Digital Devices and Digital Culture

Digital devices are now in our pockets and surround us in digital culture, connecting us across the world in real time. Technology continues to bring disruptive innovation to every part of life including education, work, home life, travel, hobbies, communication, news, entertainment, healthcare, and scientific research. The focus of this chapter is an overview of various hardware and software tools that are used for literacy (metaliteracy) with emphasis on choosing the best device for the purpose at hand. As devices are constantly upgraded and evolving, it becomes impossible to predict how long each device, whether smart phone, tablet, or computer, can serve us. More importantly, understanding the basic advantages and disadvantages of current digital devices will allow individuals to adapt and make the best future choices for metaliteracy in a metamodern world.

Author(s):  
Shankar Chaudhary

Despite being in nascent stage m-commerce is gaining momentum in India. The explosive growth of smart-phone users has made India much loved business destination for whole world. Indian internet user is becoming the second largest in the world next to China surpassing US, which throws open plenty of e-commerce opportunities, not only for Indian players, offshore players as well. Mobile commerce is likely to overtake e-commerce in the next few years, spurred by the continued uptrend in online shopping and increasing use of mobile apps.The optimism comes from the fact that people accessing the Internet through their mobiles had jumped 33 per cent in 2014 to 173 million and is expected to grow 21 per cent year-on-year till 2019 to touch 457 million. e-Commerce brands are eyeing on the mobile app segment by developing user-friendly and secure mobile apps offering a risk-free and easy shopping experience to its users. Budget 4G smart phones coupled with affordable plans, can very well drive 4G growth in India.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Plunkett

This manuscript provides two demonstrations of how Augmented Reality (AR), which is the projection of virtual information onto a real-world object, can be applied in the classroom and in the laboratory. Using only a smart phone and the free HP Reveal app, content rich AR notecards were prepared. The physical notecards are based on Organic Chemistry I reactions and show only a reagent and substrate. Upon interacting with the HP Reveal app, an AR video projection shows the product of the reaction as well as a real-time, hand-drawn curved-arrow mechanism of how the product is formed. Thirty AR notecards based on common Organic Chemistry I reactions and mechanisms are provided in the Supporting Information and are available for widespread use. In addition, the HP Reveal app was used to create AR video projections onto laboratory instrumentation so that a virtual expert can guide the user during the equipment setup and operation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-32
Author(s):  
Nandi Syukri ◽  
Eko Budi Setiawan

Business Card is the most efficient, effective and appropriate tool for every business men no matter they are owners, employees, more over marketers to provide information about their businesses. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to bring and manage business card in large numbers also to remember the face of the business card owner. A Business Card application need to be built to solve all those issues mentioned above. The Application or software must be run in media which can be accessed anywhere and anytime such as smart phone. Kuartu is as business card application run in mobile devices. Kuartu is developed using object base modeling for mobile sub system. The platform of the mobile sub system is android, as it is the most widely used platform in the world. The Kuartu application utilizing NFC and QR Code technology to support the business card information exchange and the Chatting feature for communication. Based on the experiment and test using black box methodology, it can be concluded that Kuartu application makes business card owner to communicate each other easily, business card always carried, easy to manage the cards and information of the business card owner can be easily obtained. Index Terms— Business Card, Android, Kuartu, NFC, QrCode, Chatting.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 225-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lulu Zuo ◽  
Ke Peng ◽  
Yihong Hu ◽  
Qinggang Xu

AIDS is a globalized infectious disease. In 2014, UNAIDS launched a global project of “90-90-90” to end the HIV epidemic by 2030. The second and third 90 require 90% of HIV-1 infected individuals receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) and durable virological suppression. However, wide use of ART will greatly increase the emergence and spreading of HIV drug resistance and current HIV drug resistance test (DRT) assays in China are seriously lagging behind, hindering to achieve virological suppression. Therefore, recommending an appropriate HIV DRT method is critical for HIV routine surveillance and prevention in China. In this review, we summarized the current existing HIV drug resistance genotypic testing methods around the world and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of these methods.


Author(s):  
Kavita Pandey ◽  
Dhiraj Pandey ◽  
Vatsalya Yadav ◽  
Shriya Vikhram

Background: According to the WHO report, around 4.07% of the world's population is visually impaired. About 90% of the visually impaired users live in the lower economic strata. In the fast moving technology, most of the invention misses the need of these people. Mainly the technologies were designed for mainstream people; visually impaired people always find an inability to access it. This inability arises primarily for reasons such as cost, for example, Perkins Brailler costs 80-248 dollars for the simple purpose of Braille input. Another major reason is the hassle of carrying the big equipment. Objective: Keeping all this in mind and making technology as their best friends, MAGIC-1 has been designed. The goal is to provide a solution in terms of an application, which helps the visually impaired user in their daily life activities. Method: The proposed solution assists visually impaired users through smart phone technology. If visually impaired users ever wished to have a touched guide into a smart phone, MAGIC-1 has the solution that consolidates all the important features in their daily activities. Results: The performance of the solution as a whole and its individual features in terms of usability, utility and other metrics, etc. has been tested with sample visually impaired users. Moreover, their performances in term of Errors per Word and Words per Minute have been observed. Conclusion: MAGIC-I, the proposed solution works as an assistant of visually impaired users to overcome their daily struggles and stay more connected to the world. A visually impaired user can communicate via their mobile devices with features like eyes free texting using braille, voice calling etc. They can easily take help in an emergency situation with the options of SOS emergency calling and video assistance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
François Stüder ◽  
Jean-Louis Petit ◽  
Stefan Engelen ◽  
Marco Antonio Mendoza-Parra

