Documents found
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341.More information
Rapid and unplanned urban expansion in low-lying zones of Pikine and Keur Massar has significantly increased flood susceptibility and exposure. In response, flood susceptibility mapping is a strategic tool for urban planning and risk reduction. This study aims to produce a flood susceptibility map for the departments of Pikine and Keur Massar in Senegal, by combining Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) . Six triggering factors were integrated: rainfall, elevation, slope, drainage density, soil type, and land use. Weighting of the criteria was based on the Saaty method, and the final map was generated through weighted overlay analysis. Landsat-8 and SRTM satellite data, processed via Google Earth Engine, were used to map flooded areas over the period 2015–2024, divided into three sub-periods. The Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) was used to detect flood, while the NDVI helped reduce false detections due to vegetation. The flood frequency map served to validate the AHP-based susceptibility results. Findings show that 56.60% of the study area’s surface exhibits high and very high susceptibility. By overlaying this data with infrastructure layers, the study reveals that 67.46% of buildings and more than half of the road and railway networks are highly flood-prone. This exposure is largely due to unplanned urban expansion into former water retention basins. The results underscore the urgent need for integrated and resilient spatial planning strategies to mitigate the growing flood risks in these densely urbanized areas. The approach provides a replicable framework for flood risk assessment and infrastructure vulnerability analysis in similar contexts.
Keywords: susceptibilité, inondations, analyse par procédé hiérarchique (AHP), Système d’Information Géographique (SIG), Google Earth Engine (GEE), susceptibility, floods, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Google Earth Engine (GEE)
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342.More information
Academic publications are too often ignored by other researchers. There are various reasons: Researchers know that conclusions may eventually be proved wrong; publications are sometimes retracted; effects may decline when studied later; researchers occasionally don’t seem to know about papers they have allegedly authored; there are even accusations of fraud (Cohen, 2011). In this exploratory case study, 10 papers were examined to determine the various ways they were used by others, whether there were cases of reported effects declining, and whether, among those who referenced the papers, there were suggestions that anything in the papers ought to be retracted. Findings showed that all the papers had been referenced by others (337 user publications were found, containing a total of 868 references). Other findings include the following: Single references were far more common than multiple references; applications/replications were the least common type of usage (23 occurrences), followed by contrasts/elaborations (34), and quotations (65); unlike reports regarding publications in the sciences, whether the paper was solo- or co-authored did not affect usage; appearance in a non-prestige journal was actually associated with more usage of some kinds; and well over 80% of uses were in heavily scrutinized sources (journal articles or theses/dissertations). The paper concludes with recommendations to writers about how to avoid producing publications that are ignored.
Keywords: distance education, publishing, interaction analysis
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343.More information
Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are a recent addition to the range of online learning options. Since 2008, MOOCs have been run by a variety of public and elite universities, especially in North America. Many academics have taken interest in MOOCs recognising the potential to deliver education around the globe on an unprecedented scale; some of these academics are taking a research-oriented perspective and academic papers describing their research are starting to appear in the traditional media of peer reviewed publications. This paper presents a systematic review of the published MOOC literature (2008-2012): Forty-five peer reviewed papers are identified through journals, database searches, searching the Web, and chaining from known sources to form the base for this review. We believe this is the first effort to systematically review literature relating to MOOCs, a fairly recent but massively popular phenomenon with a global reach. The review categorises the literature into eight different areas of interest, introductory, concept, case studies, educational theory, technology, participant focussed, provider focussed, and other, while also providing quantitative analysis of publications according to publication type, year of publication, and contributors. Future research directions guided by gaps in the literature are explored.
Keywords: MOOC, Massively Open Online Course, Systematic Review, Connectivism
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344.More information
This paper describes a survey of online learning which attempts to determine online learning providers’ awareness of potential security risks and the protection measures that will diminish them. The authors use a combination of two methods: blog mining and a traditional literature search. The findings indicate that, while scholars have identified diverse security risks and have proposed solutions to mitigate the security threats in online learning, bloggers have not discussed security in online learning with great frequency. The differences shown in the survey results generated by the two different methods confirm that online learning providers and practitioners have not considered security as a top priority. The paper also discusses the next generation of an online learning system: a safer personal learning environment which requires a one-stop solution for authentication, assures the security of online assessments, and balances security and usability.
