The effect of recording situation on the echolocation calls of the New Zealand Lesser short-tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata Gray).

Using a broad‐band recording system (150 Hz‐100 kHz) the echolocation calls of the lesser short‐tailed bat (Mystacina tuberculata) were recorded under three very different situations: free‐flying, flying within a flight cage, and on release from the hand. Calls of bats landing and feeding on a platform in Wellington Zoo were also recorded. Both the lowest frequency and frequency of peak amplitude of calls were significantly affected by the situation under which calls were recorded. Although the calls of free‐flying bats are different from those produced by bats foraging on the ground, it is unlikely that M. tuberculata uses echolocation to locate prey on the ground. No significant differences could be found between the calls emitted by male and female bats, and no consistent relationships were obvious between temporal and spectral call characteristics. There was some evidence to suggest that individual bats could be identified by their echolocation calls.

Human resource management of Indian call centre representatives

This study examines how call centres adopt different types of human resource practices (involvement and control oriented) to manage frontline employees in Indian call centres. Data were collected from 250 call centre representatives to test the research hypotheses. The research model was analyzed using Mplus software. Findings showed that involvement and control oriented human resource practices resulted in more employee exhaustion and disengagement. Involvement oriented HRM had a positive impact on job satisfaction as well as, a positive relationship between employee exhaustion and disengagement. The findings suggest that, while involvement oriented HRM enhances job satisfaction, its implementation comes with a cost, that is, an increase in employee exhaustion and disengagement at work.

Kids, counselors and troubles-telling : morality-in-action in talk on an Australian children’s helpline

This article begins with the premise that morality is an intrinsic, although often invisible, aspect of everyday social action. Drawn from a corpus of fifty audiorecorded telephone calls to Kids Helpline, an Australian helpline for children and young people, we examine one call to show how the young caller and counsellor co-construct ‘morality-in-action’. Ethnomethodological understandings and, in particular, Sacks’ (1992) description of ‘Class 2’ rules and infractions show how an adolescent caller and counsellor collaboratively assemble moral versions of the caller. In puzzling out possible motives, the caller and counsellor can be seen to be attending to the implications of different moral versions of the caller. This attribution of motives is moral work in action, with motives contingently assembled, displayed and evaluated, with such work understood as displays of moral reasoning. The counselling call makes visible the counsellor’s interactional work to support and empower the client. Analysis such as this offers counsellors ways of understanding and making visible their interactional and moral work within helpline call interactions.

The YOU CALL-WE CALL randomized clinical trial: Impact of a multimodal support intervention after a mild stroke

Background Comparison of a multimodal intervention WE CALL (study initiated phone support/information provision) versus a passive intervention YOU CALL (participant can contact a resource person) in individuals with first mild stroke. Methods and Results This study is a single-blinded randomized clinical trial. Primary outcome includes unplanned use of health services (participant diaries) for adverse events and quality of life (Euroquol-5D, Quality of Life Index). Secondary outcomes include planned use of health services (diaries), mood (Beck Depression Inventory II), and participation (Assessment of Life Habits [LIFE-H]). Blind assessments were done at baseline, 6, and 12 months. A mixed model approach for statistical analysis on an intention-to-treat basis was used where the group factor was intervention type and occasion factor time, with a significance level of 0.01. We enrolled 186 patients (WE=92; YOU=94) with a mean age of 62.5±12.5 years, and 42.5% were women. No significant differences were seen between groups at 6 months for any outcomes with both groups improving from baseline on all measures (effect sizes ranged from 0.25 to 0.7). The only significant change for both groups from 6 months to 1 year (n=139) was in the social domains of the LIFE-H (increment in score, 0.4/9±1.3 [95% confidence interval, 0.1–0.7]; effect size, 0.3). Qualitatively, the WE CALL intervention was perceived as reassuring, increased insight, and problem solving while decreasing anxiety. Only 6 of 94 (6.4%) YOU CALL participants availed themselves of the intervention. Conclusions Although the 2 groups improved equally over time, WE CALL intervention was perceived as helpful, whereas YOU CALL intervention was not used.

