M. Mestres, A. Sánchez‐Arcilla, J.P. Sierra, C. Mösso, J. González del Río and M. Rodilla
The Bay of Cullera is an example of a multi‐source polluted coastal environment. As a result of the combined discharge from the Júcar River and the sewage from a marine outfall…
Abstract
The Bay of Cullera is an example of a multi‐source polluted coastal environment. As a result of the combined discharge from the Júcar River and the sewage from a marine outfall, the Cullera coastal area presents occasionally severe water quality problems. The enhanced knowledge obtained for the most relevant processes affecting the quality of coastal and estuarine waters will lead to the production of suitable strategies and criteria for a sustainable development of these areas. This, together with the generation of a set of scientifically supported alternative policies directed to improve coastal water management, is the main goal of this paper and of the ECOSUD European research project.
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Serafeim Polyzos and Dionissios Minetos
Non‐marketable natural coastal resources such as beaches, sand‐dune systems and cliff sides have an economic value deriving not least from the various services which they provide…
Abstract
Purpose
Non‐marketable natural coastal resources such as beaches, sand‐dune systems and cliff sides have an economic value deriving not least from the various services which they provide as well as the human demand for consuming some of these services. Coastal defence projects designed to protect the coast against erosion and flooding by the sea have often caused irreversible degradation to coastal natural resources. The main aim of this article is to investigate whether the joint use of cost‐benefit analysis and environmental resource valuation techniques can give any insights toward the sustainable use of the coast. Design/methodology/approach – This paper employs cost‐benefit analysis (CBA) in order to assess the justifiability of carrying out coast protection works in a particular location. This paper also uses contingent valuation methodology (CVM) to estimate the economic values of non‐marketable coastal environmental services. In particular, this paper employs willingness to pay (WTP) technique and try to elicit satisfaction values from beach users by conducting an on‐site questionnaire survey. Findings – his paper argues that there are many advantages in approaching shoreline protection project appraisal both from an environmental as well as an economics point of view. However, when conducting a cost‐benefit analysis the monetary value of environment elicited by contingent valuation techniques has very limited use in it self. It can set the financial budget within which likely coast protection options should be considered but it cannot determine which option is more sustainable. What the decision‐maker needs is to give real meaning to this value by translating it into people's specific preferences and behavioural characteristics. The next step should be setting out pragmatic project characteristics to accommodate the above preferences. Practical implications – Knowledge‐based planning and scheduling as well as informed coastal protection decisions is central to achieving sustainability in the coastal zone. Prior to managing a coastal area, the baseline information needed is the economic value of services that the coastal location in question provides. Originality/value – Generally speaking, the economic value of non‐marketable natural coastal resources such as beaches is closely associated with the way in which society perceives the environment. Both use and non‐use values that are placed upon the environment by individuals have an anthropocentric basis. In this respect, it could be argued that these values often reflect multiple coastal zone uses, conflicts of human interests, levels of environmental education, environmental awareness and environmental appreciation.
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Amina Aouine, Latifa Mahdaoui and Laurent Moccozet
The purpose of this paper is to focus on assessing individuals’ problems in learning groups/teams and should lead to the assessment of the group/team itself as a learning entity.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to focus on assessing individuals’ problems in learning groups/teams and should lead to the assessment of the group/team itself as a learning entity.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, an extension of the IMS-Learning Design (IMS-LD) meta-model is proposed in order to support the assessment of collaborative activities in e-learning. Besides, the software architecture which consists of a set of components forming a web wizard to create, track and assess the collaborative assessment processes is described as to support that extension of the IMS-LD meta-model.
Findings
With the proposed solution we can: make assessment fairer using individual and collective assessment indicators to assign final scores to learners; make an assessment step by step for better individual and collective monitoring activities; and divide the assessment into lighter phases for the correctors. Consequently, the evaluator will have more detailed information about his/her students and the quality of judgment will be better. This could also be useful for the evaluator in order to plan further examinations.
Research limitations/implications
Further experimentations are necessary to test the effectiveness of the proposed system in order to analyze its performances under a massive usage. In addition, the authors plan to use a survey to collect learners’ opinions to know the effectiveness of the proposal in terms of fairness in the assessment of collaborative activities in an online community.
Originality/value
This paper addresses important issues in the educational area, especially assessment of collaborative activities. In fact, to reduce subjectivity and increase fairness in assessing learners in collaborative work, for example, using the peer assessment, in order to try reducing subjectivity and fairly assessing learners. However, while assessing group work, the same mark is attributed for all group members and authors have concluded that it is not the right approach to make a fair and more objective assessment.
