Monoculture

My work has its roots in structures; the regularity of structural components feel right to me and serves as a counterpoint to the visual noise of the natural world. My most recent work has focused on houses and home structures. Most contemporary houses are only a slight variation on one another, and there doesn’t seem to be too many models to choose from. The suburbs are full of sameness which can become pattern. This observation sparked my interest, so with my latest pieces I’ve been exploring this idea of multiplicity in a suburban setting, whether it be with a watercolor painting or a wooden sculpture of a house. I’m a person who likes puzzles; I’m in love with the process of finding a solution to a problem. Similarly, I enjoy exploring the things around me to try and better understand their nature and how they exist and function. I treat my art as a practice of exploring and comprehending the world around me. This method of understanding is why I find woodworking so enjoyable; it is a medium filled with processes that require you intimately understand your material. It’s constantly checking your knowledge and testing you, and if you happen to make a mistake you’ll know immediately. I’ve been looking at how Jerry Bedor Phillips utilizes the interaction of shadows to help emphasize the forms of his bookbinding covers and I have embraced this in my recent house sculptures as a way to maintain a simple but pronounced shape. These concepts of suburbia become apparent when looking at my work; for example in my most recent piece Who’s Helen Beck, you see the form of a house that you could see a hundred times driving through any American suburb. It’s painted a light pastel color reminiscent of pastries to imply this is a cookie-cutter form that has been dressed up just enough to be pleasing to the eye. There is also a lighting element that allows the windows to emit a soft warm glow to further assist this idea of visual comfort. I am currently working on four more similar houses to bring the topic of multiplicity deeper into the conversation my art poses.https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art498/1084/thumbnail.jp

Perspects in astrophysical databases

Astrophysics has become a domain extremely rich of scientific data. Data mining tools are needed for information extraction from such large datasets. This asks for an approach to data management emphasizing the efficiency and simplicity of data access; efficiency is obtained using multidimensional access methods and simplicity is achieved by properly handling metadata. Moreover, clustering and classification techniques on large datasets pose additional requirements in terms of computation and memory scalability and interpretability of results. In this study we review some possible solutions

Supply-demand matrix: a process-oriented approach for data warehouses with constellation schemas

Star schema in data warehouses is a very well-established model. However, the increasing number of star schemas creating large constellations schemas add new challenges in the organizations. In this document, we intend to make a contribution in the technical architecture of data warehouses with constellation schemas using an extension of the bus matrix. The proposed supply-demand matrix details the raw data from the original databases, describes the constellation schemas with different dimensions and establishes the information demand requirements.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An ETL Metadata Model for Data Warehousing

Metadata is essential for understanding information stored in data warehouses. It helps increase levels of adoption and usage of data warehouse data by knowledge workers and decision makers. A metadata model is important to the implementation of a data warehouse; the lack of a metadata model can lead to quality concerns about the data warehouse. A highly successful data warehouse implementation depends on consistent metadata. This article proposes adoption of an ETL (extracttransform-load) metadata model for the data warehouse that makes subject area refreshes metadata-driven, loads observation timestamps and other useful parameters, and minimizes consumption of database systems resources. The ETL metadata model provides developers with a set of ETL development tools and delivers a user-friendly batch cycle refresh monitoring tool for the production support team

Big Data Analytics. Analyse der prädiktiven Fähigkeit von Twitter-Sentiments auf die Entwicklung des Börsenkurses von Technologieunternehmen

Die Datenmengen vervielfachen sich in der heutigen Zeit konstant, was zum Begriff Big Data geführt hat. Durch diese Datenmengen entsteht ein neues Potenzial, Fragen zu beantworten. Eine dieser Fragestellungen, welche mithilfe von Big Data untersucht werden kann, ist, inwiefern die Social-Media-Daten die Veränderung von Börsenkursen voraussagen können. Diese Studie untersucht die prädiktive Fähigkeit von Twitter-Nachrichten im Zusammenhang mit einem Technologieunternehmen und dessen Börsenkurs anhand von zwei Anwendungsfällen. Konkret wird anhand der Twitter-Nachrichten mithilfe einer Sentimentanalyse die Stimmung der Twitter-Nutzer mit den Veränderungen des Börsenkurses verglichen. Diese Analyse wird anhand der Technologieunternehmen Facebook und Amazon vorgenommen. In einem ersten Schritt wird untersucht, ob eine Beziehung zwischen den Twitter-Sentiments und dem Börsenkurs besteht. In einem zweiten Schritt, ob die Twitter-Sentiments eine Voraussagekraft für die Veränderung des Börsenkurses haben. Die Auswertung zeigt bei beiden Unternehmen eine positive Korrelation der Twitter-Sentiments und des Börsenkurses auf. Weiter konnte mithilfe der Granger-Analyse eine signifikante Voraussagekraft der Twitter-Sentiments für die Börsenkurse beider Unternehmen ermittelt werden. Die Twitter-Sentiments können die Börsenkurse 13 h voraussagen

Mechanistic Indicators of Childhood Asthma (MICA) Study: piloting an integrative design for evaluating environmental health

