Online Tracking: When Does it Become Stalking?

Online user activities are tracked for many purposes. In e-commerce, cross-domain tracking is used to quantify and pay for web-tra±c generation. Our previous research studies have shown that HTTP cookie-based tracking process, though reliable, can fail due to technical reasons, as well as through fraudulent manipulation by tra±c generators. In this research study, we evaluate which of the previously published tracking mechanisms are still functional. We assess the e±cacy and utility of those methods to create a robust tracking mechanism for e-commerce. A failsafe and robust tracking mechanism does not need to translate into further privacy intrusions. Many countries are rushing to introduce new regulations, which can have a negative impact on the development of robust technologies in an inherently stateless eco-system. We used a multi-domain, purpose-built simulation environment to experiment common tracking scenarios, and to describe the parameters that de¯ne the minimum tracking requirement use-cases, and practices that result in invading privacy of users. This study will help practitioners in their implementations, and policy developers and regulators to draw up policies that would not curtail the development of robust tracking technologies that are needed in e-commerce activities, while safeguarding the privacy of internet users.fals

An integrated lean and ISO 14001 framework for environmental performance: an assessment of New Zealand meat industry

The aim of this paper is to explore the implementation of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in meat industry for environmental performance and examine a proposed conceptual framework by capturing insights from lean and ISO 14001 experts in New Zealand (NZ). Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a group of consultants (lean and ISO 14001) to evaluate the suitability of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in the meat industry for environmental performance. A conceptual framework from literature has guided this study leading to its further development based on the empirical evidence collected. Findings have illustrated a synergistic positive impact of lean and ISO 14001 implementation as an integrated approach for sustaining environmental performance in the meat industry. A joint implementation programme provides more clarity in aligning ISO 14001 operational procedures with lean tools and techniques for an enhanced environmental performance outcome. The application of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 framework is proposed in this paper, which can help industry practitioners and academia in developing a joint implementation strategy and conducting future research. To the best of author’s knowledge, this study is the first to assess the effective implementation of lean and ISO 14001 as an integrated approach in the New Zealand meat industry.Purpose The aim of this paper is to explore the implementation of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in meat industry for environmental performance and examine a proposed conceptual framework by capturing insights from lean and ISO 14001 experts in New Zealand (NZ). Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a group of consultants (lean and ISO 14001) to evaluate the suitability of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in the meat industry for environmental performance. A conceptual framework from literature has guided this study leading to its further development based on the empirical evidence collected. Findings Findings have illustrated a synergistic positive impact of lean and ISO 14001 implementation as an integrated approach for sustaining environmental performance in the meat industry. A joint implementation program provides more clarity in aligning ISO 14001 operational procedures with lean tools and techniques for an enhanced environmental performance outcome. Practical implications The application of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 framework is proposed in this paper, which can help industry practitioners and academia in developing a joint implementation strategy and conducting future research. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to assess the effective implementation of lean and ISO 14001 as an integrated approach in the NZ meat industry.Publishe

Data Quality Challenges in Educational Process Mining: Building Process-Oriented Event Logs from Process-Unaware Online Learning Systems

Educational process mining utilizes process-oriented event logs to enable discovery of learning practices that can be used for the learner’s advantage. However, learning platforms are often process-unaware, therefore do not accurately reflect ongoing learner interactions. We demonstrate how contextually relevant process models can be constructed from process-unaware systems. Using a popular learning management system (Moodle), we have extracted stand-alone activities from the underlying database and formatted it to link the learners’ data explicitly to process instances (cases). With a running example that describes quiz-taking activities undertaken by students, we describe how learner interactions can be captured to build process-oriented event logs. This article contributes to the fields of learning analytics and education process mining by providing lessons learned on the extraction and conversion of process-unaware data to event logs for the purpose of analysing online education data.fals

Gendered objectification of weight stigma in social media: a mixed method analysis

