The Continued Challenge of Y2K: What Can We Learn?

The Year 2000 (Y2K) brought numerous challenges as software and component technologies that did not properly recognize the date change threatened to fail, seriously interrupting normal business functions around the world. A campaign involving millions of IT professionals worldwide was launched to identify and correct faulty systems. Nations came together in an unprecedented spirit of cooperation, working against an immovable deadline to avoid disaster. After spending billions of dollars and countless hours of remediation work, corrections were made and the millennium date changed without incident. Y2K remediation was a declared a powerful example of success by Y2K team leaders throughout the world. This is an exploratory study that begins to examine the impact of Y2K remediation projects at the local level through a case study approach using narrative analysis. The results of the study suggests that models of learning theory, knowledge creation, complexity and action research/learning can be applied to understanding the Y2K phenomenon. Learning organization model implies organizational change

A Firm Level Framework for Electronic Commerce: An Information Systems Perspective

Many firms do not have their business plans and information systems plans in place for embarking on electronic commerce. A firm level framework for electronic commerce will help firms to plan and align their ECIS (Electronic Commerce Information Systems) to business and information systems strategies. This paper develops such a framework. The four components of the framework are information architecture, business processes, choice of technology applications, and customer focus. A brief discussion on the significance of these components to electronic commerce is include

Anomaly Detection in Streaming Sensor Data

In this chapter we consider a cell phone network as a set of automatically deployed sensors that records movement and interaction patterns of the population. We discuss methods for detecting anomalies in the streaming data produced by the cell phone network. We motivate this discussion by describing the Wireless Phone Based Emergency Response (WIPER) system, a proof-of-concept decision support system for emergency response managers. We also discuss some of the scientific work enabled by this type of sensor data and the related privacy issues. We describe scientific studies that use the cell phone data set and steps we have taken to ensure the security of the data. We describe the overall decision support system and discuss three methods of anomaly detection that we have applied to the data.Comment: 35 pages. Book chapter to appear in "Intelligent Techniques for Warehousing and Mining Sensor Network Data" (IGI Global), edited by A. Cuzzocre

Multiple organism algorithm for finding ultraconserved elements

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ultraconserved elements are nucleotide or protein sequences with 100% identity (no mismatches, insertions, or deletions) in the same organism or between two or more organisms. Studies indicate that these conserved regions are associated with micro RNAs, mRNA processing, development and transcription regulation. The identification and characterization of these elements among genomes is necessary for the further understanding of their functionality.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We describe an algorithm and provide freely available software which can find all of the ultraconserved sequences between genomes of multiple organisms. Our algorithm takes a combinatorial approach that finds all sequences without requiring the genomes to be aligned. The algorithm is significantly faster than BLAST and is designed to handle very large genomes efficiently. We ran our algorithm on several large comparative analyses to evaluate its effectiveness; one compared 17 vertebrate genomes where we find 123 ultraconserved elements longer than 40 bps shared by all of the organisms, and another compared the human body louse, <it>Pediculus humanus humanus</it>, against itself and select insects to find thousands of non-coding, potentially functional sequences.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Whole genome comparative analysis for multiple organisms is both feasible and desirable in our search for biological knowledge. We argue that bioinformatic programs should be forward thinking by assuming analysis on multiple (and possibly large) genomes in the design and implementation of algorithms. Our algorithm shows how a compromise design with a trade-off of disk space versus memory space allows for efficient computation while only requiring modest computer resources, and at the same time providing benefits not available with other software.</p

VectorBase: a home for invertebrate vectors of human pathogens

VectorBase () is a web-accessible data repository for information about invertebrate vectors of human pathogens. VectorBase annotates and maintains vector genomes providing an integrated resource for the research community. Currently, VectorBase contains genome information for two organisms: Anopheles gambiae, a vector for the Plasmodium protozoan agent causing malaria, and Aedes aegypti, a vector for the flaviviral agents causing Yellow fever and Dengue fever

Cultural Dissemination using a Quantum Model

Axelrod&apos;s [Axelrod, 1997] cultural dissemination model introduces an agent-based simulation where random agent interactions transmit culture through an agent population, and the system evolves over time to form multiple stable homogeneous cultural regions. We expand upon this work by introducing a quantum model. Agents are represented by quantum registers, and agent interactions are quantum operations performed on those registers. Results indicate that multiple stable heterogeneous cultural regions form as the population evolves, the number of regions formed is greater in the quantum model, and there is a greater diversity in the sizes of the cultural regions