The Effects of the Quantification of Faculty Productivity: Perspectives from the Design Science Research Community

In recent years, efforts to assess faculty research productivity have focused more on the measurable quantification of academic outcomes. For benchmarking academic performance, researchers have developed different ranking and rating lists that define so-called high-quality research. While many scholars in IS consider lists such as the Senior Scholar’s basket (SSB) to provide good guidance, others who belong to less-mainstream groups in the IS discipline could perceive these lists as constraining. Thus, we analyzed the perceived impact of the SSB on information systems (IS) academics working in design science research (DSR) and, in particular, how it has affected their research behavior. We found the DSR community felt a strong normative influence from the SSB. We conducted a content analysis of the SSB and found evidence that some of its journals have come to accept DSR more. We note the emergence of papers in the SSB that outline the role of theory in DSR and describe DSR methodologies, which indicates that the DSR community has rallied to describe what to expect from a DSR manuscript to the broader IS community and to guide the DSR community on how to organize papers for publication in the SSB

Modeling Internet Diffusion in Developing Countries

Despite the increasing importance of the Internet, there is little work that addresses the degree to which the models and theories of Internet diffusion in developed countries can be applied to Internet diffusion in developing countries. This paper presents the first attempt to address this question through modeling Internet diffusion via a set of variables from social, technical, and environmental determinants. A set of regression analyses and a radar graph are used to analyze the hypotheses. The findings suggest that the factors affecting the Internet diffusion in developed countries do not provide a good fit for modeling Internet diffusion in developing countries. Alternative approaches to modeling Internet diffusion in developing countries are suggested

Annual Report Of Research and Creative Productions by Faculty and Staff, January to December, 2013

Annual Report Of Research and Creative Productions by Faculty and Staff from January to December, 2013

Brain organoids as innovative tool for regenerative medicine

The introduction of the tridimensional (3D) organoids technology is revolutionizing the fields of developmental and stem cell biology and it is emerging as the latest frontier in regenerative medicine for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders, such as epilepsy. The overall objective of my PhD thesis was to set the stage to develop functional hippocampal brain organoid that can be used for regenerative medicine to cure the Temporal Lobe epilepsy (TLE)

Cholinergic Modulation of Synaptic Plasticity in VAChT-Modified Mice

The hippocampus is a region of the brain known for its role in learning and memory. The neural correlate of memory formation is believed to be changes in synaptic efficacy through processes broadly termed “synaptic plasticity”. Synaptic plasticity includes long term changes that increases (potentiation, LTP) or decreases (depression) synaptic strength. The hippocampus receives modulatory cholinergic afferents originating in the basal forebrain. This project investigates changes in bidirectional synaptic plasticity in gene-modified vesicular acetylcholine transporter protein-knockdown (VAChT-KD) mice, which express decreased acetylcholine secretion. Extracellular field recordings were performed on hippocampal slices to characterize synaptic physiology in the CA1- region glutamatergic synapses. VAChT-KD mice expressed reduced basal transmission and activity-dependent LTP, though depression was not changed. Furthermore, acute application of the cholinergic agonist carbachol rescued the LTP deficit. This project demonstrates that decreased cholinergic tone can affect hippocampal synaptic processes and suggests mechanisms by which cholinergic pathways may act on synapse physiology

Biologically inspired computational structures and processes for autonomous agents and robots

