Social-Aware Forwarding Improves Routing Performance in Pocket Switched Networks

Several social-aware forwarding strategies have been recently introduced in opportunistic networks, and proved effective in considerably in- creasing routing performance through extensive simulation studies based on real-world data. However, this performance improvement comes at the expense of storing a considerable amount of state information (e.g, history of past encounters) at the nodes. Hence, whether the benefits on routing performance comes directly from the social-aware forwarding mechanism, or indirectly by the fact state information is exploited is not clear. Thus, the question of whether social-aware forwarding by itself is effective in improving opportunistic network routing performance remained unaddressed so far. In this paper, we give a first, positive answer to the above question, by investigating the expected message delivery time as the size of the net- work grows larger

Knowledge Management & Loyalty Programs: A Customer Perception Analysis, the Greek Retail Market

The Food Retail sector in Greece is currently facing a number of challenges. From an economic point of view, the austerity programs imposed in Greece since 2010 resulted in losses of retail sales, alongside with bankruptcies and mergers of retail chains. At the same time, technological development creates an environment for innovation in terms of operations and marketing and offers new opportunities to retailers. Additionally, consumers become more involved and active in the purchasing processes. However, Greek consumers are also experiencing a dramatic decline in their disposable income. The study examines the perception of Greek consumers of several marketing efforts based on Information & Communication Technology Systems (ICT) introduced by a Greek food retailer in Northern Greece. More specifically, it investigates the relationship between ICT related marketing efforts, such as loyalty programs, and analytics regarding food control systems and purchases and consumer characteristics such as gender, age, income, status and family size. The study reveals a number of relationships between marketing efforts and consumer characteristics/segments. However, since the relationships are found to be weak, marketing managers are advised to use advanced analytics systems, such as big data technologies, in order to enhance the efficiency of their marketing strategies and approaches. The weak relationships between the parameters examined indicate that marketing efforts have to focus in several consumer sub segments in order to achieve significant results. The study’s sample population is consumers of one of the top food retailers in Greece. The findings contribute to the literature on the use of ICT on marketing strategies and the use of big data. Furthermore, they have practical implications for marketers in the retail food sector, as they reveal the need for a more focused approach to different consumer groups, in order to increase the efficiency of marketing efforts and to achieve maximum results.     Keywords: knowledge management, loyalty programs, ICT, segmentatio

Limit overturning moment chuck

Limited memory capacity is one of the major constraints in Delay Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks. Efficient management of the memory is critical to the performance of the network. This paper proposes a novel buffer management algorithm, SmartGap, a Quality of Information (QoI) targeted buffer management algorithm. That is, in a wireless sensor network that continuously measures a parameter which changes over time, such as temperature, the value of a single packet is governed by an estimation of its contribution to the recreation of the original signal. Attractive features of SmartGap include a low computational complexity and a simplified reconstruction of the original signal. An analysis and simulations in which the performance of SmartGap is compared with the performance of several commonly used buffer management algorithms in wireless sensor networks are provided in the paper. The simulations suggest that SmartGap indeed provides significantly improved QoI compared the other evaluated algorithms.QC 20150605</p

Ethnic differences in thromboprophylaxis for COVID-19 patients: should they be considered?

© 2021, Japanese Society of Hematology. Thromboembolic events contribute to morbidity and mortality in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). As a result, thromboprophylaxis using low-molecular-weight heparin (LMWH) is universally recommended for hospitalized patients based on multiple guidelines. However, ethnic differences with respect to thrombogenicity have been reported and the incidence of thromboembolic events is considered to be lower in the Asian population. Despite the importance of thromboprophylaxis, bleeding is also a side effect that should be considered. We examine the data relating to potential ethnic differences in thrombosis and bleeding in COVID-19. Although sufficient data is not yet available, current evidence does not oppose routine anticoagulant use and thromboprophylaxis using a standard dose of LMWH for admitted patients regardless of ethnicity based on our review

Process optimisation of rotating membrane emulsification through the study of surfactant dispersions

AbstractIn this study, a rotating membrane emulsification setup incorporating a 6.1μm pore diameter Shirasu porous glass membrane was used to produce oil-in-water emulsions. The processing conditions varied between 0.2 and 1.5bar for the transmembrane pressure and shear rates at the membrane surface between 0.6s−1 and 104.6s−1 were generated. All emulsions consisted of 10vol.% of sunflower oil stabilised by one of four different surfactants (Tween 20, Brij 97, lecithin and sodium dodecyl sulphate) of either 0.1wt.% or 1wt.% concentration. A novel approach for emulsification processing was introduced which incorporates high hydrophilic–lypophilic balance, non-ionic surfactants within the dispersed phase rather than the continuous phase. A reduction in droplet size by at least a factor of 3 for the same formulation can be achieved without significant hindrance on disperse phase flux. This therefore suggests a possible strategy for further process optimisation