(c) The Author/s. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Australia License, which permits non-commercial use,distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and ACIS are credited.Rising popularity of social media platforms has led to many online exchanges on emergent topics by citizens globally. The growth in obesity rates worldwide has fuelled ongoing obesity-related discussions over social media. This study investigates the existence of weight stigma targeted towards different genders in online discussions. Using a mixed method analysis approach, we examined sentiments and word co-occurrences associated with weight stigma from the data corpus captured from Twitter and YouTube. Using the objectification theory as the underlying theory to examine the experiential consequences, our study reveals many sentiments over online discourses and reports significant gender based differences in the stigmatising content, with more intensity in negative emotions targeting female objectification than males. This study bridges data mining and social construction studies with embedded analytics to share new insights on human behaviours that can help extend our understanding of sentiments that lead to male and female objectification.falseFremantle, Western Australi

A systematic literature review on environmental sustainability issues of flexible packaging: potential pathways for academic research and managerial practice

The purpose of this review is to investigate environmental sustainability issues of the flexible packaging (FP) segment of the packaging industry. Increasingly, waste and pollution caused by FP have become a significant challenge for global sustainable development. Prior research studies have examined a diverse set of environmental challenges associated with FP, albeit, in a fragmented way. There is a paucity of research exploring and synthesizing the environmental burden of FP in an integrated fashion. To bridge this knowledge gap, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify, synthesize, and analyze the environmental sustainability issues of FP utilizing the SCOPUS database. Based on an in-depth critical analysis of selected articles, this paper provides novel insights to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers for developing an improved understanding of environmental issues of the FP sector. This paper promotes academic scholarship and strengthens managerial practice in addressing the environmental sustainability challenges of FP.fals

Effectiveness of a Learning Analytics Dashboard for Increasing Student Engagement Levels

Learning Analytics Dashboards (LADs) are gaining popularity as a platform for providing students with insights into their learning behaviour patterns in online environments. Existing LAD studies are mainly centred on displaying students’ online behaviours with simplistic descriptive insights. Only a few studies have integrated predictive components, while none possess the ability to explain how the predictive models work and how they have arrived at specific conclusions for a given student. A further gap exists within existing LADs with respect to prescriptive analytics that generate data-driven feedback to students on how to adjust their learning behaviour. The LAD in this study attempts to address this gap and integrates a full spectrum of current analytics technologies for sense-making while anchoring them within theoretical educational frameworks. This study’s LAD (SensEnablr) was evaluated for its effectiveness in impacting learning in a student cohort at a tertiary institution. Our findings demonstrate that student engagement with learning technologies and course resources increased significantly immediately following interactions with the dashboard. Meanwhile, results showed that the dashboard boosted the respondents’ learning motivation levels and that the novel analytics insights drawn from predictive and prescriptive analytics were beneficial to their learning. This study, therefore, has implications for future research when investigating student outcomes and optimizing student learning using LAD technologies.fals

Digital divide framework: online learning in developing countries during the COVID-19 lockdown

This article showcases digital inequalities that came to the forefront for online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown across five developing countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan. Large sections of population in developing economies have limited access to basic digital services; this, in turn, restricts how digital media are being used in everyday lives. A digital divide framework encompassing three analytical perspectives, structure, cultural practices and agency, has been developed. Each perspective is influenced by five constructs, communities, time, location, social context and sites of practice. Community relates to gendered expectations, time refers to the lockdown period while locations are interleaved online classrooms and home spaces. Societal contexts influence aspects of online learning and how students engage within practice sites. We find structural issues are due to lack of digital media access and supporting services; further that female students are more often placed lower in the digital divide access scale. Cultural practices indicate gendered discriminatory rules, with female students reporting more stress due to added household responsibilities. This impacts learner agency and poses challenges for students in meaningfully maximising their learning outcomes. Our framework can inform policy-makers to plan initiatives for bridging digital divide and set up equitable gendered learning policies.fals

Automating Systematic Literature Reviews with Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Comprehensive Overview

