How the New Web Generations are Changing Library and Information Services

The new Web generations are influencing the minds and changing the habits of software developers and end users. Users, librarians, and information services professionals can interact more efficiently, creating additional information and content and generating knowledge. This new scenario is also changing the behavior of information providers and users in health sciences libraries. This article reviews the new Web environments and tools that give librarians opportunities to tailor their services better, and gives some examples of the advantages and disadvantages for them and their users. Librarians need to adapt to the new mindset of users, linking new technologies, information, and people.     

The role of Internet use and parental mediation on cyberbullying victimization among Spanish children from rural public schools

Cyberbullying victimization research on individual and familial correlates is scarce in Spain. By building upon previous studies, this research examines the role of Internet usage and parental mediation in online victimization. Spanish children from rural public schools (10–12 years; n?=?1068) completed a self-report questionnaire which measured being cyberbullied, Internet use and parental mediation strategies. Logistic regression analyses examined the association among cyberbullying victimization, online activities, intensity and purposes of online communication, and restricting, evaluating and co-using parental mediation. The results show that Internet use, specifically online communication, increases the likelihood of cyberbullying victimization. Conversely, monitoring software installed on the computer, joint creation of rules regarding the time spent online and personal information shared help lessen the likelihood of online victimization. The results are examined in the light of previous research, while implications for practice and future research are considered.     

Living by learning, learning by living: The quest for meaning

In our current age of rapid social, economic and technological change, including urbanisation, globalisation and information overload, human beings are more than ever seeking orientation and meaning. In this situation, education is the potential key to individual empowerment, cultural prosperity, social cohesion and economic development. Arguing for the learning city as the location where a real learning culture is being developed, the author of this article discusses the need to build a new citizenship involving democratic, social, egalitarian (gender-balanced), intercultural and environmental dimensions. Based on a new humanism, this new citizenship should be designed to overcome the exclusion of many in the interests of a few and enable a meaning-friendly evolution in our social institutions. Thus the means of knowing, understanding and being in the world of knowledge, which are essential for liberating the human mind, can be provided to everyone.     

Who says aging is lonely? A phenomenology of Filipino older adults’ experiences of happiness when joining international group tours

Across the literature, travelling has been viewed as a recurring activity for older adults and is driven by a multitude of purposes and reasons. Previous studies have probed touristic activities of older adults however, little is known about their emotional experiences specifically their sense of happiness when joining international group tours, hence this phenomenological study. A qualitative approach was utilized to gather data from a group of 15 purposively selected participants aged 60 years and above. A two-part instrument consisting of a robotfoto and a semi-structured interview was used in this study. Through vertical and horizontal analyses of the field text, this study afforded the development of The Spiraling Model of Aging Filipino Tourists’ Happiness. This model describes aging tourists’ happiness while travelling as a product of Shared Moments, Shared Culture, Shared Memories, and Shared Transcendence. Summarily, findings of this study may provide significant insights to service providers such as hotels, airlines and travel agencies across the globe in developing innovative marketing strategies that cater to this promising age group. Empirically, this study may stimulate further exploration in the field of Cognitive Psychology aimed at adding large-scale data regarding the study of emotions specifically older adults’ happiness when joining international group tours.     

Discrimination of Biomechanically Possible and Impossible Hand Movements at Birth

The development of human body perception has long been investigated, but little is known about its early origins. This study focused on how a body part highly relevant to the human species, namely the hand, is perceived a few days after birth. Using a preferential‐looking paradigm, 24‐ to 48‐hr‐old newborns watched biomechanically possible and impossible dynamic hand gestures (Experiment 1, N = 15) and static hand postures (Experiment 2, N = 15). In Experiment 1, newborns looked longer at the impossible, compared to the possible, hand movement, whereas in Experiment 2 no visual preference emerged. These findings suggest that early in life the representation of the human body may be shaped by sensory‐motor experience.     

Optimal design for manipulation of random consensus over discrete information in networked systems

In distributed and cooperative systems, the network structure is determinant to the success of the strategy adopted to solve complex tasks. Those systems are primarily governed by consensus protocols whose convergence is intrinsically dependent on the network topology. Most of the consensus algorithms deal with continuous values and perform average-based strategies to reach cohesion over the exchanged information. However, many problems demand distributed consensus over countable values, that cannot be handled by traditional protocols. In such a context, this work presents an approach based on semidefinite programming to design the optimal weights of a network adjacency matrix, in order to control the convergence of a distributed random consensus protocol for variables at the discrete-space domain, based on the voter model. As a second contribution, this work uses Markov theory and the biological inspiration of epidemics to find out a dynamical spreading model that can predict the information diffusion over this discrete consensus protocol. Also, convergence properties and equilibrium points of the proposed model are presented regarding the network topology. Finally, extensive numerical simulations evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed consensus algorithm, its spreading model, and the approach for optimal weight design.     

An application of the Udwadia-Kalaba dynamic formulation to flexible multibody systems

For the transient response analysis of a flexible slider-crank mechanism, the coordinate partitioning scheme and the Udwadia-Kalaba formulation are herein compared. The flexibility of the coupler has been modelled by means of a single Timoshenko beam element. The present analytical treatment can be viewed as an extension of the model discussed by Shabana in his textbook.     

Preventive Conservation: People,Objects, Place and Time in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Preventive conservation, with its origins grounded in the material fabric of cultural material, is in a period of transformation, with numerous practitioners, in and outside of the field of conservation, considering its broader and holistic objectives. The conventional tools for the assertion of preventive conservation principles, namely the assessment and management of risks to cultural material from the ‘ten agents of deterioration’, have a central focus on the primacy of physical materials and degradation, with less clear relationships with people, place, and time in their modelling. With a case study focus on collections in the Philippines, this paper argues for a practice of preventive conservation that incorporates a balanced assessment and broader thinking around the contexts of objects, people, place, and time. The case studies of ecclesiastical Church collections, and museum environments in the Philippines, demonstrate how the interdependency of objects, people, place and time forms a holistic and conceptual preventive conservation framework. Through a cyclic renegotiation of these four parameters, this paper speculates on the gaps and opportunities for an inclusive view of preventive conservation that is current and more sustainable.