A Comparative Analysis of E-Commerce Governance Mechanisms

This research-in-progress compares the effectiveness of various governance mechanisms used by organizations to implement e-commerce initiatives. The research uses economic theories to develop refutable hypotheses regarding the different governance mechanisms. The hypotheses will be tested using an event-study methodology

Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus

Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is characterized by dilated ventricles and a combination of gait impairment, cognition impairment, and loss of urinary control (urgency and incontinence). The only effective treatment for NPH is a CSF shunt; however, only a small percentage of patients ever receive it. The features of gait impairment in patients with NPH are difficult to distinguish from patients of neurodegenerative disorders with motor involvement, such as parkinsonism or dementia with Lewy bodies. CT or MRI imaging is required for the diagnosis of idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus. An Evans ratio of more than 0.3 indicates large ventricles, and a ratio of more than 0.33 indicates very large ventricles, but is not specific for idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus. The international and Japanese guidelines support shunt surgery as effective treatment of idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus, as does the American Academy of Neurology practice guideline. There is a need to provide longitudinal care of patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus after shunt surgery as all symptoms respond well to shunt surgery

Water Use Efficiency and Evapotranspiration of Hybrid Napier (\u3cem\u3ePennisetum purpureum\u3c/em\u3e x \u3cem\u3eP. americanum\u3c/em\u3e) under Semi-Arid Indian Region

Napier bajra hybrid (Pennisetum glaucum x P. purpureum) is a highly valued for its abundant quality forage, round the year fodder availability, regenerative ability and suitability to silage and hay making. It yields upto 110-120 t/ha fresh fodder as sole crop. Though, it requires moist regimes for optimum growth, but it can withstand drought for a short spell and regenerate with rains. It contains 8.7-10.2 % crude protein, 28-30.5% crude fibre and 10-11.5 % ash on dry matter basis (Agrawal et al., 2001). The hybrid napier has wider adaptability and is grown all over the country, particularly in milk shed area of Gujrat, Maharashtra and north and central India. Estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) as a function of crop stages is important in determining crop water use for efficient irrigation management. Evapotranspiration loss and the rate of evapotranspiration at different cutting stages indicate the amount of water required at different growth periods for its satisfactory growth and optimum production. Few results in measurement of evapotranspiration and water use efficiency of fodder crops are available (Alvarez and Quiroga, 1992; Pradeep Behari et al., 2003). The water stress in the plant can be quantified by actual evapotranspiration rate, as the level of evapotranspiration is related to the evaporative demand of the air (Doorenbos and Kassam, 1979). However, the information on these aspects for hybrid napier is lacking. In present study we estimate, the water use efficiency and evapotranspiration of the hybrid napier in central India

GANTouch: An Attack-Resilient Framework for Touch-based Continuous Authentication System

Previous studies have shown that commonly studied (vanilla) implementations of touch-based continuous authentication systems (V-TCAS) are susceptible to active adversarial attempts. This study presents a novel Generative Adversarial Network assisted TCAS (G-TCAS) framework and compares it to the V-TCAS under three active adversarial environments viz. Zero-effort, Population, and Random-vector. The Zero-effort environment was implemented in two variations viz. Zero-effort (same-dataset) and Zero-effort (cross-dataset). The first involved a Zero-effort attack from the same dataset, while the second used three different datasets. G-TCAS showed more resilience than V-TCAS under the Population and Random-vector, the more damaging adversarial scenarios than the Zero-effort. On average, the increase in the false accept rates (FARs) for V-TCAS was much higher (27.5% and 21.5%) than for G-TCAS (14% and 12.5%) for Population and Random-vector attacks, respectively. Moreover, we performed a fairness analysis of TCAS for different genders and found TCAS to be fair across genders. The findings suggest that we should evaluate TCAS under active adversarial environments and affirm the usefulness of GANs in the TCAS pipeline.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables, 3 algorithms, in IEEE TBIOM 202

On the Inference of Soft Biometrics from Typing Patterns Collected in a Multi-device Environment

In this paper, we study the inference of gender, major/minor (computer science, non-computer science), typing style, age, and height from the typing patterns collected from 117 individuals in a multi-device environment. The inference of the first three identifiers was considered as classification tasks, while the rest as regression tasks. For classification tasks, we benchmark the performance of six classical machine learning (ML) and four deep learning (DL) classifiers. On the other hand, for regression tasks, we evaluated three ML and four DL-based regressors. The overall experiment consisted of two text-entry (free and fixed) and four device (Desktop, Tablet, Phone, and Combined) configurations. The best arrangements achieved accuracies of 96.15%, 93.02%, and 87.80% for typing style, gender, and major/minor, respectively, and mean absolute errors of 1.77 years and 2.65 inches for age and height, respectively. The results are promising considering the variety of application scenarios that we have listed in this work.Comment: The first two authors contributed equally. The code is available upon request. Please contact the last autho

Aetiological Profile of Optic Atrophy: A hospital based prospective study

Objectives: This study was to evaluateclinical presentations and aetiological profiles of patients with optic atrophy.Methods:The patients had undergone complete ophthalmological examination, i.e. anterior segment examination with the help of slit lamp and posterior segment examination with the help of direct and indirect ophthalmoscopy. Visual fields and colour vision were performed whenever required and in possible cases. CT scan and MRI of the brain and orbits were done to rule out intracranial space-occupying lesions.Results:Mean age of the patients was 47.87±18.21 years.126(63%) patients were males. 146(73%) patients had bilateral involvement of eye. 82(41%) patients had glaucomatous optic atrophy.113(56.5%) had pressure and traction atrophy. Amon them this pressure and traction atrophy had included 74(65.49%) glaucomatous optic atrophy.126 patients had BCVA <6/60-CF 1 mt. Among them, 6/60-CF 1 mt was seen in 63(50%) pressure and traction atrophy and 47(37.30%) consecutive atrophy.Conclusions:Optic atrophy was commonly found in older age male population. Bilateral involvement was commonly seen. Glaucomatous atrophy was the main type optic atrophy. Second common was consecutive optic atrophy. Pressure and traction was the most common aetiological factors of optic atrophy. BCVA <6/60-CF 1 mt was seen in most of the patients. Most of the pressure and traction optic atrophy patients had <6/60-CF 1 mt BCVA. Hence, Ophthalmological counselling, preventive measures, early diagnosis and prompt treatment of aetiological factors are necessary for prevention from optic atrophy. Key words: Optic atrophy, Aetiology, Glaucomatous, Age group, Gende