THE MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS AREA: PROBLEMS, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Management Information Systems has evolved as an area in which teaching and research is common. In order to consolidate advances made to date in this area and to meet new and significant challenges, a number of problems must be overcome. This paper identifies and discusses the problems, suggests methods fortheir solution, and concludes by looking toward future opportunities for the area

Probabilistic Mapping and Spatial Pattern Analysis of Grazing Lawns in Southern African Savannahs Using WorldView-3 Imagery and Machine Learning Techniques

Savannah grazing lawns are a key food resource for large herbivores such as blue wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus), hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) and white rhino (Ceratotherium simum), and impact herbivore densities, movement and recruitment rates. They also exert a strong influence on fire behaviour including frequency, intensity and spread. Thus, variation in grazing lawn cover can have a profound impact on broader savannah ecosystem dynamics. However, knowledge of their present cover and distribution is limited. Importantly, we lack a robust, broad-scale approach for detecting and monitoring grazing lawns, which is critical to enhancing understanding of the ecology of these vital grassland systems. We selected two sites in the Lower Sabie and Satara regions of Kruger National Park, South Africa with mesic and semiarid conditions, respectively. Using spectral and texture features derived from WorldView-3 imagery, we (i) parameterised and assessed the quality of Random Forest (RF), Support Vector Machines (SVM), Classification and Regression Trees (CART) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) models for general discrimination of plant functional types (PFTs) within a sub-area of the Lower Sabie landscape, and (ii) compared model performance for probabilistic mapping of grazing lawns in the broader Lower Sabie and Satara landscapes. Further, we used spatial metrics to analyse spatial patterns in grazing lawn distribution in both landscapes along a gradient of distance from waterbodies. All machine learning models achieved high F-scores (F1) and overall accuracy (OA) scores in general savannah PFTs classification, with RF (F1 = 95.73±0.004%, OA = 94.16±0.004%), SVM (F1 = 95.64±0.002%, OA = 94.02±0.002%) and MLP (F1 = 95.71±0.003%, OA = 94.27±0.003%) forming a cluster of the better performing models and marginally outperforming CART (F1 = 92.74±0.006%, OA = 90.93±0.003%). Grazing lawn detection accuracy followed a similar trend within the Lower Sabie landscape, with RF, SVM, MLP and CART achieving F-scores of 0.89, 0.93, 0.94 and 0.81, respectively. Transferring models to the Satara landscape however resulted in relatively lower but high grazing lawn detection accuracies across models (RF = 0.87, SVM = 0.88, MLP = 0.85 and CART = 0.75). Results from spatial pattern analysis revealed a relatively higher proportion of grazing lawn cover under semiarid savannah conditions (Satara) compared to the mesic savannah landscape (Lower Sabie). Additionally, the results show strong negative correlation between grazing lawn spatial structure (fractional cover, patch size and connectivity) and distance from waterbodies, with larger and contiguous grazing lawn patches occurring in close proximity to waterbodies in both landscapes. The proposed machine learning approach provides a novel and robust workflow for accurate and consistent landscape-scale monitoring of grazing lawns, while our findings and research outputs provide timely information critical for understanding habitat heterogeneity in southern African savannah

Learning from a fool: searching for the 'unmanaged' context for radical learning

Drawing on the existing theorizing of organizational learning from a radical perspective, this article attempts to problematize such notion of learning and position it within the existing organizational contexts informed by divergent types of rationality. The study scrutinizes these frameworks with a view to reflect on the potentiality for radical learning to occur within them. In this vein, the conceptual analysis of non-technical and non-marginal notions, namely, ‘spirituality’, ‘luck’ and ‘wisdom’, in different modes of rationality is conducted. This article demonstrates that since the conceptual inclusiveness is entailed by the specificity of sensemaking mechanisms, which these modes employ, the analysed notions can be approached as their litmus paper. The functionalist rationality types are found to be incommensurate with exigencies of the radical context for learning. In pursue of the conducive area for radical learning, the notions of unmanaged organization and the technology of foolishness provide the theoretical frame for the study, and their joint sensemaking context is discussed using examples. This unmanaged space driven by inclusive foolishness is recognized as one that enables the liminal sensemaking processes conducive for radical learning to occur

