Using Q-methodology to study the metaphors of consumption for mobile phone users

Even before business has really come to grips with the intricacies of incorporating emarketing and e-commerce into their organisational strategies, they are now being encouraged to make significant investments in developing capabilities for mobile phone marketing. Fuelled once again by huge profit predictions reminiscent of the mid-1990s when speaking of e-commerce (Anckar and D’Incau 2002) marketers are tapping into this mobility. So, instead of having to drive consumers to web sites through the ‘sit and search’ context, marketers are now exploring ways to develop strategies to deliver relevant and timely information in a ‘roam and receive’ context directly to their potential customers anywhere, anytime, any place (Mort and Drennan 2002).

Farming under constrained budgets: Practices of agricultural credit users in central Lombok, Indonesia

There has been a long dependency on credit by Indonesian farmers as a result of the lack of capital to apply proper farming practices. This paper describes the farming activities applied by agricultural credit users in Central Lombok, Indonesia. A survey was conducted during July 2001- March 2002 of 65 farmers making use of government or private credit in three villages within the Regency. Data from the farmers were collected using face-to-face, semi-structured interviews. Survey results indicated that on average, farmers had some 20 years experience of farming, were aged 40 years, but lacked of formal education. Their main asset was cropping land with average landholding of 0.69 ha. As a consequence of their capital constraints, farmers were commonly making use of credit to finance their farming activities, including both production of rice as the main crop and secondary crops. Farmers generally applied less than recommended amount of inputs in their farming practices, since the amount of credit they obtained was limited. As a result, their farms become less productive and their repayment capability of loans diminished. Of 65 farmers interviewed, 54 could earn extra income by engaging in a variety of non-farm activities, which contributed on average some 36% to family incomes of over Rp 5 million (A$ 1 thousand). The average credit repayment rate made by agricultural producers was 60%. The repayment made did not always reflect farm production capacity, being sometimes supported by other borrowings. The greater role of credit is not in increasing agricultural production or improving farmers’ income, but in helping them to sustain farm production and their living. Farmers need a bigger amount of credit to make an impact on their livelihood. This should be accompanied by extension services for farmers to enable better use of credit and to change their attitude towards it. As well, farmers require to be equipped with technical and market skills to run a business. Interdisciplinarity, holistic analysis, and an expansion of traditional ‘agricultural’ interests to embrace the span of interests included in rural livelihood, are each critical features of revision of the existing system.

The use of complementary and alternative therapies by patients with cancer

The aim of this research was to assess the prevalence and predictors of complementary and alternative therapy (CAT) use among cancer patients in Australia. A total of 1492 cancer patients attending nine major public cancer treatment centers in New South Wales, Australia, were asked to complete the Supportive Care Needs Survey. Of the 1354 consenting patients, 888 (65%) returned a completed survey. This article reports the secondary analyses of the survey data, specifically focusing on CAT use. For all cancers, 17.1% of patients were using at least one CAT. The two main demographic characteristics of CAT users were gender and age, where females were more likely to use CAT than males and that CAT use declined as age increased. Time since diagnosis was identified as the only significant clinical predictor of CAT use, where CAT use increased with time until 5 years since diagnosis. Our research shows that herbal treatments and naturopathy are the most popular CAT used by cancer patients (constituting over 30% of all CAT use recorded). The use of CAT among cancer patients is a significant issue in cancer care, especially considering the potential interactions between CAT and conventional medicines. Given that many cancer patients may not be aware of potential risks associated with these interactions it is important that oncologists and others involved in cancer patient care are informed about CAT and its use amongst their patients.

Making Fedora easier to implement with Fez: A free open source content model and workflow management front-end to Fedora

The University of Queensland, Australia has developed Fez, a world-leading user-interface and management system for Fedora-based institutional repositories, which bridges the gap between a repository and users. Christiaan Kortekaas, Andrew Bennett and Keith Webster will review this open source software that gives institutions the power to create a comprehensive repository solution without the hassle..

MBCNS2 Example Book

MBCNS2 is a small collection of programs for the simulation of transient two-dimensional (or axisymmetric) flows. It is part of the larger collection of compressible flow simulation codes found at http://www.mech.uq.edu.au/cfcfd/. This manual is a collection of example simulations: scripts, results and commentary. It may be convenient for new users of the code to identify an example close to the situation that they wish to model and then adapt the scripts for that example.

Spectral peak resolution and speech recognition in quiet: Normal hearing, hearing impaired and cochlear implant listeners

Spectral peak resolution was investigated in normal hearing (NH), hearing impaired (HI), and cochlear implant (CI) listeners. The task involved discriminating between two rippled noise stimuli in which the frequency positions of the log-spaced peaks and valleys were interchanged. The ripple spacing was varied adaptively from 0.13 to 11.31 ripples/octave, and the minimum ripple spacing at which a reversal in peak and trough positions could be detected was determined as the spectral peak resolution threshold for each listener. Spectral peak resolution was best, on average, in NH listeners, poorest in CI listeners, and intermediate for HI listeners. There was a significant relationship between spectral peak resolution and both vowel and consonant recognition in quiet across the three listener groups. The results indicate that the degree of spectral peak resolution required for accurate vowel and consonant recognition in quiet backgrounds is around 4 ripples/octave, and that spectral peak resolution poorer than around 1–2 ripples/octave may result in highly degraded speech recognition. These results suggest that efforts to improve spectral peak resolution for HI and CI users may lead to improved speech recognition

Speech recognition in noise for cochlear implant listeners: Benefits of residual hearing

The purpose of this study was to explore the potential advantages, both theoretical and applied, of preserving low-frequency acoustic hearing in cochlear implant patients. Several hypotheses are presented that predict that residual low-frequency acoustic hearing along with electric stimulation for high frequencies will provide an advantage over traditional long-electrode cochlear implants for the recognition of speech in competing backgrounds. A simulation experiment in normal-hearing subjects demonstrated a clear advantage for preserving low-frequency residual acoustic hearing for speech recognition in a background of other talkers, but not in steady noise. Three subjects with an implanted "short-electrode" cochlear implant and preserved low-frequency acoustic hearing were also tested on speech recognition in the same competing backgrounds and compared to a larger group of traditional cochlear implant users. Each of the three short-electrode subjects performed better than any of the traditional long-electrode implant subjects for speech recognition in a background of other talkers, but not in steady noise, in general agreement with the simulation studies. When compared to a subgroup of traditional implant users matched according to speech recognition ability in quiet, the short-electrode patients showed a 9-dB advantage in the multitalker background. These experiments provide strong preliminary support for retaining residual low-frequency acoustic hearing in cochlear implant patients. The results are consistent with the idea that better perception of voice pitch, which can aid in separating voices in a background of other talkers, was responsible for this advantage.

Proof Explanation in the DR-DEVICE System

Trust is a vital feature for Semantic Web: If users (humans and agents) are to use and integrate system answers, they must trust them. Thus, systems should be able to explain their actions, sources, and beliefs, and this issue is the topic of the proof layer in the design of the Semantic Web. This paper presents the design and implementation of a system for proof explanation on the Semantic Web, based on defeasible reasoning. The basis of this work is the DR-DEVICE system that is extended to handle proofs. A critical aspect is the representation of proofs in an XML language, which is achieved by a RuleML language extension.