BACKGROUND: Asthma is a common complex disease responsible for considerable morbidity and mortality, particularly in urban minority populations. The Mechanistic Indicators of Childhood Asthma study was designed to pilot an integrative approach in children's health research. The study incorporates exposure metrics, internal dose measures, and clinical indicators to decipher the biological complexity inherent in diseases such as asthma and cardiovascular disease with etiology related to gene-environment interactions. METHODS/DESIGN: 205 non-asthmatic and asthmatic children, (9-12 years of age) from Detroit, Michigan were recruited. The study includes environmental measures (indoor and outdoor air, vacuum dust), biomarkers of exposure (cotinine, metals, total and allergen specific Immunoglobulin E, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic carbon metabolites) and clinical indicators of health outcome (immunological, cardiovascular and respiratory). In addition, blood gene expression and candidate SNP analyses were conducted. DISCUSSION: Based on an integrative design, the MICA study provides an opportunity to evaluate complex relationships between environmental factors, physiological biomarkers, genetic susceptibility and health outcomes. PROJECT APPROVAL: IRB Number 05-EPA-2637: The human subjects' research protocol was reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University of North Carolina; the IRB of Westat, Inc., the IRB of the Henry Ford Health System; and EPA's Human Subjects' Research Review Official

Genome-wide analysis of the omega-3 fatty acid desaturase gene family in Gossypium

Background The majority of commercial cotton varieties planted worldwide are derived from Gossypium hirsutum, which is a naturally occurring allotetraploid produced by interspecific hybridization of A- and D-genome diploid progenitor species. While most cotton species are adapted to warm, semi-arid tropical and subtropical regions, and thus perform well in these geographical areas, cotton seedlings are sensitive to cold temperature, which can significantly reduce crop yields. One of the common biochemical responses of plants to cold temperatures is an increase in omega-3 fatty acids, which protects cellular function by maintaining membrane integrity. The purpose of our study was to identify and characterize the omega-3 fatty acid desaturase (FAD) gene family in G. hirsutum, with an emphasis on identifying omega-3 FADs involved in cold temperature adaptation. Results Eleven omega-3 FAD genes were identified in G. hirsutum, and characterization of the gene family in extant A and D diploid species (G. herbaceum and G. raimondii, respectively) allowed for unambiguous genome assignment of all homoeologs in tetraploid G. hirsutum. The omega-3 FAD family of cotton includes five distinct genes, two of which encode endoplasmic reticulum-type enzymes (FAD3-1 and FAD3-2) and three that encode chloroplast-type enzymes (FAD7/8-1, FAD7/8-2, and FAD7/8-3). The FAD3-2 gene was duplicated in the A genome progenitor species after the evolutionary split from the D progenitor, but before the interspecific hybridization event that gave rise to modern tetraploid cotton. RNA-seq analysis revealed conserved, gene-specific expression patterns in various organs and cell types and semi-quantitative RT-PCR further revealed that FAD7/8-1 was specifically induced during cold temperature treatment of G. hirsutum seedlings. Conclusions The omega-3 FAD gene family in cotton was characterized at the genome-wide level in three species, showing relatively ancient establishment of the gene family prior to the split of A and D diploid progenitor species. The FAD genes are differentially expressed in various organs and cell types, including fiber, and expression of the FAD7/8-1 gene was induced by cold temperature. Collectively, these data define the genetic and functional genomic properties of this important gene family in cotton and provide a foundation for future efforts to improve cotton abiotic stress tolerance through molecular breeding approaches

Using Management Objectives to Specify Management Information Systems - A Contribution to MIS Success

Data warehouse projects, today, are in an ambivalent situation. On the one hand, data warehouses are critical for a company’s success and various methodological and technological tools are sophisticatedly developed to implement them. On the other hand, a significant amount of data warehouse projects fails due to non-technical reasons such as insufficient management support or in-corporative employees. But management support and user participation can be increased dramatically with specification methods that are understandable to these user groups. This paper aims at overcoming possible non-technical failure reasons by introducing a user-adequate specification approach within the field of management information systems.\u

Using Semantic Web technologies in the development of data warehouses: A systematic mapping

The exploration and use of Semantic Web technologies have attracted considerable attention from researchers examining data warehouse (DW) development. However, the impact of this research and the maturity level of its results are still unclear. The objective of this study is to examine recently published research articles that take into account the use of Semantic Web technologies in the DW arena with the intention of summarizing their results, classifying their contributions to the field according to publication type, evaluating the maturity level of the results, and identifying future research challenges. Three main conclusions were derived from this study: (a) there is a major technological gap that inhibits the wide adoption of Semantic Web technologies in the business domain;(b) there is limited evidence that the results of the analyzed studies are applicable and transferable to industrial use; and (c) interest in researching the relationship between DWs and Semantic Web has decreased because new paradigms, such as linked open data, have attracted the interest of researchers.This study was supported by the Universidad de La Frontera, Chile, PROY. DI15-0020. Universidad de la Frontera, Chile, Grant Numbers: DI15-0020 and DI17-0043