Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) at Peerless Technologies

Peerless Technologies is an award-winning 8(a), small disadvantaged business (SDB) located in Fairborn, Ohio, whose primary focus is on government defense contracts. It has customers ranging from the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security and others in the government sector. Peerless currently has approximately 60 employees. More than half of these employees work at various locations while the remaining employees work at Peerless’ corporate headquarters in Fairborn, Ohio

Practicing Learner-Centered Teaching: Pedagogical Design and Assessment of a Second Life Project

Guided by the principles of learner-centered teaching methodology, a Second Life project is designed to engage students in active learning of virtual commerce through hands-on experiences and teamwork in a virtual environment. More importantly, an assessment framework is proposed to evaluate the learning objectives and learning process of the Second Life project. The assessment framework is composed of a variety of items, such as reflection essays, chat transcripts, peer evaluations, and a post project survey that measures the learning motive, attitudes, level of difficulty, and the time used to complete the project. The Second Life project was implemented in an MBA-IS course in which thirty-two students were randomly assigned to eight teams. In Second Life, each team managed an avatar and completed a series of business-related activities. The assessment outcomes indicated that students were able to apply what they learned in class into the virtual environment through their exploration and interaction. Students were motivated to learn in the Second Life project and felt that the engaging experiences helped with their learning. On average, students developed a positive attitude toward Second Life and felt that the application was not difficult to use. Lessons learned, recommendations for design issues, and implications for educators are also discussed

Exploring a Third-Party e-Waste Recycling System under the Extended Producer Responsibility Framework in China

The rapid advance of information technologies has produced a large amount of waste of electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE). WEEE or e- waste, refers to old, end-of-life (EoL) or discarded electronic appliances. The world produces 20 to 50 million metric tons of e-waste annually (Electronics Take-back Coalition 2009), of which China alone contributes 2 million tons. Each year at least 6 million washing machines, 7 million TV sets, 10 million PCs and 70 million mobile phones are discarded and the number increases at the rate of more than 10 per cent each year (Hung 2007), according to the report from the resource and environment comprehensive utilization department of the State Development and Reform Commission (SDRC 2006). Discarded electronic products contain a stew of toxic metals and chemicals such as lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and polychlorinated biphenyls (Scott 2007) and cause great harm to the environment. Recycling and reusing e-waste are thus becoming an increasingly important global issue

Subsequent chemotherapy reverses acquired tyrosine kinase inhibitor resistance and restores response to tyrosine kinase inhibitor in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Patients with advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can develop acquired resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) erlotinib and gefitinib. Here, we report the successful treatment with alternating chemotherapy and TKIs of two cases of advanced NSCLC who developed resistance to TKI.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>Two patients with advanced or metastatic NSCLC were treated with palliative chemotherapy followed by erlotinib/gefitinib. When TKI therapy failed, two cycles of chemotherapy were provided, which were followed by re-challenge with erlotinib or gefitinib.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>NSCLC patients with acquired TKI resistance should be managed aggressively whenever possible. Subsequent chemotherapy and target treatment is one of the reasonable choices for those with an initial dramatic clinical response with erlotinib/gefitinib treatment. Further studies are warranted to substantiate the association of erlotinib /gefitinib treatment with the efficacy of NSCLC patients with acquired TKI failure.</p

Brief Bursts Self-Inhibit and Correlate the Pyramidal Network

A multi-cell patch clamp study reveals the summation properties of frequency-dependent disynaptic inhibition between neocortical pyramidal cells and shows how brief bursts of activity in a few cells can synchronize the entire microcircuit

Parallel Computational Subunits in Dentate Granule Cells Generate Multiple Place Fields

A fundamental question in understanding neuronal computations is how dendritic events influence the output of the neuron. Different forms of integration of neighbouring and distributed synaptic inputs, isolated dendritic spikes and local regulation of synaptic efficacy suggest that individual dendritic branches may function as independent computational subunits. In the present paper, we study how these local computations influence the output of the neuron. Using a simple cascade model, we demonstrate that triggering somatic firing by a relatively small dendritic branch requires the amplification of local events by dendritic spiking and synaptic plasticity. The moderately branching dendritic tree of granule cells seems optimal for this computation since larger dendritic trees favor local plasticity by isolating dendritic compartments, while reliable detection of individual dendritic spikes in the soma requires a low branch number. Finally, we demonstrate that these parallel dendritic computations could contribute to the generation of multiple independent place fields of hippocampal granule cells

Business Analytics in 2015

A few years ago, when it seemed that everyone was riding the hype of big data, experts alerted us that big data was evolution — big data or small data, every organization needs data and the capability to manage them for business insights

e-Textbooks: Is Now the Right Time?

Don’t be surprised when you see NOOK and iPads sitting along the side of books in campus bookstores this fall. Among numerous types of digital tools and technologies used in classrooms today, e-textbooks seem to be the next rising star. In the arena of higher education, educators have long been using digital materials and tools for teaching and learning. Many universities have adopted campus-wide online course management applications such as products from BlackBoard and Desire2Learn. Online meeting tools such as GoToMeeting, Elluminate, and Adobe Connect have now transformed the traditional delivery of teaching and lecturing to a synchronized, real-time interaction online. The world is now witnessing another trend of digital content consumption happening in higher education, and this time it’s the textbooks

Connecting You With Real People at Real Time

As we all know, traditional customer services are mainly based on face-to-face in-store help, mailing catalogs, and telephone contacts such as call centers. The Internet has introduced new ways of delivering customer services on time and on target to address customers’ needs. Live Chat Online Customer Service uses live text chats, an innovative tool, and advanced features, such as shared co-browsing windows, to deliver real-time help and on-demand assistance to online customers. Although happening over the Internet, customers are interacting with real people synchronously

Big Data for Business and Education

Have you heard of the phrase, Big Data? The New York Times declared 2012 the dawn of the “Age of Big Data. ”Today, Big Data, together with social and mobile, are the hottest trends in the technology and business communities.“Big Data” is no longer just a technical term, but rather indicates business opportunity.The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI) Best Practices Report on Big Data Analytics reports that 74% of organizations have adopted some form of analytics today and 34% companies practice some form of advanced Big Data analytics. However, Big Data brings along challenges with benefits.The purpose of this article is to introduce Big Data for our business and education communities and, hopefully, to encourage a lot more discussions on this topic