Study protocol of the YOU CALL - WE CALL TRIAL: Impact of a multimodal support intervention after a "mild" stroke

Background More than 60% of new strokes each year are "mild" in severity and this proportion is expected to rise in the years to come. Within our current health care system those with "mild" stroke are typically discharged home within days, without further referral to health or rehabilitation services other than advice to see their family physician. Those with mild stroke often have limited access to support from health professionals with stroke-specific knowledge who would typically provide critical information on topics such as secondary stroke prevention, community reintegration, medication counselling and problem solving with regard to specific concerns that arise. Isolation and lack of knowledge may lead to a worsening of health problems including stroke recurrence and unnecessary and costly health care utilization. The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness, for individuals who experience a first "mild" stroke, of a sustainable, low cost, multimodal support intervention (comprising information, education and telephone support) - "WE CALL" compared to a passive intervention (providing the name and phone number of a resource person available if they feel the need to) - "YOU CALL", on two primary outcomes: unplanned-use of health services for negative events and quality of life. Method/Design We will recruit 384 adults who meet inclusion criteria for a first mild stroke across six Canadian sites. Baseline measures will be taken within the first month after stroke onset. Participants will be stratified according to comorbidity level and randomised to one of two groups: YOU CALL or WE CALL. Both interventions will be offered over a six months period. Primary outcomes include unplanned use of heath services for negative event (frequency calendar) and quality of life (EQ-5D and Quality of Life Index). Secondary outcomes include participation level (LIFE-H), depression (Beck Depression Inventory II) and use of health services for health promotion or prevention (frequency calendar). Blind assessors will gather data at mid-intervention, end of intervention and one year follow up. Discussion If effective, this multimodal intervention could be delivered in both urban and rural environments. For example, existing infrastructure such as regional stroke centers and existing secondary stroke prevention clinics, make this intervention, if effective, deliverable and sustainable.

Temporal and environmental influences on the vocal behaviour of a nocturnal bird

Temporal and environmental variation in vocal activity can provide information on avian behaviour and call function not available to short-term experimental studies. Intersexual differences in this variation can provide insight into selection effects. Yet factors influencing vocal behaviour have not been assessed in many birds, even those monitored by acoustic methods. This applies to the New Zealand kiwi (Apterygidae), for which call censuses are used extensively in conservation monitoring, yet which have poorly understood acoustic ecology. We investigated little spotted kiwi Apteryx owenii vocal behaviour over 3 yr, measuring influences on vocal activity in both sexes from time of night, season, weather conditions and lunar cycle. We tested hypotheses that call rate variation reflects call function, foraging efficiency, historic predation risk and variability in sound transmission, and that there are inter-sexual differences in call function. Significant seasonal variation showed that vocalisations were important in kiwi reproduction, and inter-sexual synchronisation of call rates indicated that contact, pair-bonding or resource defence were key functions. All weather variables significantly affected call rates, with elevated calling during increased humidity and ground moisture indicating a relation between vocal activity and foraging conditions. A significant decrease in calling activity on cloudy nights, combined with no moonlight effect, suggests an impact of light pollution in this species. These influences on vocal activity provide insight into kiwi call function, have direct consequences for conservation monitoring of kiwi, and have wider implications in understanding vocal behaviour in a range of nocturnal birds

On the efficacy of Fourier series approximations for pricing European options

This paper investigates several competing procedures for computing the prices of vanilla European options, such as puts, calls and binaries, in which the underlying model has a characteristic function that is known in semi-closed form. The algorithms investigated here are the half-range Fourier cosine series, the half-range Fourier sine series and the full-range Fourier series. Their performance is assessed in simulation experiments in which an analytical solution is available and also for a simple affine model of stochastic volatility in which there is no closed-form solution. The results suggest that the half-range sine series approximation is the least effective of the three proposed algorithms. It is rather more difficult to distinguish between the performance of the halfrange cosine series and the full-range Fourier series. However there are two clear differences. First, when the interval over which the density is approximated is relatively large, the full-range Fourier series is at least as good as the half-range Fourier cosine series, and outperforms the latter in pricing out-of-the-money call options, in particular with maturities of three months or less. Second, the computational time required by the half-range Fourier cosine series is uniformly longer than that required by the full-range Fourier series for an interval of fixed length. Taken together,these two conclusions make a case for pricing options using a full-range range Fourier series as opposed to a half-range Fourier cosine series if a large number of options are to be priced in as short a time as possible.