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Chih-Ming Chen, Chung Chang and Yung-Ting Chen
Digital humanities aim to use a digital-based revolutionary new way to carry out enhanced forms of humanities research more effectively and efficiently. This study develops a…
Abstract
Purpose
Digital humanities aim to use a digital-based revolutionary new way to carry out enhanced forms of humanities research more effectively and efficiently. This study develops a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) that can semi-automatically assist digital humanists through human-computer interaction to more efficiently and accurately explore the character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts for useful research findings.
Design/methodology/approach
With a counterbalanced design, semi-structured in-depth interview, and lag sequential analysis, a total of 21 research subjects participated in an experiment to examine the system effectiveness and technology acceptance of adopting the ancient book digital humanities research platform with and without the CSNRMT to interpret the characters and character social network relationships.
Findings
The experimental results reveal that the experimental group with the CSNRMT support appears higher system effectiveness on the interpretation of characters and character social network relationships than the control group without the CSNRMT, but does not achieve a statistically significant difference. Encouragingly, the experimental group with the CSNRMT support presents remarkably higher technology acceptance than the control group without the CSNRMT. Furthermore, use behaviors analyzed by lag sequential analysis reveal that the CSNRMT could assist digital humanists in the interpretation of character social network relationships. The results of the interview present positive opinions on the integration of system interface, smoothness of operation, and external search function.
Research limitations/implications
Currently, the system effectiveness of exploring the character social network relationships from texts for useful research findings by using the CSNRMT developed in this study will be significantly affected by the accuracy of recognizing character names and character social network relationships from Chinese ancient texts. The developed CSNRMT will be more practical when the offered information about character names and character social network relationships is more accurate and broad.
Practical implications
This study develops an ancient book digital humanities research platform with an emerging CSNRMT that provides an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface to semi-automatically support digital humanists to perform digital humanities research with the need of exploring character social network relationships.
Originality/value
At present, a real-time social network analysis tool to provide a friendly interaction interface and effectively assist digital humanists in the digital humanities research with character social networks analysis is still lacked. This study thus presents the CSNRMT that can semi-automatically identify character names from Chinese ancient texts and provide an easy-to-use real-time interaction interface for supporting digital humanities research so that digital humanists could more efficiently and accurately establish character social network relationships from the analyzed texts to explore complicated character social networks relationship and find out useful research findings.
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Chih-Ming Chen and Chung Chang
With the rapid development of digital humanities, some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists. However…
Abstract
Purpose
With the rapid development of digital humanities, some digital humanities platforms have been successfully developed to support digital humanities research for humanists. However, most of them have still not provided a friendly digital reading environment and practicable social network analysis tool to support humanists on interpreting texts and exploring characters’ social network relationships. Moreover, the advancement of digitization technologies for the retrieval and use of Chinese ancient books is arising an unprecedented challenge and opportunity. For these reasons, this paper aims to present a Chinese ancient books digital humanities research platform (CABDHRP) to support historical China studies. In addition to providing digital archives, digital reading, basic search and advanced search functions for Chinese ancient books, this platform still provides two novel functions that can more effectively support digital humanities research, including an automatic text annotation system (ATAS) for interpreting texts and a character social network relationship map tool (CSNRMT) for exploring characters’ social network relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopted DSpace, an open-source institutional repository system, to serve as a digital archives system for archiving scanned images, metadata, and full texts to develop the CABDHRP for supporting digital humanities (DH) research. Moreover, the ATAS developed in the CABDHRP used the Node.js framework to implement the system’s front- and back-end services, as well as application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by different databases, such as China Biographical Database (CBDB) and TGAZ, used to retrieve the useful linked data (LD) sources for interpreting ancient texts. Also, Neo4j which is an open-source graph database management system was used to implement the CSNRMT of the CABDHRP. Finally, JavaScript and jQuery were applied to develop a monitoring program embedded in the CABDHRP to record the use processes from humanists based on xAPI (experience API). To understand the research participants’ perception when interpreting the historical texts and characters’ social network relationships with the support of ATAS and CSNRMT, semi-structured interviews with 21 research participants were conducted.
Findings
An ATAS embedded in the reading interface of CABDHRP can collect resources from different databases through LD for automatically annotating ancient texts to support digital humanities research. It allows the humanists to refer to resources from diverse databases when interpreting ancient texts, as well as provides a friendly text annotation reader for humanists to interpret ancient text through reading. Additionally, the CSNRMT provided by the CABDHRP can semi-automatically identify characters’ names based on Chinese word segmentation technology and humanists’ support to confirm and analyze characters’ social network relationships from Chinese ancient books based on visualizing characters’ social networks as a knowledge graph. The CABDHRP not only can stimulate humanists to explore new viewpoints in a humanistic research, but also can promote the public to emerge the learning interest and awareness of Chinese ancient books.
