Big Data Drive: The Rhetoric of Biometric Big Data

In this essay, we seek to develop a concept of “big data drive.” Influenced in part by Lacan’s theory of drive, we study the drive toward biometric big data. Biometric big data (BBD) refers to the data collected around facial recognition, eye recognition, thumb prints, and other types of technology whose task is to identify a specific being through unique bio characteristics. “Big Data Drive” refers to the energies that pulsate around Big Data, as both a signifier and fetishized object, to promise “something more” that may never be fulfilled

Business Process Integration And Supply Chain Networks

Given the dot-com collapse and the recent Enron bankruptcy, one might conclude that the promises of the so-called new economy have been overstated.  Yet, in spite of the litany of failed Internet pure plays and Enron’s unexpected demise, the Internet has transformed the way the business is being conducted.  Yes, the basics still matter and cost-cutting is appropriate, but today it must be achieved along with unprecedented business-model innovation and corporate agility.  Witness the way many traditional firms are still thriving and succeeding by transforming their core business architectures around the Net. The Internet is slashing the cost of sharing knowledge, collaborating, and meshing business processes among supply chain partners.  Valued-added communities are replacing traditional vertically integrated industries. These value added communities are external networks that cover both company and supply chain processes, such as financial, marketing, accounting and human resources services.  Smart companies are focusing on their core competencies and outsourcing the remainder of their non-essential processes.  The traditional vertically integrated corporation is no longer the most effective vehicle for value creation.   Ford was the quintessential example of this. At one point, the company owned steamships, power plants, forests and virtually every other input critical to building an automobile. The vertically integrated structure worked well for auto manufacturers for a time to achieve scale economies and productivity.  But these companies have squeezed out about as much productivity as they can.  In today’s networked economy, one company makes the car's wheels, another makes the engine, another makes the seats and another makes the body all of which flow through the value added community that the auto company created.   In the end, the auto company and the consumer both benefit.  The automobile consumers get a better quality product, delivered precisely when and how they want it, at a much better cost.  The auto company can respond to customers far more quickly than ever before.  We strongly believe that the “glue” for building these networked communities is a business process orientation (BPO), a concept introduced in one of our earlier books, which serves as a powerful organizing principle for firms competing in the networked economy. BPO is not simply a new business fad, but an entirely new way of thinking or viewing an organization.  Nor is BPO simply a new business operations strategy, but rather broad framework for organizing work and information flows that ultimately help an organization build superior customer value. Corporate survival in the Internet economy will depend both on the effectiveness of internal processes and their integration with supply chain customers.  Supply chain management will serve as the coordinating mechanism for process integration among supply chain partners. Competitors can match individual processes or activities but can’t match the integration or “fit’ of these activities In this paper,we present empirical evidence showing that building a process-oriented organization results in improved business performance.  We also propose that BPO can be successfully applied to supply chain networks and argue that value is created in the networked economy based on the alignment of supply chain processes

Time-Domain Isolated Phoneme Classification Using Reconstructed Phase Spaces

This paper introduces a novel time-domain approach to modeling and classifying speech phoneme waveforms. The approach is based on statistical models of reconstructed phase spaces, which offer significant theoretical benefits as representations that are known to be topologically equivalent to the state dynamics of the underlying production system. The lag and dimension parameters of the reconstruction process for speech are examined in detail, comparing common estimation heuristics for these parameters with corresponding maximum likelihood recognition accuracy over the TIMIT data set. Overall accuracies are compared with a Mel-frequency cepstral baseline system across five different phonetic classes within TIMIT, and a composite classifier using both cepstral and phase space features is developed. Results indicate that although the accuracy of the phase space approach by itself is still currently below that of baseline cepstral methods, a combined approach is capable of increasing speaker independent phoneme accuracy

On the Modulation Equations and Stability of Periodic GKdV Waves via Bloch Decompositions

In this paper, we complement recent results of Bronski and Johnson and of Johnson and Zumbrun concerning the modulational stability of spatially periodic traveling wave solutions of the generalized Korteweg-de Vries equation. In this previous work it was shown by rigorous Evans function calculations that the formal slow modulation approximation resulting in the Whitham system accurately describes the spectral stability to long wavelength perturbations. Here, we reproduce this result without reference to the Evans function by using direct Bloch-expansion methods and spectral perturbation analysis. This approach has the advantage of applying also in the more general multi-periodic setting where no conveniently computable Evans function is yet devised. In particular, we complement the picture of modulational stability described by Bronski and Johnson by analyzing the projectors onto the total eigenspace bifurcating from the origin in a neighborhood of the origin and zero Floquet parameter. We show the resulting linear system is equivalent, to leading order and up to conjugation, to the Whitham system and that, consequently, the characteristic polynomial of this system agrees (to leading order) with the linearized dispersion relation derived through Evans function calculation.Comment: 19 pages