Acoustic feature extraction using perceptual wavelet packet decomposition for frog call classification

Frog protection has become increasingly essential due to the rapid decline of its biodiversity. Therefore, it is valuable to develop new methods for studying this biodiversity. In this paper, a novel feature extraction method is proposed based on perceptual wavelet packet decomposition for classifying frog calls in noisy environments. Pre-processing and syllable segmentation are first applied to the frog call. Then, a spectral peak track is extracted from each syllable if possible. Track duration, dominant frequency and oscillation rate are directly extracted from the track. With k-means clustering algorithm, the calculated dominant frequency of all frog species is clustered into k parts, which produce a frequency scale for wavelet packet decomposition. Based on the adaptive frequency scale, wavelet packet decomposition is applied to the frog calls. Using the wavelet packet decomposition coefficients, a new feature set named perceptual wavelet packet decomposition sub-band cepstral coefficients is extracted. Finally, a k-nearest neighbour (k-NN) classifier is used for the classification. The experiment results show that the proposed features can achieve an average classification accuracy of 97.45% which outperforms syllable features (86.87%) and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs) feature (90.80%).

Application of image processing techniques for frog call classification

Frogs have received increasing attention due to their effectiveness for indicating the environment change. Therefore, it is important to monitor and assess frogs. With the development of sensor techniques, large volumes of audio data (including frog calls) have been collected and need to be analysed. After transforming the audio data into its spectrogram representation using short-time Fourier transform, the visual inspection of this representation motivates us to use image processing techniques for analysing audio data. Applying acoustic event detection (AED) method to spectrograms, acoustic events are firstly detected from which ridges are extracted. Three feature sets, Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), AED feature set and ridge feature set, are then used for frog call classification with a support vector machine classifier. Fifteen frog species widely spread in Queensland, Australia, are selected to evaluate the proposed method. The experimental results show that ridge feature set can achieve an average classification accuracy of 74.73% which outperforms the MFCCs (38.99%) and AED feature set (67.78%).

Community-based social marketing: Effects on social norms

Purpose This research investigates whether application of a community-based social marketing principle, namely increasing the visibility of a target behaviour in the community, can change social norms surrounding the behaviour. Design/methodology/approach A repeated measures quasi-experimental design was employed to evaluate the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation’s Walk to School 2013 programme, which increases the visibility of walking to and from school through programme participation to promote active transportation for primary school children. The target population for the survey were caregivers of primary school children aged between 5-12 years old. The final sample size across the three online surveys administered was 102 respondents. Findings The results suggest that the programme increased caregivers’ perceptions that children in their community walked to and from school and that walking to and from school is socially acceptable. Originality/value The study contributes to addressing the recent call for research examining the relationship between community-based social marketing principles and programme outcomes. Further, the results provide insight for enhancing the social norms approach, which has traditionally relied on changing social norms exclusively through media campaigns.

On the importance of pro-environmental organizational climate for employee green behavior

In their call to action, Ones and Dilchert(2012) discuss several possible individual and some contextual determinants of employee green behavior that await examination by industrial and organizational I–O) psychologists. Although these authors briefly mentioned organizational climate, specifically ethical climate, as a potentially relevant predictor of green behaviors, they mostly emphasized the role of individual difference characteristics and traditional job performance determinants such as knowledge, skills, abilities, and other person factors (KSAOs).

