22 research outputs found
Centering core administration in government 2.0
No full textThis electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2019Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 54-56).Currently, most literature sees 'civic technology' and the digital service units that build them as an answer to the challenge of modernizing governance and delivering social services. My hypothesis is that, contrary to existing literature, greater digitization alone of government services does not strengthen government performance. The reason for this gap between digitization and modernization can be attributed to a variety of conditions -- institutional culture, procurement practices, and unresponsive budgeting, among others. But I argue that the underlying problem is rooted in how digital service units have yet to view their own public employees as in need of service. In the move towards making governance more "user-centered," public interest technologists have forgotten one of government's biggest users: those on the inside. One of the biggest services government provides is a public salary and access to income stability for minorities and women. In addition, improving service delivery requires improving the experience for the person serving. How can we shape a future of digital governance that does not pit our external users against our internal users, particularly when both are seeking the same access to stability and dignity? By recognizing the human qualities of digital transformation, this thesis advocates for digital governance that better engages the administrators, public workers, and 'middle management' who remain core to government operations beneath the veil of digital transformation.by Ayushi Roy.M.C.P.M.C.P. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Plannin
Assessment of 5G RAN Features for Integrated Services Provisioning in Smart Cities
No full textIn a 5G Radio Access Network (RAN), different features are offered as solutions to serve traffic with diverse characteristics and requirements, including flexible numerology, (non-)pre-emptive mini-slot based scheduling and network slicing. In this paper, we present an extensive simulation-based assessment of the relative merit of these distinct 5G features in the context of a smart city environment. We further derive the optimal feature combination and associated configuration which best handles the services related to the smart city environment given their performance requirements. The obtained insights confirm the commonly argued potential of slicing, emphasizing that the optimal configuration of the slice-specific numerology depends not only on the nature of the handled services but also on the selected RAN features. Among these features, non-preemptive mini-slot based scheduling and idle resource sharing reveal significant performance potential.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Network Architectures and Service
Inferring Personality from GitHub Communication Data: Promises & Perils
No full textPersonality plays a significant role in our lives; it does not only influence what we think, feel, and do, but also affects what we say about what we think, feel, and do. In software engineering (SE), it might help in improving team composition through a combination of personalities within a team, and it could help explain work preferences and work satisfaction. Earlier studies in the field of software engineering have focused on extracting personality from developers with the use of questionnaires and automatic tools such as psycholinguistic tests. Psycholinguistic tests infer personality based on the words people use. As taking questionnaires is time-consuming, the interest in automated tools has grown. However, there is a lack of studies comparing different psycholinguistic models on actual SE data to validate to what extent these tools apply to software engineering. In this study, we compare two well-established academical models proposed by Yarkoni and Golbeck et al. and the popular industrial model Personality Insights by IBM. We use the three models to infer personality from comments on open-source projects on GitHub and compare the found scores to a ground-truth obtained through a questionnaire among software developers. In this study, we establish a baseline and compare three models on their performance to this baseline. We show three methods to perform almost equally when mean-centered, indicating the three methods may work on different scales. We show log-transformations to improve LIWC category scores found by reducing the effect of outliers and give recommendations for thirteen preprocessing steps to improve the inference on SE data. We found 600 to 1200 words per person to provide sufficient accuracy while remaining resource-aware and recommend a minimum of a hundred words for all three methods. Furthermore, we do not find enough evidence for discrimination by all three methods for people proficient in English compared to those who found themselves non-proficient in English. We find existing psycholinguistic models to be most useful for software engineering when used on a group or team level. When used on an individual level, one should take into account possible inaccuracies and consider the potentially harmful impact the misuse or misinterpretation of scores may have on an individual.Related dataset 4TU.ResearchData http://doi.org/10.4121/uuid:6b648676-26f4-4eb1-89dc-050810909b3bComputer Scienc
Reflection on Life, in the Light of Mortality Awareness
