Driving digital transformation: integrative insights on organizational, environmental and managerial drivers

Given the prevalence and ubiquity of digital technologies in organizations’ transformation, it is of great importance to understand the drivers of digital transformation. This dissertation contributes to this line of research by examining three relevant organizational, environmental, and managerial drivers and offering novel insights into the roles of the three types of drivers. Chapter 2 examines the complementarity of organizational drivers. The results show that firms need to combine awareness of digital technologies, commitment to change, and organizational flexibility to effectively drive digital transformation. Chapter 3 explores the industry-level role of technologies as a key environmental driver. The results reveal that the industry-level roles of technologies carry different technological needs and play a configurating role in the strategy for fostering digital readiness. More specifically, firms in technologically intensive industries prioritize capabilities to sense and respond to digital technologies, while those in less intensive industries combine complementary assets with a commitment to transformation in their digital readiness strategy. Accordingly, the fitting digital readiness configurations drive digital transformation with significant business value. Chapter 4 investigates the power dispersion between IT executives and the top management team on digital innovation, an outcome of firms’ digital transformation. The results demonstrate that power dispersion has an incentivizing benefit that motivates IT executives to engage in digital innovation but also an attenuating effect – at high levels – as it increases collaboration costs that prevent IT executives from leading successful digital innovation. Chapter 4 also recommends IT expertise and firm-specific experience of IT executives as the conditions that strengthen the motivational mechanism or alleviate the collaboration costs respectively

A Hierarchical Trusted Third-Party System for Secure Peer-to-Peer Transactions

A peer-to-peer (P2P) network is a distributed network of peer computers loosely connected through the Internet. Transactions in a P2P network are often conducted on a no-security basis. Moreover, peer anonymity is often highly desirable, which makes security even more difficult to achieve. In most cases, a peer executes a transaction solely based on the faith that the other peer plays by the rules. Here we propose a hierarchical Trusted Third-Party (TTP) system that facilitates secure transactions between peers in an existing P2P network. This system is designed to provide mutual authentication by using public key cryptography for peers to authenticate the TTP system and by using symmetric key cryptography for the TTP system to authenticate peers. After logging into the system, two peers can obtain a shared secret key from the TTP system to form a secure channel over which all transactions are encrypted using the secret key. The TTP system is designed to operate as an independent entity that peers can choose to join independently of their P2P network and can remain anonymous among each other. In addition, a reputation scheme, in which peers rate each other, is employed in the TTP system. This self-policing system provides a relative measure of trust among peers so that a peer can decide whether to allow a transaction based on another peer’s rating. The anonymity of peers in P2P systems creates many difficulties for establishing an accurate rating system. However, we believe this is still achievable to a degree

Effect of Biomixture Containing Spent Coffee Ground and Milled Egg-shells on The Yield of Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Moench) and Soil Fertility under Greenhouse Conditions

To evaluate the effect of biomixture including spent coffee ground and milled egg-shells (ratio of 10:2 (w/w)) on the yield of Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Moench) and soil fertility, an experiment was conducted in the greenhouse for 3 months with four replicates for each treatment. The soil sample in this study was collected from the experimental farm of Cantho University. The biomixture was applied with 3 levels: 5, 10 and 15% (w/w). A commonly recommended inorganic fertilizer application rate for Okra was used as control treatment and 15% of used coffee ground as another treatment to study a single effect of used coffee ground on yield of Okra and soil fertility.  Results showed that although the plan performance was much better in the control treatment, the highest yield of Okra was found in the treatments amended with 10 and 5% of the biomixture and was 167 and 161 g/plant/pot, respectively. The yield was much higher in these two treatments than that in the control treatment. The appearance of Okra fruits in the amended biomixture treatments reached the standard quality for selling. Moreover, organic matter, N, P, pH, bacterial and fungal cell counts in soils were enhanced considerably when amended with this biomixture. Five percent of the biomixture performed as the best treatment to enhance Okra yield in the greenhouse experiment

The Rheology of Striated Muscles

Striated muscles are actuators of animal bodies. They are responsible for several biomechanical functions critical to survival and these include powering the cardiovascular system and modulating the mechanical interactions the body has with its surroundings. Nearly two centuries of active research on muscle phenomena has led to detailed insights into its microscopic composition, but accurate predictive models of muscle at larger scales remain elusive. This thesis reports on efforts to accurately capture the mechanical properties of striated muscles based on current knowledge of actomyosin dynamics. Specifically, this thesis derives the rheology of striated muscles from the dynamics. Muscle rheology is a characterization of the forces that it develops in resistance to externally imposed changes to its length, i.e. its mechanical behavior as a material. For example, the rheology of elastic solids is stiffness and that of viscous fluids is a damping coefficient. Detailed analyses of actomyosin dynamics suggest that the smallest functional units of striated muscles, half-sarcomeres, are viscoelastic and can function as either a solid-like struct or a fluid-like damper depending on time-durations of interest and neural inputs. Such adaptability may underlie the vastly different biomechanical functions that striated muscles provide to animal bodies. Furthermore, muscles are active structures because their properties require metabolic energy and depend on neural inputs. Striated muscles can therefore exhibit rheologies and functions that elastic springs and viscous fluids cannot. The analysis presented in this thesis may extend beyond muscles and biomedical applications. It may help to engineer muscle-like actuators based on principles of tunable properties and to understand the physics of other materials that can similarly transition between being solid-like and fluid-like

