Exploring Practical Potentials of Business Simulation Games

With the emergence of the digital generation, advances in technology, and the trend towards more experiential learning formats, business simulation games (BSGs) are increasingly used by educators today. Of interest in this paper is the extent to which serious game playing, for business and technology professionals, influences work behaviors in practice. This study explores the business professional’s sense-making process when consciously reasoning about how BSG learning influences business practice. We adapt Toulmin’s framework for deconstructing practical reasoning to capture, analyze, and elicit patterns within arguments made regarding the application of BSG learning to business practice. The findings contribute to theories related to BSGs, and thus would benefit those practitioners who use BSGs

The Effect of Online Customer Reviews on Product Sales and Prices – A Longitudinal Study

As e-commerce prospers, increasing interests are gained in online customer reviews and its application to the theory and practice. However, there are many controversies around the effect of the online customer reviews. This study will use a longitudinal analysis approach to find the impact of online customer reviews on the price strategy and the product sales, which will add more solid application of effective use of e-WOM to the theory and the practice

Comments on AdS2 solutions of D=11 Supergravity

We study the supersymmetric solutions of 11-dimensional supergravity with a factor of $AdS_2$ made of M2-branes. Such solutions can provide gravity duals of superconformal quantum mechanics, or through double Wick rotation, the generic bubbling geometry of M-theory which are 1/16-BPS. We show that, when the internal manifold is compact, it should take the form of a warped U(1)-fibration over an 8-dimensional Kahler space.Comment: 11 pages, no figure, JHEP3.cl

Finite N Index and Angular Momentum Bound from Gravity

We exactly compute the finite N index and BPS partition functions for N=4 SYM theory in a newly proposed maximal angular momentum limit. The new limit is not predicted from the superconformal algebra, but naturally arises from the supergravity dual. We show that the index does not receive any finite N corrections while the free BPS partition function does.Comment: 14 pages, v2: minor revisions, published versio

Flow in Business Simulation Games: Comparison between Online and Face-to-Face MBA

This study explores the role of flow and its relationship with other elements of Business Simulation Games (BSGs) used in different MBA course delivery methods, namely online vs. face-to-face (F2F). We collect level of flow and other game behavioral variables from young professionals enrolled in an MBA Technology and Operations Management course. We analyze the data with one-way ANOVA to explore flow measures across different course delivery methods. The findings show there exist differences in flow level and performance measures between online and F2F formats

Non-compact QED(3) coupled to a four-fermi interaction

We present preliminary numerical results for the three dimensional non-compact QED with a weak four-fermion term in the lattice action. Approaches based on Schwinger-Dyson studies, arguments based on thermodynamic inequalities and numerical simulations lead to estimates of the critical number of fermion flavors (below which chiral symmetry is broken) ranging from $N_{fc}=1$ to $N_{fc}=4$. The weak four-fermion coupling provides the framework for an improved algorithm, which allows us to simulate the chiral limit of massless fermions and expose delicate effects.Comment: 3 pages, Contribution to Lattice2004(chiral), Fermilab, June 21-26, 200

Teaching Tip: What You Need to Know about Gamification Process of Cybersecurity Hands-on Lab Exercises: Lessons and Challenges

Cybersecurity education is becoming increasingly important in modern society, and hands-on practice is an essential element. Although instructors provide hands-on labs in their cybersecurity courses, traditional lab exercises often fail to effectively motivate students. Hence, many instructors desire to incorporate gamification in hands-on training to engage and motivate cybersecurity students, especially beginner learners. Given the dearth of guiding examples, this paper aims to describe the holistic process of converting traditional cybersecurity hands-on lab exercises to gamified lab exercises in an undergraduate network security course. We find that the gamified cybersecurity lab promotes students’ engagement, learning experience, and learning outcomes. The results show the positive acceptance of gamification by students as well as instructors. While gamification has been used in competitions and training, the success in the classroom and students’ desire for more gamification show that further investment in gamification will be more important in the classroom. We expect this paper to help instructors who are interested in gamification 1) convert traditional lab exercises to gamified labs; 2) estimate the extra workload and potential benefits; and 3) plan resources for implementation. This process is applicable to any cybersecurity courses with hands-on assignments

Development of a fully "humanized" xenograft model of breast cancer.

Until now there has been a distinct lack of a truly representative breast cancer model. The development of a complex heterologous multi-compartment xenograft model incorporating the relevant stromal elements will provide a realistic alternative to currently available chimeric xenograft models. The recent ability to immortalize primary human mammary endothelial cells and fibroblasts by the insertion of the hTERT and a temperature sensitive mutant variant of SV40 LT has made this possible. We have commenced the development of an organotypic, 3-compartment xenograft model of human breast cancer. The immortalized mammary stromal cells provide a viable and much needed tumour microenvironment of human origin for tumour proliferation. Results have confirmed the crucial importance of stromal cell support as well as tumour-stromal interactions in tumourigenesis. MCF-7 cells when xenografted in numbers insufficient to produce tumours alone, consistently produced tumours when combined with stromal cells. Also, heterologous xenografts produced not only faster growing but larger tumours than tumour cell lines alone. Immunohistochemical analysis using human cell specific markers demonstrated that initial tumour growth was supported by the stromal cells before the recruitment of host vasculature. The xenografts were composed predominantly of proliferating tumour cells, host ECM and vasculature. Surprisingly the LT antigen expressing immortalized stromal cells did not survive, proliferate or form organized structures in this environment for any reasonable time period. To conclude, these findings parallel observations made in 3-D organotypic cultures which indicates that progression of the epithelial cell tumour is not cell autonomous. Rather, that tumourigenesis is promoted, and probably sometimes induced, by the anomalies in the surrounding stroma and microenvironment. With further refinement and adjustments this model can be utilized as a credible pre-clinical model for the development and testing of new therapeutic strategies, such as those that target breast cancer stroma itself. This is very timely as stroma is now emerging as the dominant factor in modulating epithelial morphogenesis and mitogenesis

On a class of 4D Kahler bases and AdS_5 supersymmetric Black Holes

We construct a class of toric Kahler manifolds, M_4, of real dimension four, a subset of which corresponds to the Kahler bases of all known 5D asymptotically AdS_5 supersymmetric black-holes. In a certain limit, these Kahler spaces take the form of cones over Sasaki spaces, which, in turn, are fibrations over toric manifolds of real dimension two. The metric on M_4 is completely determined by a single function H(x), which is the conformal factor of the two dimensional space. We study the solutions of minimal five dimensional gauged supergravity having this class of Kahler spaces as base and show that in order to generate a five dimensional solution H(x) must obey a simple sixth order differential equation. We discuss the solutions in detail, which include all known asymptotically AdS_5 black holes as well as other spacetimes with non-compact horizons. Moreover we find an infinite number of supersymmetric deformations of these spacetimes with less spatial isometries than the base space. These deformations vanish at the horizon, but become relevant asymptotically.Comment: 34 pages, 3 figures. v2: formula (8.35) and other minor typos corrected; references added; accepted for publication in JHE