism of Shakespeare under three heads; Shakespeare as an artist, Shakespeare's poetic works, and their appreciation. In chapter one, in order to trace the background of Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism, I discuss the two distinctive schools of Shakespearean criticism contemporary with Coleridge; i.e., the British school and the German school. In chapter two, I deal with the poetical principles that form the ground of Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism; that is, the concept of nature, organicism and imagination. In chapter three, I show how a unified ideal of Shakespeare can be drawn from the fragments. In chapter four, I begin by tracing Coleridge's insistence that Shakespeare's drama is an instance, indeed the highest instance, of all art. In chapter five, I deal with Coleridge's appreciation of Shakespeare's work. Finally, I discuss Coleridge's idea of the perfect audience for Shakespeare's plays, the audience that the plays imply. In conclusion I offer a general view of Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism and indicate its crucial place in critical history. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Lateral Orbitofrontal Gray Matter Abnormalities in Subjects with Problematic Smartphone Use

Background and aims: Smartphone use is becoming commonplace and exerting adequate control over smartphone use has become an important mental health issue. Little is known about the neurobiology underlying problematic smartphone use. We hypothesized that structural abnormalities in the fronto-cingulate brain region could be implicated in problematic smartphone use, similar to that has been reported for Internet gaming disorder and Internet addiction. This study investigated fronto-cingulate gray matter abnormalities in problematic smartphone users, particularly those who spend time on social networking platforms. Methods: The study included 39 problematic smartphone users with excessive use of social networking platforms via smartphone and 49 normal control male and female smartphone users. We conducted voxel-based morphometric analysis with diffeomorphic anatomical registration using an exponentiated Lie algebra algorithm. Region of interest analysis was performed on the fronto-cingulate region to identify whether gray matter volume (GMV) differed between the two groups. Results: Problematic smartphone users had significantly smaller GMV in the right lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) than healthy controls, and there were significant negative correlations between GMV in the right lateral OFC and the Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale (SAPS) score, including the SAPS tolerance subscale. Conclusions: These results suggest that lateral orbitofrontal gray matter abnormalities are implicated in problematic smartphone use, especially in social networking platform overuse. Small GMV in the lateral OFC was correlated with an increasing tendency to be immersed in smartphone use. Our results suggest that orbitofrontal gray matter abnormalities affect regulatory control over previously reinforced behaviors and may underlie problematic smartphone use