Originality/value
This study proposed a novel CABDHRP that provides the advanced features, including the automatic word segmentation of Chinese text, automatic Chinese text annotation, semi-automatic character social network analysis and user behavior analysis, that are different from other existed digital humanities platforms. Currently, there is no this kind of digital humanities platform developed for humanists to support digital humanities research.
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Pierre Jouan and Pierre Hallot
The purpose of this paper is to address the challenging issue of developing a quantitative approach for the representation of cultural significance data in heritage information…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the challenging issue of developing a quantitative approach for the representation of cultural significance data in heritage information systems (HIS). The authors propose to provide experts in the field with a dedicated framework to structure and integrate targeted data about historical objects' significance in such environments.
Design/methodology/approach
This research seeks the identification of key indicators which allow to better inform decision-makers about cultural significance. Identified concepts are formalized in a data structure through conceptual data modeling, taking advantage on unified modeling language (HIS). The design science research (DSR) method is implemented to facilitate the development of the data model.
Findings
This paper proposes a practical solution for the formalization of data related to the significance of objects in HIS. The authors end up with a data model which enables multiple knowledge representations through data analysis and information retrieval.
Originality/value
The framework proposed in this article supports a more sustainable vision of heritage preservation as the framework enhances the involvement of all stakeholders in the conservation and management of historical sites. The data model supports explicit communications of the significance of historical objects and strengthens the synergy between the stakeholders involved in different phases of the conservation process.
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Dina Frutos-Bencze, Kujtim Avdiu and Stephan Unger
This paper aims to investigate the effect of monetary policy indicators on Latin America’s renewable energy development. The authors conduct several regressions as well as a…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the effect of monetary policy indicators on Latin America’s renewable energy development. The authors conduct several regressions as well as a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to unveil relationships among possible driving factors among others the current account balance, interest rates, money flow and energy trade balance for Latin America’s energy mix.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis was a two-part process. First, the authors used multiple regression to identify if monetary policy affects the development of renewable energy usage at all. To investigate the singular effects of each of the nine macro-economic variables and four energy indicators, collected from the World Bank (2017) database, several regressions were run where the authors regressed each economic indicator on each energy variable. Then, the authors conducted a principal component analysis with all 13 variables.
Findings
The authors found a significant relationship between the clean energy share and governmental spending boosting GDP as well as a significant relationship between governmental spending and the amount of foreign exchange reserves. Declining net energy imports indicate that countries in Latin America are getting more and more energy autonomous for the price of building up huge amounts of foreign exchange reserves.
Research limitations/implications
Renewable energy indicators are not always available for all Latin American countries. Data tend to be scattered. However, sources such as the International Renewable Energy Agency and the World Bank database can be complementary.
Practical implications
The understanding of the effects and impacts of some of the monetary policy related indicators can provide insights for improving renewable energy financing policies. In turn, such policies can have increased influence on renewable energy sustainability and potentially contribute to improving environmental policies.
Originality/value
The specific impact of the selected variables on renewable energy has not been studied. This study attempts to discern the impact of such variables to understand how they influence the renewable energy mix. The insights can in turn inform and modify existing policies and guidelines as well as advise new policy.
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Christian Mauricio Cobos, Octavio Fenollar, Juan López Martinez, Santiago Ferrandiz and Luis Garzón
This paper aims to describe the influence of maleinized linseed oil (MLO), when used as a lubricant, on the thermal and rheological properties of PLA/MWCNTs (polylactic…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe the influence of maleinized linseed oil (MLO), when used as a lubricant, on the thermal and rheological properties of PLA/MWCNTs (polylactic acid/multi-walled carbon nanotubes) and PLA/HNT (halloysite nanotubes) nanocomposites, as a reference for application in 3D printing processes.
Design/methodology/approach
Nanocomposites were obtained by melting in a twin-screw extruder, mixing PLA with MWCNTs and HNTs in different percentages of 0.5, 0.75 and 1 Wt.% for subsequent mixing by the same process with 5 phr MLO, for application in additive manufacturing, as analyzed by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), capillary rheometry, melt flow rate (MFL) and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM).