AbstractSince December 2019, a novel coronavirus responsible for a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) is accountable for a major pandemic situation. The emergence of the B.1.1.7 strain, as a highly transmissible variant has accelerated the world-wide interest in tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants’ occurrence. Similarly, other extremely infectious variants, were described and further others are expected to be discovered due to the long period of time on which the pandemic situation is lasting. All described SARS-CoV-2 variants present several mutations within the gene encoding the Spike protein, involved in host receptor recognition and entry into the cell. Hence, instead of sequencing the whole viral genome for variants’ tracking, herein we propose to focus on the SPIKE region to increase the number of candidate samples to screen at once; an essential aspect to accelerate diagnostics, but also variants’ emergence/progression surveillance. This proof of concept study accomplishes both at once, population-scale diagnostics and variants' tracking. This strategy relies on (1) the use of the portable MinION DNA sequencer; (2) a DNA barcoding and a SPIKE gene-centered variant’s tracking, increasing the number of candidates per assay; and (3) a real-time diagnostics and variant’s tracking monitoring thanks to our software RETIVAD. This strategy represents an optimal solution for addressing the current needs on SARS-CoV-2 progression surveillance, notably due to its affordable implementation, allowing its implantation even in remote places over the world.


Author(s):  
Sara M.T. Polo

AbstractThis article examines the impact and repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on patterns of armed conflict around the world. It argues that there are two main ways in which the pandemic is likely to fuel, rather than mitigate, conflict and engender further violence in conflict-prone countries: (1) the exacerbating effect of COVID-19 on the underlying root causes of conflict and (2) the exploitation of the crisis by governments and non-state actors who have used the coronavirus to gain political advantage and territorial control. The article uses data collected in real-time by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) and the Johns Hopkins University to illustrate the unfolding and spatial distribution of conflict events before and during the pandemic and combine this with three brief case studies of Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Libya. Descriptive evidence shows how levels of violence have remained unabated or even escalated during the first five months of the pandemic and how COVID-19-related social unrest has spread beyond conflict-affected countries.


npj Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos C. Kyriakidis ◽  
Andrés López-Cortés ◽  
Eduardo Vásconez González ◽  
Alejandra Barreto Grimaldos ◽  
Esteban Ortiz Prado

AbstractThe new SARS-CoV-2 virus is an RNA virus that belongs to the Coronaviridae family and causes COVID-19 disease. The newly sequenced virus appears to originate in China and rapidly spread throughout the world, becoming a pandemic that, until January 5th, 2021, has caused more than 1,866,000 deaths. Hence, laboratories worldwide are developing an effective vaccine against this disease, which will be essential to reduce morbidity and mortality. Currently, there more than 64 vaccine candidates, most of them aiming to induce neutralizing antibodies against the spike protein (S). These antibodies will prevent uptake through the human ACE-2 receptor, thereby limiting viral entrance. Different vaccine platforms are being used for vaccine development, each one presenting several advantages and disadvantages. Thus far, thirteen vaccine candidates are being tested in Phase 3 clinical trials; therefore, it is closer to receiving approval or authorization for large-scale immunizations.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6-7 ◽  
pp. 783-789
Author(s):  
Jian Feng Dong ◽  
Tian Yang Dong ◽  
Jia Jie Yao ◽  
Ling Zhang

With the rapid development of smart-phone applications, how to make the ordering process via smart-phones more convenient and intelligent has become a hotspot. This paper puts forward a method of restaurant dish recommendation relying on position information and association rules. In addition, this paper has designed and developed a restaurant recommendation system based on mobile phone. The system would fetch the real-time location information via smart-phones, and provide customers personalized restaurant and dish recommendation service. According to the related applications, this system can successfully recommend the related restaurants and food information to customers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 622
Author(s):  
Wan-Ru Huang ◽  
Pin-Yi Liu ◽  
Ya-Hui Chang ◽  
Cheng-An Lee

This study assesses the performance of satellite precipitation products (SPPs) from the latest version, V06B, Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for Global Precipitation Mission (IMERG) Level-3 (including early, late, and final runs), in depicting the characteristics of typhoon season (July to October) rainfall over Taiwan within the period of 2000–2018. The early and late runs are near-real-time SPPs, while final run is post-real-time SPP adjusted by monthly rain gauge data. The latency of early, late, and final runs is approximately 4 h, 14 h, and 3.5 months, respectively, after the observation. Analyses focus on the seasonal mean, daily variation, and interannual variation of typhoon-related (TC) and non-typhoon-related (non-TC) rainfall. Using local rain-gauge observations as a reference for evaluation, our results show that all IMERG products capture the spatio-temporal variations of TC rainfall better than those of non-TC rainfall. Among SPPs, the final run performs better than the late run, which is slightly better than the early run for most of the features assessed for both TC and non-TC rainfall. Despite these differences, all IMERG products outperform the frequently used Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42 v7 (TRMM7) for the illustration of the spatio-temporal characteristics of TC rainfall in Taiwan. In contrast, for the non-TC rainfall, the final run performs notably better relative to TRMM7, while the early and late runs showed only slight improvement. These findings highlight the advantages and disadvantages of using IMERG products for studying or monitoring typhoon season rainfall in Taiwan.


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