Recent years have seen a proliferation of intelligent agent applications: from robots for space exploration to software agents for information filtering and electronic commerce on the Internet. Although the scope of these agent applications have blossomed tremendously since the advent of compact, affordable computing (and the recent emergence of the World Wide Web), the design of such agents for specific applications remains a daunting engineering problem;Rather than approach the design of artificial agents from a purely engineering standpoint, this dissertation views animals as biological agents, and considers artificial analogs of biological structures and processes in the design of effective agent behaviors. In particular, it explores behaviors generated by artificial neural structures appropriately shaped by the processes of evolution and spatial learning;The first part of this dissertation deals with the evolution of artificial neural controllers for a box-pushing robot task. We show that evolution discovers high fitness structures using little domain-specific knowledge, even in feedback-impoverished environments. Through a careful analysis of the evolved designs we also show how evolution exploits the environmental constraints and properties to produce designs of superior adaptive value. By modifying the task constraints in controlled ways, we also show the ability of evolution to quickly adapt to these changes and exploit them to obtain significant performance gains. We also use evolution to design the sensory systems of the box-pushing robots, particularly the number, placement, and ranges of their sensors. We find that evolution automatically discards unnecessary sensors retaining only the ones that appear to significantly affect the performance of the robot. This optimization of design across multiple dimensions (performance, number of sensors, size of neural controller, etc.) is implicitly achieved by the evolutionary algorithm without any external pressure (e.g., penalty on the use of more sensors or neurocontroller units). When used in the design of robots with limited battery capacities , evolution produces energy-efficient robot designs that use minimal numbers of components and yet perform reasonably well. The performance as well as the complexity of robot designs increase when the robots have access to a spatial learning mechanism that allows them to learn, remember, and navigate to power sources in the environment;The second part of this dissertation develops a computational characterization of the hippocampal formation which is known to play a significant role in animal spatial learning. The model is based on neuroscientific and behavioral data, and learns place maps based on interactions of sensory and dead-reckoning information streams. Using an estimation mechanism known as Kalman filtering, the model explicitly deals with uncertainties in the two information streams, allowing the robot to effectively learn and localize even in the presence sensing and motion errors. Additionally, the model has mechanisms to handle perceptual aliasing problems (where multiple places in the environment appear sensorily identical), incrementally learn and integrate local place maps, and learn and remember multiple goal locations in the environment. We show a number of properties of this spatial learning model including computational replication of several behavioral experiments performed with rodents. Not only does this model make significant contributions to robot localization, but also offers a number of predictions and suggestions that can be validated (or refuted) through systematic neurobiological and behavioral experiments with animals

UmobiTalk: Ubiquitous Mobile Speech Based Learning Language Translator for Sesotho Language

Published ThesisThe need to conserve the under-resourced languages is becoming more urgent as some of them are becoming extinct; natural language processing can be used to redress this. Currently, most initiatives around language processing technologies are focusing on western languages such as English and French, yet resources for such languages are already available. The Sesotho language is one of the under-resourced Bantu languages; it is mostly spoken in Free State province of South Africa and in Lesotho. Like other parts of South Africa, Free State has experienced high number of migrants and non-Sesotho speakers from neighboring provinces and countries; such people are faced with serious language barrier problems especially in the informal settlements where everyone tends to speak only Sesotho. Non-Sesotho speakers refers to the racial groups such as Xhosas, Zulus, Coloureds, Whites and more, in which Sesotho language is not their native language. As a solution to this, we developed a parallel corpus that has English as source and Sesotho as a target language and packaged it in UmobiTalk - Ubiquitous mobile speech based learning translator. UmobiTalk is a mobile-based tool for learning Sesotho for English speakers. The development of this tool was based on the combination of automatic speech recognition, machine translation and speech synthesis

In vivo functional human imaging using photoacoustic microscopy: response to ischemic and thermal stimuli

We report results of two in vivo functional human imaging experiments using photoacoustic microscopy. In Experiment 1, the hemodynamic response to an ischemic event was measured. The palm of a volunteer was imaged and a single cross-section was monitored while periodic arterial occlusions were administered using a blood pressure cuff wrapped around the upper arm and inflated to ~280 mmHg. Significant relative decreases in oxygen saturation (sO_2) and total hemoglobin (HbT) were observed during periods of ischemia. Upon release of the occlusion, significant relative increases in sO_2 and HbT due to post-occlusive reactive hyperemia were recorded. Experiment 2 explored the vascular response to a local, external thermal stimulus. Thermal hyperemia is a common physiological phenomenon and thermoregulation function in which blood flow to the skin is increased to more efficiently exchange heat with the ambient environment. The forearm of a volunteer was imaged and a single cross-section was monitored while the imaged surface was exposed to an elevated temperature of ~46°C. Due to thermal hyperemia, relative increases in sO_2 and HbT were measured as the temperature of the surface was raised. These results may contribute as clinically relevant measures of vascular functioning for detection and assessment of vascular related diseases