Keywords: Online learning, security, risk, threat, protection, e-learning
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345.More information
The cross-fertilization functions of translation have never been higher than today, in the digital age. How can we use Information and Communication Technologies for the translation of cultural texts (Humanities, Social Sciences)? In this article, we underline the topological potential of digital collaborative translation, and in particular of the TraduXio project (collaborative digital environment for precise translation), by insisting on its genuine vocation for cultural translocalization. Among the major issues at stake in the internet era of multlingualism and free culture, one could underline the constitution of transnational communities, the promotion of new commons and the valorization of the translators' work.
Keywords: traduction multilingue, traduction littéraire, collaboration, précision, translocalisation, multilingual translation, literary translation, collaboration, precision, translocalization
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346.More information
Libraries have existed for millennia, but today many question their necessity. In an ever more digital and connected world, do we still need places of books in our towns, colleges, or schools? If libraries aren't about books, what are they about? In Expect More: Demanding Better Libraries For Today's Complex World, Lankes walks you through what to expect out of your library. Lankes argues that, to thrive, communities need libraries that go beyond bricks and mortar, and beyond books and literature. We need to expect more out of our libraries. They should be places of learning and advocates for our communities in terms of privacy, intellectual property, and economic development. Expect More is a rallying call to communities to raise the bar, and their expectations, for great libraries.
Keywords: bibliothèques, bibliothéconomie, communauté, apprentissage, innovation, création de connaissances, libraries, librarianship, community, learning, innovation, knowledge creation
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347.More information
Keywords: archive, écriture
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348.More information
This paper discusses the impact on public sector innovation of the two most significant overarching policy developments in the last five years: economic stimulus in response to the global financial crisis, and austerity intended to reduce government deficits. The former's focus on immediacy limited the extent stimulus funds could support public sector innovation. Austerity had a mixed effect: a positive impetus to find new service delivery mechanism, but a negative impact due to the reduction of slack used to support innovation. The paper also presents results of a study of applications to the 2010 Innovations in American Government Awards that replicates the author's 1998 book Innovating with Integrity. The most significant difference observed is a much greater salience of interorganizational partnerships, including those involving shared funding, now than two decades ago.
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349.More information
Based on their personal experiences within the local communities that have rallied against proximity services that Google is attempting to install in many European suburbs, the authors analyze active resistance mechanisms and the role of documentation as a means of political action. This text invites an anthropological understanding of transmission and its current potential for networking technology. Following Habermas, the text highlights the paradox of writing's technologization, in a positivism that drives us towards democracy's paralysis. Anchored in experiences relating to common and resistance writing, this text recursively addresses its hypothesis, as an action-research, that is to say an emancipation of the written via an undoing and an appropriation of writing tool environments (technical, economic, legal), in order to counter their limitations.
Keywords: documentation, wiki, modernité, Jürgen Habermas, technique, recherche-action, théorie/pratique, documentation, wiki, modernity, Jürgen Habermas, technology, action research, theory/practice
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350.More information
Following Edward Snowden's revelations, end-to-end encryption is becoming increasingly widespread in messaging tools—solutions that propose a large variety of ways to conceal, obfuscate, disguise private communications and online activities. Designing privacy-enhancing tools requires the identification of a threat model that serves to agree upon an appropriate threshold of anonymity and confidentiality for a particular context of usage. In this article, we discuss different use-cases, from “nothing-to-hide” low-risk situations to high-risk scenarios in war zones or in authoritarian contexts, to question how users, trainers, and developers co-construct threat models, decide which data to conceal, and how to conceal it. We demonstrate that classic oppositions such as high-risk versus low-risk, privacy versus security, should be redefined within a more relational, processual, and contextual approach.