This study examines Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) in large language models (LLMs) and their significant application for undertaking systematic literature reviews (SLRs). RAG-based LLMs can potentially automate tasks like data extraction, summarization, and trend identification. However, while LLMs are exceptionally proficient in generating human-like text and interpreting complex linguistic nuances, their dependence on static, pre-trained knowledge can result in inaccuracies and hallucinations. RAG mitigates these limitations by integrating LLMs’ generative capabilities with the precision of real-time information retrieval. We review in detail the three key processes of the RAG framework—retrieval, augmentation, and generation. We then discuss applications of RAG-based LLMs to SLR automation and highlight future research topics, including integration of domain-specific LLMs, multimodal data processing and generation, and utilization of multiple retrieval sources. We propose a framework of RAG-based LLMs for automating SRLs, which covers four stages of SLR process: literature search, literature screening, data extraction, and information synthesis. Future research aims to optimize the interaction between LLM selection, training strategies, RAG techniques, and prompt engineering to implement the proposed framework, with particular emphasis on the retrieval of information from individual scientific papers and the integration of these data to produce outputs addressing various aspects such as current status, existing gaps, and emerging trends.fals

Syntactic generation of practice novice programs in Python

Abstract: In the present day, computer programs are written in high level languages and parsed syntactically as part of a compilation process. These parsers are defined with context-free grammars (CFGs), a language recogniser for the respective programming language. Formal grammars in general are used for language recognition or generation. In this paper, we present the automatic generation of procedural programs in Python using a CFG. We have defined CFG rules to model program templates and implemented these rules to produce infinitely many distinct practice programs in Python. Each generated program is designed to test a novice programmer’s knowledge of functions, expressions, loops, and/or conditional statements. The CFG rules are highly generic and can be extended to generate programs in other procedural languages. The resulting programs can be used as practice, test or examination problems in introductory programming courses. 500,000 iterations of generated programs can be found at: https://tinyurl.com/ pythonprogramgenerator. A survey of 103 students’ perception showed that 93.1% strongly agreed that these programs can help them in practice and improve their programming skills

Characterization and Regulation of the Osmolyte Betaine Synthesizing Enzymes GSMT and SDMT from Halophilic Methanogen Methanohalophilus portucalensis

The halophilic methanoarchaeon Methanohalophilus portucalensis can synthesize the osmolyte betaine de novo in response to extracellular salt stress. Betaine is generated by the stepwise methylation of glycine to form sarcosine, N, N-dimethylglycine and betaine by using S-adenosyl-L-methionine (AdoMet) as the methyl donor. The complete gene cluster of Mpgsmt-sdmt was cloned from Southern hybridization and heterologous expressed in E. coli respectively. The recombinant MpGSMT and MpSDMT both retained their in vivo functional activities in E. coli BL21(DE3)RIL to synthesize and accumulate betaine and conferred elevated survival ability in betaine transport deficient mutant E. coli MKH13 under high salt stress. The dramatic activating effects of sodium and potassium ions on the in vitro methyltransferase activities of MpGSMT, but not MpSDMT or bacterial GSMT and SDMT, revealed that GSMT from halophilic methanoarchaeon possesses novel regulate mechanism in betaine biosynthesis pathway. The circular dichroism spectra showed the fluctuated peaks at 206 nm were detected in the MpGSMT under various concentrations of potassium or sodium ions. This fluctuated difference may cause by a change in the β-turn structure located at the conserved glycine- and sarcosine-binding residue Arg167 of MpGSMT. The analytical ultracentrifugation analysis indicated that the monomer MpGSMT switched to dimeric form increased from 7.6% to 70% with KCl concentration increased from 0 to 2.0 M. The level of potassium and sodium ions may modulate the substrate binding activity of MpGSMT through the conformational change. Additionally, MpGSMT showed a strong end product, betaine, inhibitory effect and was more sensitive to the inhibitor AdoHcy. The above results indicated that the first enzymatic step involved in synthesizing the osmolyte betaine in halophilic archaea, namely, GSMT, may also play a major role in coupling the salt-in and compatible solute (osmolyte) osmoadaptative strategies in halophilic methanogens for adapting to high salt environments