Improving Decision Making Using Confidence Scaling for Enhanced Data Quality

This work identifies measurements of data quality and determines indicators of both data qualityand data deficiency. Additionally, this work introduces the concept of confidence scaling which promotes enhanced data quality, resulting in improved decision making

Connecting Geographically Dispersed Classrooms for Computer Supported Collaborative Work

Today\u27s increasingly global economy is changing the way businesses communicate. Technology to facilitate business communications and operations continues to advance and set the pace for these changing needs. Educational institutions that are building tomorrow\u27s workforce should create opportunities for students where they can apply this technology to future business needs. This paper presents an inter-university project that provided practical experience to two groups of students at two different universities. Through information technology, both groups experienced first-hand the value of computer technology and inherent problems with using computer technology to solve problems over great distances

Using CSCW Technology to Connect Classrooms

This paper describes the details and results of a pilot study in which students at two geographically dispersed institutions of higher education were linked together using communication technologies and the Internet. Experiments were designed to require student groups at both universities to collaborate locally and with their remote partners using electronic mail, the Internet, and other computing technologies to output Joint solutions to class assignments. The successful results of these Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) experiments suggest future Implementations of similar inter- and Intra-university projects will enhance the quality of IS education, benefiting both students and prospective employers

Association and mediators of leisure time physical activity and mental health among people with spinal cord injury

This cross-sectional survey based study examined the association and mediators of leisure time physical activity (LTPA) and mental health among people with the spinal cord injury (SCI) in Canada. Self-esteem, coping self-efficacy, social support and perceived barriers to LTPA were measured as the potential mediators. Participants (N = 37) Canadians with the SCI completed the self-administered survey. Data were analyzed using correlation analysis and bootstrapping for multiple mediation. Data from the present study did not demonstrate any association between LTPA and mental health among people with SCI. None of the potential mediators demonstrated the significant mediation, but it was found that coping self-efficacy and perceived barriers to LTPA significantly predicted anxiety and depression respectively. The present study addressed the need of future research in the field of LTPA and mental health in SCI

Mobile App Installation: the Role of Precautions and Desensitization

The purpose of this research is to investigate precautions that consumers take before installing mobile apps and consumer’s potential desensitization to excessive app permission requests. Through a survey of 209 participants, a prediction model was created that attempts to predict whether respondents would download applications asking for excessive permissions. The model results indicate those that take more precautions are less likely to download apps requesting excessive permissions. However, the precautions taken by participants may be inadequate and may leave consumers with a false since of security. Another key finding with the support of Communication Theory and the C-HIP Model is that some consumers have become desensitized to excessive permission requests. These consumers knowingly install apps requesting excessive permissions for reasons such as nothing bad has happened to them before, they trust the market, or they really want the app. The security implications of permission desensitization and inadequate precautions are discussed

An Exploration of Mobile Device Security Artifacts At Institutions Of Higher Education

The explosive growth and rapid proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices that access data over communication networks has necessitated advocating and implementing security constraints for the purpose of abetting safe computing. Remote data access using mobile devices is particularly popular among students at institutions of higher education. To ensure safe harbor for constituents, it is imperative for colleges and universities to establish, disseminate, and enforce mobile device security artifacts, where artifacts is defined as policies, procedures, guidelines or other documented or undocumented protocols. The purpose of this study is to explore the existence of, specific content of, and the general current state of published mobile device artifacts at higher education institutions. Results show that such artifacts are only sparsely available through public university websites, and even when available, rarely address mobile device security specifically

Physical mapping of wheat and rye expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats on wheat chromosomes

Six hundred and seventy two loci belonging to 275 expressed sequence tag-simple sequence repeats [EST-SSRs, including 93 wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and 182 rye (Secale cereale L.) EST-SSRs] were physically mapped on 21 wheat chromosomes. The mapping involved two approaches, the wet-lab approach involving use of deletion stocks and the in silico approach involving matching with ESTs that were previously mapped. The number of loci per EST-SSR mapped using the in silico approach was almost double the number of loci mapped using the wet-lab approach (using deletion stocks). The distribution of loci on the three subgenomes, on the seven homoeologous groups and on the 21 individual chromosomes was nonrandom (P « 0.01). Long arms had disproportionately (relative to the difference in DNA content) higher number of loci, with more loci mapped to the distal regions of chromosome arms. A fairly high proportion of EST-SSRs had multiple loci, which were largely (81%) homoeoloci. Rye EST-SSRs showed a high level of transferability (≈77%) to the wheat genome. Putative functions were assigned to 216 SSR-containing ESTs through homology searches against the protein database. As many as 104 SSR-containing ESTs (a subset of the above ESTs) were also mapped to the 12 rice chromosomes, which corresponded with the known homology between wheat and rice chromosomes. These physical maps of EST-SSRs should prove useful for comparative genomics, gene tagging, fine mapping, and cloning of genes and QTLs. Dna-based molecular markers, particularly SSRs, have been developed and mapped on chromosomes in a variety of crop plants. In bread wheat, genetic and physical mapping of SSRs has been an ongoing exercise, and, to date, ≈2450 SSRs (1 SSR 1.63 cM-1) have been genetically mapped (for details see Torada et al., 2006) and ≈1320 SSRs (62 SSRs chromosome-1) have been physically mapped (for details see Goyal et al., 2005). With a genome size of ≈16 000 Mbp, it is evident that despite concerted efforts, the density of mapped SSRs in bread wheat remains relatively low and continued efforts are needed to increase the density of these SSRs on available genetic and physical maps. In recent years, emphasis has also shifted from genomic SSRs to EST-SSRs due to the availability of very large databases of ESTs from all of the cereals including bread wheat. Consequently, the number of EST-SSRs in cereals now includes 43 598 from bread wheat (Peng and Lapitan, 2005), 16 917 from rice and 184 from rye (La Rota et al., 2005; Hackauf and Wehling, 2002). The genetic mapping of these EST-SSRs is difficult due to a low level of polymorphism, as a result of their conserved nature. Physical mapping of these EST-SSRs in wheat is equally difficult due to the occurrence of homoeoloci exhibiting no polymorphism. This has discouraged wheat researchers from undertaking a large-scale project to genetically or physically map wheat EST-SSRs although genetic mapping of 325 EST-SSRs (Gao et al., 2004; Nicot et al., 2004; Yu et al., 2004) and physical mapping of 305 EST-SSRs was recently undertaken (Yu et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2005; Peng and Lapitan, 2005). We previously reported genetic mapping of 58 and physical mapping of 270 genomic SSRs (Gupta et al., 2002; Goyal et al., 2005). The present study is an extension of our earlier studies on physical mapping of SSRs and involved both wet-lab and in silico approaches, leading to the successful mapping of as many as 672 loci. The in silico approach allowed mapping of twice the number of loci (per EST-SSR) mapped using wet-lab analysis