Explore the vast range of titles available.

The author analyzes the effects of the expansion of broadband Internet access from 1999 to 2007 on labor market outcomes throughout the United States. Recent federal policy programs have allocated $18 billion toward subsidizing the spread of this technology, especially to rural areas. Understanding the interplay between technology, firms, and the labor market is important for evaluating whether additional scarce government resources should be allocated to improve this type of infrastructure. Using models that include county and time fixed effects, the author finds that gaining access to broadband services in a county is associated with approximately a 1.8 percentage point increase in the employment rate, with larger effects in rural and isolated areas. Most of the employment gains result from existing firms increasing the scale of their labor demand and from growth in the labor force. These results are consistent with a theoretical model in which broadband technology is complementary to skilled workers, with larger effects among college-educated workers and in industries and occupations that employ more college-educated workers.

The ability to grasp unknown objects still remains an unsolved problem in the robotics community. One of the challenges is to choose an appropriate grasp configuration, i.e., the 6D pose of the hand relative to the object and its finger configuration. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm that is based on the assumption that similarly shaped objects can be grasped in a similar way. It is able to synthesize good grasp poses for unknown objects by finding the best matching object shape templates associated with previously demonstrated grasps. The grasp selection algorithm is able to improve over time by using the information of previous grasp attempts to adapt the ranking of the templates to new situations. We tested our approach on two different platforms, the Willow Garage PR2 and the Barrett WAM robot, which have very different hand kinematics. Furthermore, we compared our algorithm with other grasp planners and demonstrated its superior performance. The results presented in this paper show that the algorithm is able to find good grasp configurations for a large set of unknown objects from a relatively small set of demonstrations, and does improve its performance over time.

Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL offers backgrounds in information studies, computer science, and sociology.This book is divided into three parts: analyzing social media, NodeXL tutorial, and social-media network analysis case studies.Part I provides background in the history and concepts of social media and social networks.

In the existing farming system, information is obtained manually, and most times, farmers act based on their discretion. Sometimes, farmers rely on information from experts and extension officers for decision making. In recent times, a lot of information systems are available with relevant information on organic farming practices; however, such information is scattered in different context, form, and media all over the internet, making their retrieval difficult. The use of ontology with the aid of a conceptual scheme makes the comprehensive and detailed formalization of any subject domain possible. This study is aimed at acquiring, storing, and providing organic farming-based information available to current and intending software developer who may wish to develop applications for farmers. It employs information extraction (IE) and ontology development techniques to develop an ontology-based information extraction (OBIE) system called ontology-based information extraction system for organic farming (OBIESOF). The knowledge base was built using protégé editor; Java was used for the implementation of the ontology knowledge base with the aid of the high-level application programming language for working web ontology language application program interface (OWL API). In contrast, HermiT was used to checking the consistencies of the ontology and for submitting queries in order to verify their validity. The queries were expressed in description logic (DL) query language. The authors tested the capability of the ontology to respond to user queries by posing instances of the competency questions from DL query interface. The answers generated by the ontology were promising and serve as positive pointers to its usefulness as a knowledge repository.

\"Die vorliegende Abhandlung beschreibt die Untersuchung von Kompetenzen, Technologie und Managementpraktiken (Skills, Technology, and Management Practices - STAMP), die die Nutzung verhaltensspezifischer Fragen als ein Mittel unterstreicht, um die Qualität von Arbeitsplatzmaßnahmen zu verbessern. Solche Maßnahmen führen zu einem besseren Verständnis der absoluten Arbeitsanforderungen im Vergleich zu Skalen mit willkürlichen Einheiten, die außerhalb einer speziellen Studie keine eindeutige Bedeutung haben. STAMP-Maßnahmen zeigen, dass die meisten Angestellten einfache Mathematik für ihre Arbeit nutzen. Zugleich gibt es zwei Gruppen von Arbeitsplätzen im Hinblick auf die Komplexität der erforderlichen Kompetenzen im Bereich Lesen und insbesondere Schreiben. Abgesehen von Managementpositionen und Fachkräften erscheint das absolute Niveau an theoretischen Kenntnissen, das für die meisten Arbeitsplätze erforderlich ist, nicht sonderlich hoch. Ebenso ist die Nutzung von Computern weit verbreitet, wobei die meisten Menschen Computer für eher schlichte Büroarbeiten verwenden als für komplexere Aufgaben; nur wenige Arbeitnehmer nutzen Formen automatisierter Betriebsmittel bei ihrer Arbeit. Fortgeschrittene Methoden zur Mitarbeiterbeteiligung wie eigenständige Teams betreffen rund ein Fünftel bis ein Viertel der Erwerbstätigen. Sehr wenige Arbeitnehmer berichten, dass sie direkt von Outsourcing betroffen sind und die Anzahl derer, die ihren Arbeitsplatz verlieren, weil ihre Aufgaben von neuen Technologien übernommen werden, ist verschwindend gering.\" (Autorenreferat, © Springer-Verlag). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Längsschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 2004 bis 2009. \"This paper describes the survey of Skills, Technology, and Management Practices (STAMP), which emphasizes the use of behaviourally specific questions in order to improve the quality of job measures. Such measures yield better understanding of the absolute levels of job demands compared to items or scales with arbitrary units that lack definite meaning outside the framework of a particular survey. STAMP measures reveal most workers use relatively simple levels of math on their jobs, but there is a bifurcation of jobs in terms of the complexity of reading and especially writing that is required. Aside from managerial and professional occupations, the absolute level of academic skills required on most jobs does not appear to be very high. Likewise, computer use is widespread but most people use computers for fairly mundane office duties rather than more complex tasks; few workers use any kind of automated production equipment on their jobs. Well-developed employee involvement practices, such as self-directed teams, cover about one-fifth to one-quarter of the workforce. Very few workers report being affected by outsourcing and the numbers affected by technological displacement are almost imperceptible.\" (Author's abstract, © Springer-Verlag).

