Farmers’ willingness to participate in a big data sharing program: A study of Saskatchewan grain farmers

Big data in crop agriculture is information collected by sophisticated machinery at the farm level, as well as externally generated data, such as field satellite imagery. Although some of this data is useful to individual farmers, much of it has little value to the farmer that collects it. Capturing the true value of big data comes when it is aggregated over many farms, allowing researchers to find underlying bio-physical and economical relationships. We conduct a hypothetical choice experiment to analyze farmers’ willingness to share data by asking farmers in Saskatchewan whether they would participate in a big data sharing program. The choice tasks varied the type of organization that operated the big data program and included financial and non-financial incentives. Heteroscedastic and random effects probit models are presented using the data from the survey. The results are consistent across models and find that farmers are most willing to share their data with university researchers, followed by crop input suppliers or grower associations, and financial institutions or equipment manufacturers. Farmers are least willing to share their data with government. Farmers are more willing to share data in the presence of a financial incentive or non-financial incentive such as comparative benchmark statistics or prescription maps generated from the data submitted. Checks for robustness and heterogeneity indicate there is no self-selection bias into the survey, and no heterogeneity in the results for financial incentive and farm revenue. A latent class logit model determines the farmer population may be heterogenous in their willingness to participate in a big data sharing program, but homogenous in their ordering of preferences for organization, financial incentive, and non-financial incentive. In addition, demographic variables are not related to class membership

Scaling of the Anomalous Boost in Relativistic Jet Boundary Layer

We investigate the one-dimensional interaction of a relativistic jet and an external medium. Relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations show an anomalous boost of the jet fluid in the boundary layer, as previously reported. We describe the boost mechanism using an ideal relativistic fluid and magnetohydrodynamic theory. The kinetic model is also examined for further understanding. Simple scaling laws for the maximum Lorentz factor are derived, and verified by the simulations.Comment: typos corrected; fortran 77/90 codes are attached; see ancillary files in the "Other formats" lin

Translation into Spanish of: “Changes to publication requirements made at the XVIII International Botanical Congress in Melbourne - what does e-publication mean for you?”. Translated by Carmen Ulloa Ulloa, Lourdes Rico Arce, and Renée H. Fortunato

Changes to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature are decided on every 6 years at Nomenclature Sections associated with International Botanical Congresses (IBC). The XVIII IBC was held in Melbourne, Australia; the Nomenclature Section met on 18-22 July 2011 and its decisions were accepted by the Congress at its plenary session on 30 July. Several important changes were made to the Code as a result of this meeting that will affect publication of new names. Two of these changes will come into effect on 1 January 2012, some months before the Melbourne Code is published. Electronic material published online in Portable Document Format (PDF) with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) or an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) will constitute effective publication, and the requirement for a Latin description or diagnosis for names of new taxa will be changed to a requirement for a description or diagnosis in either Latin or English. In addition, effective from 1 January 2013, new names of organisms treated as fungi must, in order to be validly published, include in the protologue (everything associated with a name at its valid publication) the citation of an identifier issued by a recognized repository (such as MycoBank). Draft text of the new articles dealing with electronic publication is provided and best practice is outlined.To encourage dissemination of the changes made to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants, this article will be published in BMC Evolutionary Biology, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, Brittonia, Cladistics, MycoKeys, Mycotaxon, New Phytologist, North American Fungi, Novon, Opuscula Philolichenum, PhytoKeys, Phytoneuron, Phytotaxa, Plant Diversity and Resources, Systematic Botany and Taxon

Aiding information security decisions with human factors using quantitative and qualitative techniques

Phd ThesisThe Information Security Decision Making Process is comprised of an extremely complex and dynamic set of sub-tasks, sub-goals and inter-disciplinary practices. In order to be effective and appropriate, this process must balance both the requirements of the stakeholder as well as the users within the system. Without careful consideration of users’ behaviours and preferences, interventions are often seen as obstacles towards productivity and subsequently circumvented or simply not adhered to. The approach detailed herein requires an intimate knowledge of both Information Security and Human Behaviour. An effective security policy must adequately protect a given set of assets (human and non-human) or systems as well as preserve maximal productivity. Companies rely on their Intellectual Property Rights which are often stored in a digital format. This presents a plethora of issues regarding security, access management and locality (whether on or off the premises). Furthermore, there is the added complexity of employees and how they operate within this environment (a subset of compliance, competence and policy). With the continued increase in consumerisation, more specifically the rise of Bring Your Own Device, there is a significant threat towards data security that persists outside of the typical working environment. This trend enables employees to access and transfer corporate assets remotely but in doing so creates a conflict over identity, ownership and data management. The governance of these activities creates an extremely complex problem space which requires the need to balance these requirements relying on an accurate assessment of risk, identification of security vulnerabilities and knowledge pertaining to the behaviour of employees. The risks to company assets can be estimated by the analysis of the following issues: • Threats to your assets. These are unwanted events that could cause the deliberate or accidental loss, damage or misuse of the assets. • Vulnerabilities. How susceptible your assets are to attack. • Impact. The magnitude of the potential loss or the seriousness of the event. The ability to quantify and accurately represent these variables is critical in developing, implementing and supporting a successful security policy. The dissertation is structured as follows. Chapter 1 provides an abstract overview of the problem space and highlights our aims, objectives and publications. Chapter 2 details an in-depth literature review of the cross-disciplinary problem space. This involves both the analysis of industry standards, practices and reports as well as a summary of academic literature pertaining to theoretical frameworks and simulations for discussion. Chapter 3 introduces our problem space and documents the rationale for designing our methodology. Each successive chapter (4, 5, & 6) documents a separate investigative strategy for populating specific data sets with respect to the behaviours and practices highlighted from our pilot study and CISO interaction. This provides the rationale behind each approach as well as a documented implementation and evaluation of our experimental design with reference to publications in the field. Chapter 7 documents our modelling strategy and highlights the extensions we propose to the BPMN 2.0 formalism. Chapter 8 concludes our work with reference to our contributions, limitations and the direction of future study

Personality and Social Framing in Privacy Decision-Making: A Study on Cookie Acceptance

Despite their best intentions, people struggle with the realities of privacy protection and will often sacrifice privacy for convenience in their online activities. Individuals show systematic, personality dependent differences in their privacy decision making, which makes it interesting for those who seek to design ‘nudges’ designed to manipulate privacy behaviors. We explore such effects in a cookie decision task. Two hundred and ninety participants were given an incidental website review task that masked the true aim of the study. At the task outset, they were asked whether they wanted to accept a cookie in a message that either contained a social framing ’nudge’ (they were told that either a majority or a minority of users like themselves had accepted the cookie) or contained no information about social norms (control). At the end of the task, participants were asked to complete a range of personality assessments (impulsivity, risk-taking, willingness to self-disclose and sociability). We found social framing to be an effective behavioral nudge, reducing cookie acceptance in the minority social norm condition. Further, we found personality effects such that those scoring highly on risk taking and impulsivity were significantly more likely to accept the cookie. Finally, we found that the application of a social nudge could attenuate the personality effects of impulsivity and risk-taking. We explore the implications for those working in the privacy by-design space