Community Knowledge Sharing Wiki for Higher Education Information Technology Professionals

Information Technology (IT) professionals in higher education regularly collaborate in communities of practice. The community knowledge sharing wiki is a collaboration tool IT professionals utilize as a centralized platform to improve knowledge and share best practices. The goals of the wiki are to improve the knowledge of IT professionals and the services of IT organizations in higher education. The primary benefit of IT professionals establishing a knowledge sharing wiki is having a centralized, structured, searchable, and expert reviewed resource for IT related service areas. As this wiki was further developed, measurements were to be defined to regularly report and review the wiki successes and failures. These measurements would ensure information is current and beneficial to all participants. A structure for the wiki was developed and the wiki was promoted to IT professionals via established community mailing lists and other outreach activities. The success of this knowledge sharing wiki implementation depended upon identifying a core group of professionals interested in establishing and updating the wiki. Once the wiki was established, others in the community would also be encouraged to contribute and participate in the wiki to ensure the tool was effective and useful for professionals and organizations to improve their IT services. Although many IT professionals expressed interest in the wiki, a core group of professionals could not be identified to establish the knowledge sharing wiki. A survey was conducted to identify the barriers with establishing the wiki and determine criteria for the wiki to be a beneficial tool to professionals. Professionals primarily lacked the time to participate and also cited an abundance of other resources already available in the field. Some of the professionals may have contributed if an incentive of some type was offered. While the establishment of the wiki has not been realized, the knowledge gained through developing the foundations for the wiki, promoting the wiki and analyzing the challenges with establishing the wiki have been beneficial to the IT community

Exploration of the organizational citizenship phenomenon in Lebanon

This dissertation examines Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) at two levels of theory and within Lebanon. First, a group level conceptualization of this construct (i.e., Collective Citizenship Behavior or CCB ) is theoretically developed based on an isomorphic model of emergence. Second, a qualitative pilot study examines the meaning and applicability of OCB. Results of this study suggest that OCB is a meaningful construct in this Arab context however cultural nuances and possible emic OCB dimensions are identified both in general and in times of war. Third, a single level quantitative study is conducted where CCB was found to have emerged in 57 of the 62 groups sampled (mean rwg(j) = 0.86). Further, a confirmatory factor analysis suggests that Williams and Anderson\u27s (1991) distinction of OCB-I and OCB-O applies at the group level of analysis (CCB-I and CCB-O). This study also suggests that between group differences in cohesiveness are positively related to CCB-I ( r = 0.79, t (42) = 8.12, p \u3c 0.001). Finally, a cross-level study relating CCB, OCB, and cultural orientation (i.e., allocentrism versus idiocentrism; Triandis, 1989) is tested using hierarchical linear modeling (Bryk, Radenbush, Cogdon, 1994). The relationships tested and their corresponding results are that: (1) the individual-level relationships between the dimensions of cultural orientation and OCB suggest that where allocentrism is not related to employee OCB in Lebanon; idiocentrism is positively related (γ10 =0.20, se =0.08, t (47) = 2.54, p \u3c 0.05). (2) A cross-level main effect of CCB on OCB was found (γ01 =0.56, se =0.18, t (46) = 3.06, p \u3c 0.01) indicating that individuals will display higher levels of OCB in groups with higher levels of CCB. Finally, (3) a cross-level moderating influence of CCB on the relationship between idiocentrism and OCB was not found suggesting that the level of CCB does not moderate this relationship in this sample

How to get research into practice : first get practice into research

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How Should Governments Address High Levels of Natural Radiation and Radon--Lessons from the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident and Ramsar, Iran

The authors discuss the high levels of natural background radiation in Ramsar, Iran, and offer data indicating that this has had little effect on the health of Ramsar\u27s inhabitants. The authors then examine the implications their research could have for public health policy

