Community Attitude About the Effects of Corruption on Forest Governance--A Case of Malakand District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan

This research paper focused on finding links between poor forest governance and corruption. A sample size of 357 respondents was proportionally allocated to each union council and then randomly selected. Chi-square test was used to test the association between the variables. The result shows that forest governance had a significant association with the power elite get illegal management benefits from the forest (P=0.000). Moreover, the political influence on the distribution of benefits received from forest productivity was found significantly associated with forest governance, in addition, the association of the inter-connection of corruption mafia was found significant (P=0.000) with forest governance. Depoliticizing the forest department, establishing rule of law and implementation of the laws in its true spirit without any discrimination can improve forest governance

The Global Impact of Science Gateways, Virtual Research Environments and Virtual Laboratories

Science gateways, virtual laboratories and virtual research environments are all terms used to refer to community-developed digital environments that are designed to meet a set of needs for a research community. Specifically, they refer to integrated access to research community resources including software, data, collaboration tools, workflows, instrumentation and high-performance computing, usually via Web and mobile applications. Science gateways, virtual laboratories and virtual research environments are enabling significant contributions to many research domains, facilitating more efficient, open, reproducible research in bold new ways. This paper explores the global impact achieved by the sum effects of these programs in increasing research impact, demonstrates their value in the broader digital landscape and discusses future opportunities. This is evidenced through examination of national and international programs in this field

Heritability and Genome-Wide Association Analyses of Sleep Duration in Children:The EAGLE Consortium

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Low or excessive sleep duration has been associated with multiple outcomes, but the biology behind these associations remains elusive. Specifically, genetic studies in children are scarce. In this study, we aimed to: (1) estimate the proportion of genetic variance of sleep duration in children attributed to common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), (2) identify novel SNPs associated with sleep duration in children, and (3) investigate the genetic overlap of sleep duration in children and related metabolic and psychiatric traits.METHODS: We performed a population-based molecular genetic study, using data form the EArly Genetics and Life course Epidemiology (EAGLE) Consortium. 10,554 children of European ancestry were included in the discovery, and 1,250 children in the replication phase.RESULTS: We found evidence of significant but modest SNP heritability of sleep duration in children (SNP h(2) 0.14, 95% CI [0.05, 0.23]) using the LD score regression method. A novel region at chromosome 11q13.4 (top SNP: rs74506765, P = 2.27e-08) was associated with sleep duration in children, but this was not replicated in independent studies. Nominally significant genetic overlap was only found (rG = 0.23, P = 0.05) between sleep duration in children and type 2 diabetes in adults, supporting the hypothesis of a common pathogenic mechanism.CONCLUSIONS: The significant SNP heritability of sleep duration in children and the suggestive genetic overlap with type 2 diabetes support the search for genetic mechanisms linking sleep duration in children to multiple outcomes in health and disease.</p

Science gateways for biomedical big data analysis

Biomedical researchers are facing data deluge challenges such as dealing with large volume of complex heterogeneous data and complex and computationally demanding data processing methods. Such scale and complexity of biomedical research requires multi-disciplinary collaboration between scientists from different organizations. Data-driven or e-Science methods are defined as a combination of Information Technology (IT) and science that enables scientists to tackle the data deluge challenges. The IT infrastructures that address these challenges are known as cyberinfrastructures or e-Infrastructures, which are the environments that provide collaborative sharing of distributed computing and data resources. However, e-Infrastructures fall short of high-level and customized services to support the needs of scientists genuinely, and scientists find interacting with e-Infrastructures challenging, as it requires detailed technical knowledge. Science Gateway (SG) research addresses these drawbacks. SGs are web-based enterprise information systems that provide scientists with customized and easy access to community-specific data collections, computational tools, and collaborative services on e-Infrastructures. In this thesis we advanced the understanding of the fundamentals of SGs for biomedical research by organizing the findings about the requirements of biomedical researchers. We also organized the considerations about the design, development, operation, and sustainability of effective SGs. Moreover, we constructed a few successful SGs that were adopted by a large number of scientists and facilitated their biomedical big data analysis on e-Infrastructures. Finally we proposed a reference model that organizes the essential functions of SGs. We think that these efforts will facilitate design, development, operation, sustainability, and most importantly, adoption of SGs for biomedical research

A Dynamic web service scheduling and deployment framework for grid workflow

126 p.Grid computing boosts productivity by maximizing resource utilization and simplifying access to resources which are shared among virtual organizations. Recently, the Grid and Web Service communities have established a set of common interests and requirements. The latest version of the Globus Toolkit implements the Web Service Resource Framework (WSRF) specifications which have been formulated to cover these interests. However, it has some limitations in supporting the dynamic nature of large-scale Grid and data-intensive workflow executions. Dynamic Web Service deployment fits well into the dynamic nature of the Grid and opens new ways of managing workflow executions on the Grid.MASTER OF ENGINEERING (SCE

Examining moral judgment and ethical decision-making in information technology managers and their relationship

Growing incidences of corporate ethical misconducts have revived the debate over ethical reasoning and moral development of corporate managers. The role of information technology (IT) in the ethical dilemmas is becoming more evident as virtual environments become increasingly popular, organizations adopt digital form of record keeping, and the processing speed of computing technologies increase tremendously. This quantitative descriptive correlational study investigated the moral judgment of information technology managers as measured by the Defining Issue Test (DIT-2), ethical decision-making in terms of moral sensitivity measured by the IT Ethics Survey, and examined the relationship between moral judgment and ethical decision-making. The findings revealed that IT managers’ level of moral development matched that of Kohlberg’s Stage 4 or maintaining norms. IT managers’ overall moral sensitivity was encouraging, especially when it concerned general ethics and ethical use of workplace resources. However, moral sensitivity was low concerning protection of intellectual property and privacy. Sufficient evidence did not exist to support the presence of a significant correlation between moral judgment and overall moral sensitivity

Rosemary: Make Complex Collaborative Big Data Analysis Easy

Fact sheet about the Rosemary Science Gateway Platform