Fitness Tracking Technologies: Data Privacy Doesn’t Matter? The (Un)Concerns of Users, Former Users, and Non-Users

To be concerned about data privacy in the fitness tracking world is apparently not the question of age or fitness level. It also does not necessarily influence the actual use of fitness tracking technologies. In this empirical study, 590 participants from the EU and USA, who are current users, former users or non-users of fitness tracking applications, were surveyed (online) on their sensitivity perception of several data pieces collected with fitness trackers as well as their data privacy concerns. Furthermore, subgroups of different fitness tracking users were detected based on their different privacy unconcerns

Determinants of Household Education Expenditures: Do Poor Spend Less on Education?

Accumulation of human capital is proved to be crucial for economic growth and poverty alleviation. Education is counted as one of the basic services that allows individuals to gain better skills and knowledge which enhances economic growth and is also essential to combat poverty. Although investment in education is mostly financed by the government, most of the families privately contribute to their children’s education. Some of the researches argued that education expenditures depend on the income level of the households. From this point of view, private education can only be afforded by households who are at the higher income groups. Therefore, the focus of this study has twofold: One is to examine the determinants of education expenditure of Turkish households and the other is to reveal the impact of the different income groups on the education expenditures. Household Budget Survey (HBS) for the years 2002, 2010 and 2013 conducted by Turkish Statistic Institution (TurkStat) is utilized for Tobit model estimations. Findings show that higher Household income levels leads to higher educational expenditures. We also find that households with better human capital spend more on their children’s education. For 002, however, income elasticity of education expenditure is higher compare for poorer households compared to the richer ones, which means that poor are more sensitive to income changes with respect to education expenditures. We do not find this for the year 2013

Do Wives’ Earnings have an Impact on Income Inequality?: Evidence from Turkey

The Turkish economy has been experiencing a structural transformation as a result of economic liberalization, especially after the 1990s. Liberalization and integration to the world economy have had inevitable distributional consequences. In that sense, trends in the distribution of income have received substantial attention in recent years. As income inequality becomes an important issue for developing countries, gender (in)equality in Turkey also has gained attention. There exists a vast survey in the literature about the relationship between gender discrimination and inequality. Mainly, more recent research has concentrated on the reasons for gender discrimination in the labor market and its effects on the labor market. Mostly, the gender wage gap is chosen as the preferred way of examining discrimination. However, less attention is given to the effect of married women’s earnings on overall inequality in the literature. As far as we know, for Turkey, there is no research that examines the impacts of wives’ earnings on the income inequality of married couples. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of wives’ earnings on inequality by using a counterfactual distribution of income. In this respect, we believe that this study will fill this gap in the literature. For the empirical work, we use the Income and Living Conditions Survey conducted by TurkStat for the years 2006 and 2011. At first, basic income inequality measures are applied to reveal the changes in the income inequality of married couples’ earnings. The results for the overall inequality level of Turkey show that inequality has declined throughout investigated years. Also, it is found that married household inequality has a declining trend for these years. After using brief (descriptive) inequality indicators, as our aim is to compare the existing distribution in each year to the distribution that would occur if wives had no earnings, all else equal, we develop a hypothetical equation. In order to do that, we calculate the counterfactual distribution for each year by setting wives\u27 earnings equal to zero. Our preliminary results show that, wives’ earning has the highest within inequality for the investigated years. Although a correlation between husbands’ and wives’ earnings exists, we conclude that wives’ earnings are non-equalizing. Also, a coefficient of variation is used to measure the households’ income inequality for the decomposition analysis. By discriminating the impact of wives’ earnings from other sources of income, the results reveal that wives’ earnings have a small contribution to income inequality

Open Innovation in Libraries

Open innovation means the participation of an institution’s stakeholders (customers, suppliers, competitors, etc.) in its innovation processes. With the advent of the knowledge society, the role of libraries is deeply changing towards digital libraries, special services, and the provision of spaces. However, how should libraries realize such knowledge and innovation projects? Concerning libraries, open innovation integrates the views of users (as customers), software houses or design companies (as suppliers) as well as other libraries (as competitors) into the development strategy of a library. Innovation processes include information inflows and information outflows. In this paper, a theoretical model of open innovation in the context of the library institution is presented. We describe results of a survey and introduce paradigmatic case studies of libraries, which deployed open innovation and networked governance. These libraries show examples of innovation processes on a scale from small to large

