Predicting Risk for Deer-Vehicle Collisions Using a Social Media Based Geographic Information System

As an experiment investigating social media as a data source for making management decisions, photo sharing websites were searched for data on deer sightings. Data about deer density and location are important factors in decisions related to herd management and transportation safety, but such data are often limited or not available. Results indicate that when combined with simple rules, data from photo sharing websites reliably predicted the location of road segments with high risk for deer-vehicle collisions as reported by volunteers to an internet site tracking roadkill. Use of Google Maps as the GIS platform was helpful in plotting and sharing data, measuring road segments and other distances, and overlaying geographical data. The ability to view satellite images and panoramic street views proved to be a particularly useful. As a general conclusion, the two independently collected sets of data from social media provided consistent information, suggesting investigative value to this data source. Overlaying two independently collected data sets can be a useful step in evaluating or mitigating reporting bias and human error in data taken from social media

Deer Herd Management Using the Internet: A Comparative Study of California Targeted By Data Mining the Internet

An ongoing project to investigate the use of the internet as an information source for decision support identified the decline of the California deer population as a significant issue. Using Google Alerts, an automated keyword search tool, text and numerical data were collected from a daily internet search and categorized by region and topic to allow for identification of information trends. This simple data mining approach determined that California is one of only four states that do not currently report total, finalized deer harvest (kill) data online and that it is the only state that has reduced the amount of information made available over the internet in recent years. Contradictory information identified by the internet data mining prompted the analysis described in this paper indicating that the graphical information presented on the California Fish and Wildlife website significantly understates the severity of the deer population decline over the past 50 years. This paper presents a survey of how states use the internet in their deer management programs and an estimate of the California deer population over the last 100 years. It demonstrates how any organization can use the internet for data collection and discovery

Results of Environmental Scanning Applied to the Design of a Deer Management Decision Support System (DSS) For The United States and California

Using freely available internet search tools for environmental scanning, information related to deer management was collected, categorized, and evaluated with the goal of providing public decision support. Key issues raised in the public debate discovered by the search are addressed with relevant information formatted as output for a decision support system – dashboard elements. A graph addresses contradictory reports about the current direction of the deer population; the trend since 2006 appears to be down. Another graph illustrates the approximate longterm population trend; the current U.S. white-tailed deer population is about the same as in 1500. A table summarizes profiles of state deer issues and strategies. Only eleven states are trying to reduce their deer population. A graph illustrates the rise and fall of the California population, the most dramatic population decline in the U.S. over the past 100 years. Hunting pressure and herd demographic management are found to be related to the decline, making these candidate variables for attention in the decision support system. This case application is designed to illustrate methods the author has learned in creating a variety of decision support applications for technology companies

Using an Online Virtual Server to Simulate Network Administration

Participants in the rapidly changing computer networking arena face the significant challenge of keeping up with technologies that are often expensive to deploy, making it particularly difficult to gain hands-on experience. A survey of current job descriptions indicates that Microsoft systems continue to experience strong interest among employers. Learning alternatives are considered with a focus on a new solution to the problem of hands-on experience that has been provided by Microsoft, a virtual server lab that is available on-line and is free. Features of this virtual lab are explained, and the results of an experiment to integrate this lab into a networking course are discussed

Extrapolating the Price to Performance Frontier for Computer System Components: Processing, Storage, Memory, and Network Interface

As new computer hardware becomes available offering better performance at a lower price, computer accessibility rapidly improves resulting in dramatic changes to society. Planners in business and other organizations need an estimate of future prices and performance to help design their systems or to anticipate the effect of these changes. This paper presents a new set of historical annual data from 1987 to 2010 defining basic price to performance measurements for computer components including processors, hard drives, random access memory, and network interface cards. Two approaches to extrapolating price to performance are evaluated, the industry learning curve and a constant rate of increase implied by Moore’s Law. Regression analysis of this new dataset shows long-term, stable improvements in price to performance consistent with Moore’s Law provide a very good fit of historical data and a better approach to extrapolating future price to performance than a learning curve approach. Practioners can apply basic percentage changes to make reasonable forecasts that may be modified by short-term market fluctuation

Problematic White-Tailed Deer Information in Rochlin et al. (2022) Regarding Past and Future Tick (Amblyomma americanum, Acari: Ixodidae) Distributions

Figure 3 in this Journal of Medical Entomology article is central to the authors\u27 warning about an exploding white-tailed deer population but conflicts in important aspects with the relevant deer research. Among other problems, it shows a 60% increase in the white-tailed deer density from 1500 to 2020 when the research consensus is that the population is about the same. It shows an exploding population from 2000 to 2020 without supporting data when the population peaked around the year 2000 according to evidence-based research

A Rule Based Forecast of Hard Disk Drive Costs

While the cost of storage devices such as hard disk drives continues to fall, the overall proportion of computer network costs dedicated to storage continues to rise. Within a few years, storage will account for 50 percent of total network hardware and software costs. Since computer networks typically have long lives, the design process often involves projecting costs many years into the future. This paper examines a rule based on a technology trend that can be used to estimate the cost per megabyte of hard disk drives. The rule is similar to the well-known Moore’s law that has reliably summarized integrated circuit advances over the past several decades. A statistical analysis of historic data suggests the rule for hard disk drives captures much of the readily available information

Using Google Keyword Statistics to Explain Changes in Traffic to Internet Sites Related to Global Environmental Management

Google recently provided a keyword statistics tool to support its “AdWords” program that conducts a deep evaluation of individual web sites. It provides detailed information on the keywords in the site and an index of monthly and average statistics for these keywords over the past year for users of the Google search engine. The data is intended to help with the design of internet sites and to support bidding for keywords that when purchased become AdWords that draw traffic through the sponsored links of Google search. This paper describes an analysis of the traffic, keywords, and search rank results for a sample of internet sites related to global environmental management for March 2007 and March 2008. Surprisingly, the analysis shows absolutely no correlation between changes in traffic and changes in keyword statistics. There is only weak evidence that the Google search rank affects traffic. One interesting result was that highly trafficked sites received less traffic while less trafficked sites received more traffic, a regression to mean traffic

Faster Ethernet and the ATM Market Boundary

As a network technology, ethernet flourished in low-cost, low-end markets. Simple to make and with open standards, many companies created products. The resulting improvement in price, performance, and market acceptance resulted in ethernet replacing the more established and sophisticated token-ring technology that dominated early large corporate LANs. As ethernet gets faster, accelerating from the original 10 Mbps into Gigabit speeds, the technology is poised to challenge the dominant backbone and WAN standard, ATM. A discussion of new ethernet developments is formalized with a decision model used to define a market boundary with data illustrating why and where a technology may dominate