No full textMortality is the fact of life, yet we as collective human species relate to it in (multidimensional) fearful ways (Cozzolino et al., 2013). Subsequently, in an attempt to proof ourselves from this death induced anxiety and fear, we have adapted to denying or avoiding our mortality to us, thus living in a death-buffer system. (Cave, 2013)However, emerging experimental evidence suggests that if we relate to our mortality such that we do not deny or avoid it, but are aware of it, it can result in human enhancement in many possible ways. It can lead to substantial benefits such as bolstered important positive components of the self, greater well-being, and stronger, personally valued self that is conceived with clarity and that has inner meaning and purpose. Besides that, it can also lead to positive existential growth, enhanced meaning in life and can generate a recalibration and prioritization of life goals (Cozzolino et al., 2013). Hence, it was inferred that even if we as individuals have been living well up till now within the death-buffer system, being able to tweak our relationship with mortality in the possible & appropriate directions can help us leverage its benefits and further the enhancement of our life quality we are living presently. Thereby, it was deemed as a relevant topic to explore, and a promising upcoming opportunity to design for in this project.As mentioned above, there are many possible enhancement opportunities that come forth with mortality awareness. However the one that was identified and finalized for this project (through field exploration) was ‘to evoke reflection on life regarding recalibration of life goals’. Hence, the concept and the final design is an attempt to create such reflection on life in the light of mortality awareness.Design for Interactio
interactive Session for creating awareness of sharing concepts in construction logistics
No full textDue to increasing urbanisation, the basic necessities of housing demands are also on a rise. This leads to increase in construction activities and movement of construction vehicles to and from construction sites. However, the upcoming Green Deal 2025 policy would pose restrictions to the entry of construction vans, the most widely utilized transport for the sector, in the inner city areas. This reverse streams of problems for the sector pose an ardent need to effectively organise logistics in the sector. Even though there are exisiting solutions for tacking these issues in the sector such as use of Construction consolidation centres (CCC) in the sector, their use is limited to the bigger companies in the sector. Meanwhile, its adoption remains largely low due to the dominance of SMEs in the sector that suffer from financial limitations of organising these solutions and an unclear case of business case for them. This project is aimed to explore suitable collaborative sharing solutions for capacity sharing and presenting trade-offs in terms of qualitative and quantitative benefits of the solutions. The project devises an awareness session methodology to create awareness towards openness of these solutions in the chain. The session was evaluated with construction logistics experts and seems to attain its objective of creating awareness for the sharing concepts.Management of Technology (MoT
Assessment of Key 5G RAN Features for Integrated Services Provisioning in a Smart City Environment
No full textThe Fifth Generation (5G) network is expected to support three main service categories namely enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) and massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC), where each service group has a different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements i.e. the eMBB service group has a high throughput requirement, the URLLC service group require very low-latency and highly reliable transmissions and the mMTC service group do not have a strict performance requirement but have massive connection of devices in the network. 5G enables many vertical domains with these three service categories, such as, smart cities. In a smart city environment, there are applications from all three service categories such as massive connectivity of the sensors for waste managements or monitoring environmental conditions, video surveillance along the city streets and many more. This study addresses the problem of managing applications from the three service categories on the same physical network infrastructure at the Radio Access Network (RAN). Two different scenarios, one with and one without an emergency incident, are considered to find the impact of the incident in the network.In 5G networks, many new features are introduced such as, flexible numerology, mini-slot based scheduling, BandWidth Parts (BWPs) and RAN slicing. The key objective of this study is to assess the 5G RAN features in terms of achieving the performance requirements of the considered applications, simultaneously. To do so, different RAN configurations are modelled where, a RAN configuration consists of one or multiple RAN features. The evaluation is done by simulating the different possible RAN configurations. The simulations are performed using an existing 5G system-level simulator which is substantially upgraded with the 5G RAN features and is modified to the considered smart city urban macro-cellular environment and with the considered traffic models for each considered application. To evaluate the performance of each considered application, different performance metrics are defined based on the application requirements. The benefits and/or losses of different RAN features are found and then different RAN configurations are considered with the combinations of RAN features based on the evaluation of each RAN feature. For all different RAN configurations with combination of features, the performance metrics are evaluated and compared with each other to determine the best-performing configurations for the smart city environment, for the scenarios with and without an incident.Electrical Engineering | Wireless Communication and Sensin
Social Media and Social Activism