Adaptive frequency scaled wavelet packet decomposition for frog call classification

Environmental changes have put great pressure on biological systems leading to the rapid decline of biodiversity. To monitor this change and protect biodiversity, animal vocalizations have been widely explored by the aid of deploying acoustic sensors in the field. Consequently, large volumes of acoustic data are collected. However, traditional manual methods that require ecologists to physically visit sites to collect biodiversity data are both costly and time consuming. Therefore it is essential to develop new semi-automated and automated methods to identify species in automated audio recordings. In this study, a novel feature extraction method based on wavelet packet decomposition is proposed for frog call classification. After syllable segmentation, the advertisement call of each frog syllable is represented by a spectral peak track, from which track duration, dominant frequency and oscillation rate are calculated. Then, a k-means clustering algorithm is applied to the dominant frequency, and the centroids of clustering results are used to generate the frequency scale for wavelet packet decomposition (WPD). Next, a new feature set named adaptive frequency scaled wavelet packet decomposition sub-band cepstral coefficients is extracted by performing WPD on the windowed frog calls. Furthermore, the statistics of all feature vectors over each windowed signal are calculated for producing the final feature set. Finally, two well-known classifiers, a k-nearest neighbour classifier and a support vector machine classifier, are used for classification. In our experiments, we use two different datasets from Queensland, Australia (18 frog species from commercial recordings and field recordings of 8 frog species from James Cook University recordings). The weighted classification accuracy with our proposed method is 99.5% and 97.4% for 18 frog species and 8 frog species respectively, which outperforms all other comparable methods.

Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on (Re)Creating Lively Cities Through Ambient Technology in Arts, Culture and Gastronomic Experiences

Digital and interactive technologies are becoming increasingly embedded in everyday lives of people around the world. Application of technologies such as real-time, context-aware, and interactive technologies; augmented and immersive realities; social media; and location-based services has been particularly evident in urban environments where technological and sociocultural infrastructures enable easier deployment and adoption as compared to non-urban areas. There has been growing consumer demand for new forms of experiences and services enabled through these emerging technologies. We call this ambient media, as the media is embedded in the natural human living environment. This workshop focuses on ambient media services, applications, and technologies that promote people’s engagement in creating and recreating liveliness in urban environments, particularly through arts, culture, and gastronomic experiences. The RelCi workshop series is organized in cooperation with the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), in particular the Urban Informatics Lab and the Tampere University of Technology (TUT), in particular the Entertainment and Media Management (EMMi) Lab. The workshop runs under the umbrella of the International Ambient Media Association (AMEA) (http://www.ambientmediaassociation.org), which is hosting the international open access journal entitled “International Journal on Information Systems and Management in Creative eMedia”, and the international open access series “International Series on Information Systems and Management in Creative eMedia” (see http://www.tut.fi/emmi/Journal). The RelCi workshop took place for the first time in 2012 in conjunction with ICME 2012 in Melbourne, Autralia; and this year’s edition took place in conjunction with INTERACT 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa. Besides, the International Ambient Media Association (AMEA) organizes the Semantic Ambient Media (SAME) workshop series, which took place in 2008 in conjunction with ACM Multimedia 2008 in Vancouver, Canada; in 2009 in conjunction with AmI 2009 in Salzburg, Austria; in 2010 in conjunction with AmI 2010 in Malaga, Spain; in 2011 in conjunction with Communities and Technologies 2011 in Brisbane, Australia; in 2012 in conjunction with Pervasive 2012 in Newcastle, UK; and in 2013 in conjunction with C&T 2013 in Munich, Germany.

Functional Imagery Training to reduce snacking: Testing a novel motivational intervention based on Elaborated Intrusion theory

Functional Imagery Training (FIT) is a new theory-based, manualized intervention that trains positive goal imagery. Multisensory episodic imagery of proximal personal goals is elicited and practised, to sustain motivation and compete with less functional cravings. This study tested the impact of a single session of FIT plus a booster phone call on snacking. In a stepped-wedge design, 45 participants who wanted to lose weight or reduce snacking were randomly assigned to receive a session of FIT immediately or after a 2-week delay. High-sugar and high-fat snacks were recorded using timeline follow back for the previous 3 days, at baseline, 2 and 4 weeks. At 2 weeks, snacking was lower in the immediate group than in the delayed group, and the reduction after FIT was replicated in the delayed group between 2 and 4 weeks. Frequencies of motivational thoughts about snack reduction rose following FIT for both groups, and this change correlated with reductions in snacking and weight loss. By showing that FIT can support change in eating behaviours, these findings show its potential as a motivational intervention for weight management.