Verbal and visuospatial deficits in dementia with Lewy bodies

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.neurology.org/content/65/8/1232.Objective: To investigate the cognitive decline in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLBs) and characterize the contribution of Lewy bodies (LBs) to cognitive impairment in the presence of concurrent Alzheimer disease (AD). Methods: Cognitive deficits and rates of progression attributable to DLB and AD neuropathology were investigated in three groups of participants from the longitudinal cohort of the Alzheimer Disease Research Center at Washington University with autopsy-confirmed diagnoses of pure DLB (n = 9), mixed DLB/AD (n = 57), and pure AD (n = 66). Factor analysis was used to recover latent constructs in a comprehensive psychometric test battery, analysis of variance was used to test group differences on the observed dimensions, and random effects models were used to test longitudinal rates of cognitive decline. Results: Patients with AD pathology performed worse on the verbal memory dimension. Patients with LB pathology performed worse on the visuospatial dimension. Combined pathology affected visuospatial performance but not verbal memory. The rate of cognitive decline in the DLB, DLB/AD combined, and the pure AD groups was equivalent. Conclusions: The comorbid presence of DLB and AD alters the cognitive presentation of visuospatial deficits in dementia but does not alter dementia progression. Both visuospatial and verbal abilities declined at similar rates across the three patient groups. DLB diagnosis may be improved, particularly when there is comorbid AD, by using domain-specific testing

Factors Affecting Option Premium Values

4 pp.Many factors affect option premium values. This publication list these factors and gives brief explanations of them

Personality traits distinguishing dementia with Lewy bodies from Alzheimer disease

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.neurology.org/content/68/22/1895.Objective: To identify personality traits that distinguish dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) from Alzheimer disease (AD). Methods: We examined 290 participants enrolled in a longitudinal study (nondemented control = 34, DLB = 128, AD = 128) followed to autopsy. As part of the annual interview with the collateral source, the clinician asked about specific changes in personality, interests, and drives based on items from the Blessed Dementia Scale (BDS). Statistical analysis was performed using χ2 and Fisher exact tests. Factor analysis was performed to determine underlying structure and receiver operating characteristic curves assessed the ability for each of three derived factors to discriminate DLB from AD. Results: The sample was evaluated for a mean of 4.8 visits (range 1 to 14) with a mean age of 77.6 ± 9.9 years. The participants' cognitive status ranged from nondemented (Clinical Dementia Rating [CDR] 0) through all stages of dementia (CDR ≥ 0.5). Personality traits that distinguished DLB included diminished emotional responsiveness (p = 0.004), relinquishing hobbies (p = 0.01), growing apathy (p = 0.03), and purposeless hyperactivity (p = 0.003). Factor analyses of the BDS revealed a PASSIVE factor (diminished emotional responsiveness, relinquished hobbies, growing apathy, and purposeless hyperactivity) explaining 10.4% of variance and that DLB was more likely to manifest these personality traits than AD (p = 0.001). The PASSIVE factor discriminated DLB from AD (area under the curve = 0.61, 95% CI: 0.54 to 0.68, p = 0.006). Any change in personality is associated with the presence of visual hallucinations. Conclusions: Our results suggest that incorporating a brief, simple inventory of personality traits may improve the identification of individuals with dementia with Lewy bodies

Development of magnetostrictive active members for control of space structures

The goal of this Phase 2 Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) project was to determine the technical feasibility of developing magnetostrictive active members for use as truss elements in space structures. Active members control elastic vibrations of truss-based space structures and integrate the functions of truss structure element, actively controlled actuator, and sensor. The active members must control structural motion to the sub-micron level and, for many proposed space applications, work at cryogenic temperatures. Under this program both room temperature and cryogenic temperature magnetostrictive active members were designed, fabricated, and tested. The results of these performance tests indicated that room temperature magnetostrictive actuators feature higher strain, stiffness, and force capability with lower amplifier requirements than similarly sized piezoelectric or electrostrictive active members, at the cost of higher mass. Two different cryogenic temperature magnetostrictive materials were tested at liquid nitrogen temperatures, both with larger strain capability than the room temperature magnetostrictive materials. The cryogenic active member development included the design and fabrication of a cryostat that allows operation of the cryogenic active member in a space structure testbed