‘REALITY WORLDS’ COLLIDE: FILM AND VIDEOGAMES AS PEDAGOGICAL TOOLS FOR THE CLASSICS

Since the early eighties, the personal computer has come to form anintegral part of most aspects of our existence. In Hollywood thisis no different. Indeed, the influence of the computer is so powerfulthat it is rare for an action-adventure film to be able to call itselfa ‘blockbuster’ unless it is released with some sort of videogametie-in following closely in its wake, as the case of James Cameron’sAvatar (2010) suggests. It is the relationship between film andvideogame and their combined strengths as a teaching tool that arethe concerns of this article. The analysis therefore centres on twoexamples of film and videogame tie-in: Clash of the Titans andPercy Jackson & the Olympians: The lightning thief, both 2010releases. The investigation targets this film / videogame complexthrough the use of a new concept, the ‘reality world’, to be defined inthe course of the article that better allows an assessment of therelevance and utility of films and their videogame tie-ins aspedagogical tools for the teaching and study of the discipline ofClassics

An industrial case study for adopting software product lines in automotive industry an evolution-based approach for software product lines (EVOA-SPL)

Software Product Lines (SPLs) seek to achieve gains in productivity and time to market. Many companies in several domains are constantly adopting SPLs. Dealing with SPLs begin after companies find themselves with successful variants of a product in a particular domain. The adoption of an SPL-based approach in the automotive industry may provide a significant return on investment. To switch to an SPL-based approach, practitioners lack a reengineering approach that supports SPL migration and evolution in a systematic fashion. This paper presents a practical evolution-based approach to migrate and evolve a set of variants of a given product into an SPL and describes a case study from the automotive domain. The case study considers the need to handle the classical sensor variants family (CSVF) at Bosch Company. Using this study, we performed a contributed step toward future switch of the CSVF into the SPL. We investigated the applicability of the proposed evolution-based approach with a real variants family (using the textual requirements of the CSVF) and we evaluated our approach using several data collection methods. The results reveal that our approach can be suitable for the automotive domain in the case study.The University of Minho and Bosch Company supported this research. We thank our colleagues from the classical sensor development team at Bosch Company. Especially Andre L. Ferreira and Jana Seidel for their active collaboration and support. Special acknowledgment to the spirit of Helder Boas, who passed away after he offered the help and support to this research work

Características do herbicida Foramsulfuron lodosulfuron-Methyl-Sodium na cultura do milho.

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A general framework for hepatic iron overload quantification using MRI

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been considered for the quantification of iron overload in the liver. Iron overload was found to correlate with T2* measurement using T2* weighted images. In this work, we address the problem of iron overload estimation in the liver using MRI. We propose a general framework for all liver models proposed in the literature. The iron overload estimation task is then formulated as a minimization problem, and suitable regularization functions are assigned to the unknown model parameters. Subsequently, an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) is used to estimate these unknown parameters. Three different models are derived, tested and compared; namely the single exponential (SEXP), the bi-exponential (BiEXP), and the exponential plus constant (CEXP). Simulations conducted using synthetic datasets indicate good correlation between estimated and ground truth T2* for all models. Moreover, the algorithms are evaluated using MRI scans of nine patients of different iron concentrations, using a 3-Tesla MRI scanner. The estimated T2* values of the proposed approaches are found to correlate with those obtained by the MRI scanner console. Moreover, the proposed approaches outperform several existing methods in the literature for iron overload estimation

Two-period duopolies with forward markets

We experimentally consider a dynamic multi-period Cournot duopoly with a simultaneous option to manage financial risk and a real option to delay supply. The first option allows players to manage risk before uncertainty is realized, while the second allows managing risk after realization. In our setting, firms face a strategic dilemma: They must weigh the advantages of dealing with risk exposure against the disadvantages of higher competition. In theory, firms make strategic use of the hedging component, enhancing competition. Our experimental results support this theory, suggesting that hedging increases competition and negates duopoly profits even in a simultaneous setting