Concepts of creative leadership of women leaders in 21st century

Abstract: This article presents the subjective perspectives of women leaders working in higher education institutions in the 21st century in South Africa. It focuses in particular on creativity as demonstrated by women leaders working in culturally and gender diverse post-apartheid settings. The aim is to contribute to the discourse on the creativity of women leaders from diverse cultural backgrounds within South Africa higher education institutions by examining how women leaders experience creativity and what creativity means to them from a qualitative perspective. The study reported on assessed the experiences of creativity of 23 women leaders and their views on creativity and creative leadership by means of a research paradigm based on Wilhelm Dilthey’s modern hermeneutics. It used qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews, as well as observations within one selected higher education institution. Data was analysed by means of content analysis. Quality research criteria and ethical considerations were upheld. The findings highlight the creative skills and attitudes of women leaders underlying successful leadership and the types of creative leadership applied. They suggest that women leaders’ creativity manifests in facilitating creativity in higher education institutions by fostering the creativity of others rather than directing their own creative vision through or integrating it in the work of employees

Identifying Appropriate Intellectual Property Protection Mechanisms for Machine Learning Models: A Systematization of Watermarking, Fingerprinting, Model Access, and Attacks

The commercial use of Machine Learning (ML) is spreading; at the same time, ML models are becoming more complex and more expensive to train, which makes Intellectual Property Protection (IPP) of trained models a pressing issue. Unlike other domains that can build on a solid understanding of the threats, attacks and defenses available to protect their IP, the ML-related research in this regard is still very fragmented. This is also due to a missing unified view as well as a common taxonomy of these aspects. In this paper, we systematize our findings on IPP in ML, while focusing on threats and attacks identified and defenses proposed at the time of writing. We develop a comprehensive threat model for IP in ML, categorizing attacks and defenses within a unified and consolidated taxonomy, thus bridging research from both the ML and security communities

Component Selection for the Metro Visualisation of the Self-Organising Map

Self-Organising Maps have been used for a wide range of clustering applications. They are well-suited for various visualisation techniques to offer better insight into the clustered data sets. A particularly feasible visualisation is the plotting of single components of a data set and their distribution across the SOM. One central problem of the visualisation of Component Planes is that a single plot is needed for each component; this understandably leads to problems with higher-dimensional data. We therefore build on the Metro Visualisation for Self-Organising Maps which integrates the idea of Component Planes into one illustration. Higher-dimensional data sets still pose problems in terms of overloaded visualisations - component selection and aggregation techniques are highly desirable. We therefore propose and compare two methods, one for the aggregation of correlated components, one for the selection of the components most feasible for visualisation for a given clustering

Einfluss von biologischer und konventioneller Bewirtschaftung auf biologische Bodenqualitätsparameter: Entwicklungen im DOK Langzeitversuch nach pH-Regulierung

In the long-term DOK field trial at Therwil, Switzerland, agricultural farming systems are compared since 1978: CONFYM (mineral and organic fertilisers, synthetic pesticides), BIOORG (organic fertilisers, mechanical weeding and biological disease and pest control) and BIODYN (with composted manure and bio-dynamic preparations), all of them at two fertiliser intensities of 0.7 and 1.4 livestock units per ha, respectively. They are compared with CONMIN (conventionally managed, exclusively minerally fertilised) and NOFERT (unfertilised control). CONFYM and CONMIN were limed with 2.7 t CaCO3 ha-1 in 1999, CONMIN with additional 2 t CaCO3 ha-1 in 2005, since pH values had dropped below officially recommended values. In spring of 1998 and 2006 soil samples from 0 to 20 cm depth were analysed for soil microbial biomass (substrate induced respiration SIR and chloroform fumigation extraction CFE), soil respiration and dehydrogenase activity. NOFERT and CONMIN exhibited the lowest microbial soil properties Manure application influenced most soil microbial parameters positively. Differences between treatments in soil microbial parameters were smaller in 2006 than in 1998 due to pH regulation. Only CFE and dehydrogenase activity were higher in BIODYN than in BIOORG and CONFYM in 2006. For physiological methods SIR and soil respiration, no differences between these three systems were measured. Because of liming, manure use, a wide ley rotation and equal plant residue management no more differences between BIOORG and CONFYM, representing the predominant farming systems in Switzerland were observed for all soil microbial properties