An electrochromic ionic liquid: design, characterisation and performance in a solid state platform

This work describes the synthesis and characteristics of a novel electrochromic ionic liquid (IL) based on a phosphonium core tethered to a viologen moiety. When integrated into a solid-state electrochromic platform, the viologen modified IL behaved as both the electrolyte and the electrochromic material. Platform fabrication was achieved through in situ photo-polymerisation and encapsulation of this novel IL within a hybrid sol-gel. Important parameters of the platform performance, including its coloration efficiency, switching kinetics and optical properties were characterised using UV/Vis spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry in tandem. The electrochromic platform exhibits a coloration efficiency of 10.72 cm2C-1, and a varied optical output as a function of the incident current. Despite the rather viscous nature of the material, the platform exhibited approximately two orders of magnitude faster switching kinetics (221 seconds to reach 95 % absorbance) when compared to previously reported electrochromic ILs (18,000 seconds)

Intestinal Tumorigenesis Is Not Affected by Progesterone Signaling in Rodent Models

Clinical data suggest that progestins have chemopreventive properties in the development of colorectal cancer. We set out to examine a potential protective effect of progestins and progesterone signaling on colon cancer development. In normal and neoplastic intestinal tissue, we found that the progesterone receptor (PR) is not expressed. Expression was confined to sporadic mesenchymal cells. To analyze the influence of systemic progesterone receptor signaling, we crossed mice that lacked the progesterone receptor (PRKO) to the ApcMin/+ mouse, a model for spontaneous intestinal polyposis. PRKO-ApcMin/+mice exhibited no change in polyp number, size or localization compared to ApcMin/+. To examine effects of progestins on the intestinal epithelium that are independent of the PR, we treated mice with MPA. We found no effects of either progesterone or MPA on gross intestinal morphology or epithelial proliferation. Also, in rats treated with MPA, injection with the carcinogen azoxymethane did not result in a difference in the number or size of aberrant crypt foci, a surrogate end-point for adenoma development. We conclude that expression of the progesterone receptor is limited to cells in the intestinal mesenchyme. We did not observe any effect of progesterone receptor signaling or of progestin treatment in rodent models of intestinal tumorigenesis

Pentanol isomer synthesis in engineered microorganisms

Pentanol isomers such as 2-methyl-1-butanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol are a useful class of chemicals with a potential application as biofuels. They are found as natural by-products of microbial fermentations from amino acid substrates. However, the production titer and yield of the natural processes are too low to be considered for practical applications. Through metabolic engineering, microbial strains for the production of these isomers have been developed, as well as that for 1-pentanol and pentenol. Although the current production levels are still too low for immediate industrial applications, the approach holds significant promise for major breakthroughs in production efficiency

Nothing left to learn: translation and the Groundhog Day of bureaucracy

Beyond the existing theorizing of translation as a creative disruption in both occupational and semantic terms, the current study explores it critically in the experiential framework of professional translators and as a meaning-making process. Acknowledging the role of translation in creating dialogic and radical climates for learning, the article proposes to explore the other side of this relationship by studying how the limiting of space for translation delimits the possibilities for meaning-creation thus precluding dialogue. In addition to this general point, it ponders the specific aporia of organizationally-embedded adversity of translation in the occupational context (apparently) devoted to semantic labour, namely that of translator’s work. It demonstrates that the rigidity of meaning-making and the inexorableness of partaking in the uncanny déjà vu, are the reflections of specific organizational (bureaucratic) frame, and posits that they may be used as experiential and semantic heuristics for better understanding learning and non-learning in organizations