The Role of Social Media in Policy Formulation Improvement in California

How could staff members of California Assembly members use social media to improve policy formulation? The purpose of this study is to assess the role that social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook could play in the formulation and evaluation of policies in the state of California, given the increasing application of big data in decision making in the private sector. This study further evaluated how emerging technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence could be used to determine the attitudes and perceptions of the citizens of California, specifically on policy issues, and analyze how these technologies could be used by California as a means of gaining useful insights, gauging sentiments and collecting data, prior to formulating and evaluating laws and policies

Analysis of Ultraviolet Energy Distribution in UV Disinfection Systems Using Monte Carlo Ray -Trace method

Determination of fluence rate in ultraviolet (UV) disinfection systems is a crucial part in evaluating disinfection efficiency of the systems. A robust Monte Carlo Ray Trace (MCRT) method has been developed to determine fluence rates in three-dimensional space of the systems. This is a statistical sampling method in which millions of random light energy bundles are simulated from the axis of each UV lamp and traced through the system until their energies reduce to a minimum threshold level. Inherent phenomena including refraction through quartz tubes, specular reflection at quartz tube surfaces, and absorption by quartz and water, along with specific geometric factors of model systems, are addressed in the MCRT algorithm. Each time the MCRT algorithm is executed, millions of independent random samples are recorded. In spite of the inherent randomness of the simulation process, consistent fluence rates throughout the UV systems under study were obtained. Fluence rate data in the radial direction from modeled lamps compared well with observed experimental data obtained from two independent sources and with results from the Point Source Summation model. Based on data obtained from the MCRT simulations for modeled UV systems with multiple rows of low pressure UV lamps, fluence rates in the space between lamps located inside the lamp bank are significantly higher than those in space located outside the lamp bank and along channel walls. This is primarily due to the energy contributions of surrounding lamps. The results also suggest that the effects of reflections from quartz tube surfaces and changes in lamp spacing to the distribution of fluence rates in the systems under study are insignificant, primarily due to the fact that fluence rates of each individual lamp drop significantly at the radial distance beyond a few centimeters from the quartz tube surface closer to the surface

Real-time Video Streams of Hand Gestures to Control Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAVs)

Over past few years, unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs) have been becoming more and more popular for various purposes such as surveillance, automated industry, robotics, vehicle guidance, traffic monitoring and control system. It is very important to have multiple methods of UAVs controlling to fit in UAVs usages. The goal of this work is to develop a technique to control an UAV using 8 different hand gestures. To achieve that, a hand key point detection algorithm is developed to detect 21 key points of the hand. Then, those key points are used as the input to an intelligent system based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) that is able to classify the hand gestures. After archiving hand gesture classifications, unique command for UAVs control is assigned to each hand gesture; and a programming is built in Python to send those commands to an UAV for operation

Canine testes thin sections culture​

Canine testes thin section culture Testes tissue culture systems would provide a tool to elucidate spermatogenesis mechanisms, with the aim of genetic preservation of mammals, especially endangered species. Our experiment aims to develop a culture system capable of producing viable mammalian sperm cells in vitro. Dogs were chosen as the model organism because testes are readily available. Canine testes were obtained from a local veterinary clinic. Thin sections were generated using a commercial electric slicer. They then were cleaned using Dulbecco’s Phosphate-Buffered Saline (DPBS) supplemented with antibiotics then cultured in a modified Tissue Culture Medium 199 (TCM-199). Sections were cultured in an environment aimed to best reflect realistic physiological conditions, that is 7%CO2 : 7%O2 : balanced N2 at 37oC. Finally, the sections were stained with live/dead cell stain and observed under a fluorescence microscope to determine viability. Numerous live stained nuclei were observed, proving their high viability after 21 days of culturing. Sections reformed during culture to assume a tiny testes-like morphology. Fungal contamination was detected in all culture dishes at various time points during the experiment from unknown sources. The sections then were washed with DPBS supplemented with antimycotic before being again cultured in fresh medium. For ongoing experiments, the culture system will be revised to prevent fungal contamination. While spermatogenesis takes approximately 60 days in vivo, testes thin sections were maintained for 21 days, therefore culture duration will be extended in the future. Overall, our result demonstrated a cost-effective culture system to potentially obtain viable mammalian sperm cells