No full textNowadays, we are connected with our near and dear ones with the help of social media. With the advent and rapid boom of the Internet, social media has eliminated physical and geographical barriers and virtually and we come in contact with a person or a group of people as if two or more people are sitting and talking right next to each other. Imagine, if we can use social media to bring about a change in something, additional to keeping in touch with your family and friends. The answer would be a yes. It would be highly beneficial to use social media to spearhead a campaign or to disclose untold views and stories of anything related. Today, social media has become a primary tool for political and social movements globally. They serve to strengthen the already existing networks of political and social relationships among the masses. It is generally driven by excessive public participation, i.e, more the number of people participate for a cause via social media, the more impactful and successful will it be. There are many ways of social or media activism like publishing censored news on websites, creating effective video and audio presentations, spreading information to the people about the nature and reason for protesting for a cause, and organising campaigns and meetings related to media and communications policies. Often, the main aim of social activism is to change policies of the government that is mostly related to mass media and communication strategies. Social activism is now required by the population for expressing their own views and opinions, in order to bring about a necessary change. With almost half of the countries over the globe having less or no press freedom, according to the rankings made in the Press Freedom Index, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), it is always necessary to garner more public support internally from other areas of a country or externally from other countries, to make the citizens’ voices reachable to the concerned authority. The rise of digital media allows social activists to address this challenge, providing new mechanisms to influence public policy. It is also believed thatthe activists have shaken hands and are supporting with the corporate sectors, in order to influence them with their own decisions. Social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google+, to name a few have been successful for activists and anarchists for spearheading their digital campaigns, most notable being the Arab Spring in 2011, that toppled the dictators of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. Many social activists consider the larger picture – how can they find ways to end injustice and hold the perpetrators responsible for such nefarious activities. Also, they tend to create strong communities which encourage economic, social and psychological health. If we define social justice as the belief in an equitable, compassionate world where difference is understood, valued and respected, then we can see that social activism and social justice are flip sides of the same coin. Social action work is a way to meet the goal of social justice. The use of hashtags in social media enables people online to know more about the nature of the digital campaign and also to suggest ideas and opinions to make the campaign an efficient, effective and a successful one in bringing about a change in the society. With the boom of the Internet, media activism is only going to increase more in the coming years and non-democratic governments, who have curbed freedom of expression, are highly threatening by the wrath of the people, who will ensure that the authority falls out and bite the dust finally, to respect the sentiments of the people.
Eating Smart: Getting the Most Amount of Food
No full textabstract: Cravingz is a web-based application that allows users to learn the maximum number of food items that they can purchase at a restaurant within a defined personal budget. We created two versions of this web-based application and asked 40 users to perform an A/B test to determine which version provides the best user experience in terms of efficiency and performance. Users who participated in this study completed a set of tasks to test these applications. Our findings demonstrate that users prefer a web application that does not require them to input data repeatedly to view combinations for multiple restaurants. Although the version which required reentry of data was more visually-pleasing, users preferred the version in which inputting data was a one-time task
Electricity Generation Utilising Solar Energy: A Bibliometric Review and Prospects for Future Research
Get PDFAnthropogenic global warming, deforestation, and resource depletion have been probably the most important challenges affecting the planet today. To address problems, we\u27ll need to make significant modifications to our power connectivity. The author of this paper demonstrates the effectiveness of using sunlight, a green energy source, whose goal is to provide global power for all applications (electricity, transport infrastructure, heat pumps, and several others). As a consequence, energy is important to both the global economy and everyday life. Notwithstanding the increasing demand and productivity, the electrical power grid has held constant throughout the last 20 years. However, the implementation and use of alternative energy sources of power found to bring a significant effect upon this electricity network. PV systems began as a revolutionary method for generating low-cost power. Solar energy looks to have the potential to assist the world in meeting its rising power needs. Using photovoltaic systems to produce electricity directly from the sun reduces air emissions significantly, preventing the adverse effects of all these pollutants on the environment
An Analysis of The Conflict between the Right to Information Act 2005 and Official Secrets Act 1923 in India
No full textThe 2019 Rafale deal case facilitated the reemergence of an old debate between official secrecy and transparency, which now invites more scholarship with the introduction of the Right to Information Act (RTI Act 2005). The legislation intends to maximise the dissemination of information kept by public authorities, with only limited exceptions where it can be withheld. With such a profound impact on how information should be handled by public authorities, the governmental obsession with the colonial Official Secrets Act 1923 (OSA 1923) attracts scrutiny. Unlike the RTI Act 2005, which streamlines the framework on what and how information with the government can be made available, the OSA 1923, which is concerned with the regulation of official secrets in the country, is silent on the limits of withholding. Under the colonial framework, the government is empowered to classify without exception, criminalise any wrongful disclosure (sensitive or not), and minimise transparency otherwise aimed at under the RTI Act 2005. It is time that the OSA 1923 is harmonised with the RTI Act 2005, with its glaring inconsistencies. In this paper, the author argues that the OSA 1923 has become obsolete and should be harmonised with the RTI Act 2005 to prevent the dilution of the latter.