At present, the industry has great challenges for the construction and maintenance of software, in terms of quality, costs and time, for this it is significant to have a methodological framework, which allows the possibility of having effective and practical methods, applying programming techniques from an agile approach, which guarantees the construction of quality code from the beginning of software development. This study analyzes the integration between frameworks SCRUM [1], Django REST framework [2] and Vue.js [3], which are commonly implemented in isolation for the execution of software development projects, and components are also incorporated of the IEEE 830 standard defined for the specification of software requirements [4], and of the ISO 25000 standard for software quality assessment [5]. Likewise, the characteristics of each study framework within the software architecture are analyzed, establishing of traceability between them and obtaining as a result a methodology for the definition of a process map; where each framework is integrated and it is described the procedure for structuring the planning, development and delivery phases. Thus providing a guide for the application of programming techniques from the concept of agility and quality management, from the process of integration of the frameworks analyzed in this study.

\"The crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has been unlike any other the world has experienced, requiring social distancing and restrictions on mobility, and rendering some economic activity impossible. This publication explores and compares the characteristics that have affected the ability of firms, workers and consumers to maintain production, employment and consumption during the COVID-19 crisis, across industries and countries. It takes an analytical forward-looking perspective, considering a broad collection of indicators and evidence to guide policies. The aspects covered centre around topics of business dynamics; productivity; innovation and digital technologies; interconnectedness; inclusiveness; and skills. The report incorporates both a short-term perspective - analysing the supply restrictions and lockdowns that have characterised containment responses - and a medium- to long-term view, focusing on changes in demand that have arisen through recessionary effects and changes in preferences. The purpose of this publication is to provide insights to policy makers in three ways. First, by providing an overview of the different channels through which the crisis has affected firms differently across industries; then, by identifying country characteristics which may mediate these channels and mitigate or amplify the impacts of this and future shocks on the economy; and finally, by exploring systematic differences in the impact across population subgroups and the implications for policy.\" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku).

We propose a standard data format for the interchange of XAFS data. The XAFS Data Interchange (XDI) standard is meant to encapsulate a single spectrum of XAFS along with relevant metadata. XDI is a text-based format with a simple syntax which clearly delineates metadata from the data table in a way that is easily interpreted both by a computer and by a human. The metadata header is inspired by the format of an electronic mail header, representing metadata names and values as an associative array. The data table is represented as columns of numbers. This format can be imported as is into most existing XAFS data analysis, spreadsheet, or data visualization programs. Along with a specification and a dictionary of metadata types, we provide an application-programming interface written in C and bindings for programming dynamic languages.

The progress toward a digital economy in Europe involves boosting ICT use in various environments, such as households and firms. Studies available at the regional level in Europe focus on ICT use by households. This paper sheds light on the digital divide by exploring the differences in ICT use across European regions, investigating simultaneously not only ICT use by households but also by firms. Using canonical correlation analysis, we first explore the existence of regional patterns of ICT use in Europe. Second, we test the influence of regional characteristics to explain ICT use by households and firms. Our results identify a first pattern defined by the regions that combine high levels of both ICT uses. This pattern is explained primarily by the quality of the regional government, knowledge-intensive services and economic development variables. A divide between southern and northern, and western and eastern regions is detected. We also identify a second pattern that captures ICT use by firms (not related to the first), predominantly determined by educational variables and some economic factors. This pattern does not exhibit the geographical digital divide found in the first. The findings show that there are synergies and regional factors explaining the use of ICT both at home and at work at the regional level in Europe that should be considered when designing public policy geared toward encouraging ICT diffusion.

A distributed collaborative engineering has been increased in various types of industries. As a consequence, many CAD application developers have improved web-based designing systems. However, the web applications cannot modify and create 3D data but only visualize a 3D model. This paper describes a web-based collaborative framework for a runner-gate design; it includes an interactive 3D runner-gate designing module, converting module, real-time communication module, etc. The design process involves numbers of steps such as uploading 3D model data file to the STL-converting server, designing guidelines of runner-gate on the web browser, and an automatically generating runner-gate system through server side application programming interface (API). This paper concludes solutions on issues raised by research and development process of the suggested framework.