Community based distribution (CBD) programmes were introduced as a strategy to ensure access of contraceptives to the needy. The strategy is reported to increase contraceptive knowledge and use. Although CBD agents have the advantage of reaching the poor in rural areas, wealth gap does exist even in these settings. The objective of this study was to determine access to information and modern co...

There is increasing interest in context-aware applications, ranging from traffic routing, location-based services, friend finding, context-aware messaging, virtual tour guides, to physical world search. We make three observations: (i) many contextaware applications use knowledge about the individuals (and groups of people), places and objects within a particular place, that is, they are place-b...

This paper outlines the considerations that need to be made when taking steps to identify the disabled population in a given community, as part of planning for a community based rehabilitation (CBR) programme. An overview of the literature and lessons learned, and discussion of important issues is provided. It emphasises the extent of thought and considerations suggested for engaging in the fir...

Virtual communities are becoming increasingly popular, particularly on the internet, as a means for like-minded individuals to meet, share and gain access to the information they are most interested in quickly and efficiently, from other individuals they can learn to trust. The concept of a community of practice or a community of interest can be supported in a virtual community in order to brin...

In this paper we describe Nova, a new Java-based modeling platform that naturally supports the creation of models in the system dynamics, spatial and agent-based modeling paradigms. Nova uses a visual language to express model design, and provides automatic conversion for such models to script form for execution. Nova’s architecture promotes hierarchical design, code reuse, and extensibility th...

To establish a collaborative OLC, the sense of social presence must be created. Social presence is one of the most important factors that helps people actively collaborate, thus increasing sense of belonging and social cohesion to the community. However, the creation of social presence in an OLC can be problematic due to the limitations of the communication media used. Lean media such as asynch...

This article reports upon an initiative to improve the timeliness of occupational therapy home visits for discharge planning by implementing technology solutions while maintaining patient safety. A community hospital in Queensland, Australia, hosted a process evaluation that examined which aspects of home visiting could be replaced or augmented by alternative technologies. Strategies were trial...

Recent years have seen a rapid expansion of electronic trading over the Internet. A wide range of different business models is being used in this process, including auctions, E-Malls and ECommunities. Until now, the existing systems focus on selling from the original producer / issuer to the end consumer. But there are other markets, which are for reselling products. In this situation of resale...

We are interested in the design and evaluation of access control policies for virtual communities, in which an agent can be both a resource consumer as well as a resource provider, and authorization to access resources can be delegated to agents called authorities. We introduce a multiagent model that distinguishes the three roles of consumption, provision and authorization, and to evaluate the...

Rhizodeposition is considered a primary reason for the plant identity effect. However, the detection of distinct rhizosphere bacterial communities (RBC) with different plant species has been variable. The aim of this study was to examine the potential explanations for this variability using three perennial grassland species. In a Kansas field experiment, over two growing seasons, we sampled RBC...