Ultrasound Guided Percutaneous Nephrostomy For Obstructive Uropathy

We retrospectively evaluated the indications and complications in our patients that were performed of percutaneous nephrostomy applications with ultrasonography guidance.We evaluated 371 all patients whom applied percutaneous nephrostomy with ultrasonography guidance between January 2002 and December 2005 were evaluated retrospectively. The demographic data, cause of the obstruction, minor and major complications of patients were discussed.In this period, totally 455 Percutaneous nephrostomies (84 bilaterally, 287 unilaterally) in 371 patients (were placed in 113 females (30.45 %) and 258 males) were placed. The male (69.55%) patients whom mean age of the patients were 32.17 year (range 5 months to 85 years). In 17 of 371 (3.73%) patients, it was determined with antegrade pyelography that nephro stomy catheters were not in the kidney). Total success ratio was 96.37%. Causes of the obstructions were malignant diseases in for 76 patients (20.48%) and were benign diseases in for 295 patients (79.52%). The major complications were determined twenty-four of patients (6.46%). Major complications included macroscopic hematuria which needs transfusion (7 patients), septicemia (14 patients), and retroperitoneal colon perforation with needle (3 patients) were observed in 24 of the 371 patients. Minor complications were observed in 51 of the 371 patients (13.74 %). All of the minor complications were macroscopic hematuria that resolved in less than 24 hours. In conclusion, percutaneous nephrostomy with ultrasonography guidance were found as an effective and, safe and successful method for the drainage of upper urinary tract in the obstructive uropaty

Challenges for social media: Misinformation, free speech, civic engagement, and data regulations

Social media has arguably brought one of the greatest changes to Internet communication since the invention of the Web but challenges as well. Apart from helping people to have access and to exchange information, social media has also been used to spread misinformation, hate speech, and the user‐generated data is adopted for targeted commercial and political advertising based on personal profiles. Moreover, the most popular applications available are owned by a small number of companies who may have an undue influence on how civic engagement takes place on their platforms. In this panel, four panelists will discuss the following: misinformation and the role of pseudo‐cognitive authorities; hate speech and Germany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzGD); civic engagement and market capture by social media companies; and finally, personal data processing and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We intend to raise interesting questions helping to understand these issues, and to find solutions for the beneficial use of information technologies as well as to scope out all its advantages.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147854/1/pra214505501076.pd

Citizen Relationship Management in den USA und in Deutschland: 311 – 115 – Service Apps

Lebenswerte Städte der Wissensgesellschaft, sogenannte „Smart Cities“, bieten eine Vielzahl an intelligenten Dienstleistungen an, die auf Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (IKT), elaborierte Informationsübermittlung und auf Wissen aufbauen. Im Hinblick auf kommunale Verwaltungs- und Entscheidungsprozesse stellen Bürger einen zunehmend wichtiger werdenden Faktor dar. Die Einbindung der Bürger in diese Prozesse wird durch kommunale Bürgerbeteiligungssysteme (Citizen Relationship Management; CiRM) realisiert. Seit 1996 gibt es in den USA 311-Systeme, die sowohl Informationsanfragen als auch Serviceaufträge innerhalb eines CiRM bearbeiten und über erfolgte Tätigkeiten berichten. Das führt zu Transparenz beim Verwaltungshandeln und beim Bürger zu einer Identifikation mit „seiner“ Stadt und zu vermehrter Mitarbeit. In Deutschland werden – über zwanzig Jahre später – ebenfalls CiRM-Systeme konzipiert und teilweise bereits schon als 115-Systeme oder als Service App eingesetzt. Als Fallbeispiel wird über das System der Stadt Köln und eine Informationsbedarfsanalyse von Bürgern und Touristen Kölns zu einem kommunalen CiRM berichtet

Informational Urbanism. A Conceptual Framework of Smart Cities

Contemporary and future cities are often labeled as “smart cities,” “digital cities” or “ubiquitous cities,” “knowledge cities,” and “creative cities.” Informational urbanism includes all aspects of information and (tacit as well as explicit) knowledge with regard to urban regions. “Informational city” (or “smart city” in a broader sense) is an umbrella term uniting the divergent trends of information-related city research. Informational urbanism is an interdisciplinary endeavor incorporating on the one side computer science and information science as well as on the other side urban studies, city planning, architecture, city economics, and city sociology. In this article, we present both, a conceptual framework for research on smart cities as well as results from our empirical studies on smart cities all over the world. The framework consists of seven building blocks, namely information and knowledge related infrastructures, economy, politics (e-governance) and administration (e-government), spaces (spaces of flows and spaces of places), location factors, the people’s information behavior, and problem areas. \