Findings
The results obtained for thermal characterization by using DSC indicate the non-variation of glass transition temperature Tg = 62 ± 2°C and a melting temperature (Tm) around 170°C. Crystallization temperature dropped by approximately 12°C, which should be kept in mind during the transformation processes. The values obtained by capillary rheometry indicate that the material’s viscosity is reduced by the influence of the MLO plasticizer’s lubricant effect on the PLA’s molecular structure. The melt flow index values confirm a rise of approximately 46% in the flow index and back up the capillary rheometry results. The values obtained were as follows: PLA/0.5 Wt.% MWCNT/MLO 5 phr 54.07, PLA/0.75 Wt.% MWCNT/MLO 5 phr 53.46, PLA/1 Wt.% MWCNT/MLO 5 phr 51.84y PLA/0.5 Wt.% HNT/MLO 5 phr 61.8, PLA/0.75 Wt.% HNT/MLO 5 phr 68.3 and PLA/1 Wt.% HNT/MLO 5 phr 71.2 g/10 min. Apart from the nanocharge distribution, the information obtained from the FESEM shows the existence of a cluster, which could have been avoided by more energetic stirring during the nanocompound manufacturing process.
Social implications
This paper presents an analysis of the insertion of plasticizer in nanocomposites for the application in additive manufacturing processes in fusion deposition modelling (FDM) system.
Originality/value
This is a novel original research work.
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Ebrahim Ghaderi, Kambiz Hassanzadeh, Khaled Rahmani, Ghobad Moradi, Nader Esmailnasab, Daem Roshani and Arian Azadnia
Health is one of the most basic human rights. Self-medication not only results in many risks, complications and mortalities but also remains a massive economic burden on…
Abstract
Purpose
Health is one of the most basic human rights. Self-medication not only results in many risks, complications and mortalities but also remains a massive economic burden on governments’ pharmaceutical budgets, insurance companies and the general population. The importance of self-medication as one of the worldwide health problems, this paper aims to investigate the extent of this problem and related factors in Sanandaj, Iran in 2018.
Design/methodology/approach
This cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted on 838 people who referred to pharmacies in Sanandaj, Iran in 2018. The subjects were selected in 10 pharmacies, 84 in each, randomly. A self-constructed questionnaire was used to collect information about demographic features, prevalence and reasons for self-medication. The data was analyzed statistically by SPSS software.
Findings
The results show a high prevalence of self-medication, 73.70 per cent among people who referred to the pharmacies in Sanandaj during 2018. There was a significant correlation between self-medication and occupation, education level, age groups, chronic disease, smoking or reasons to refer to pharmacies (p < 0.05). Analgesics, antibiotics; non-steroid anti-inflammatory, cold and gastrointestinal medicines were the most commonly used medicines by the subjects. People with headache, cold, infection, stomach pain, toothache and dysmenorrhea were more likely to act self-medication than people with other complaints. Among people who do self-medication, (85.60 per cent) had already experienced satisfactory results after using medicines. Mild symptoms of the disease (74.11 per cent), availability of medicines (72.98 per cent) and easy access to medicine supplies in pharmacies (71.35 per cent) are other reasons for self-medication.
Research limitations/implications
In general, the study had some limitations. One of the limitations was related to the research period i.e. spring and summer. So, it is suggested to conduct studies in other seasons, too. Furthermore, as the time of self-medication was the past three months, there was a probability of recall bias.
Originality/value
The prevalence of self-medication in Sanandaj is high and alarming, implementing educational programs about this issue is extremely required. Health policymakers should take all necessary steps to tackle self-medication efficiently.
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Isto Huvila, Olle Sköld and Lisa Börjesson
Sharing information about work processes has proven to be difficult. This applies especially to information shared from those who participate in a process to those who remain…
Abstract
Purpose
Sharing information about work processes has proven to be difficult. This applies especially to information shared from those who participate in a process to those who remain outsiders. The purpose of this article is to increase understanding of how professionals document their work practices with a focus on information making by analysing how archaeologists document their information work in archaeological reports.
Design/methodology/approach
In total 47 Swedish archaeological reports published in 2018 were analysed using close reading and constant comparative categorisation.
Findings
Even if explicit narratives of methods and work process have particular significance as documentation of information making, the evidence of information making is spread out all over the report document in (1) procedural narratives, (2) descriptions of methods and tools, (3) actors and actants, (4) photographs, (5) information sources, (6) diagrams and drawings and (7) outcomes. The usability of reports as conveyors of information on information making depends more on how a forthcoming reader can live with it as a whole rather than how to learn of the details it recites.
Research limitations/implications
The study is based on a limited number of documents representing one country and one scholarly and professional field.
Practical implications
Increased focus on the internal coherence of documentation and the complementarity of different types of descriptions could improve information sharing. Further, descriptions of concepts that refer to work activities and the situation when information came into being could similarly improve their usability.
Originality/value
There is little earlier research on how professionals and academics document and describe their information activities.