ABSTRACT:
This research examines the effectiveness of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) technology in a postsecondary classroom. Despite recent advances in the technological tools available to educators, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding student efficacy, engagement and contribution to learning. This paper will present the preliminary findings of the first phases of an evaluation project measuring student interaction with BYOD technology in a large group setting. Employing a mixed methods design, the findings from two focus groups and two online surveys will be discussed. This project involved students in the Winter and Fall 2014 semesters of a fourth year Human Sexuality course which has enrolment of approximately 400 per semester. The findings suggest that BYOD technology contributes to student engagement and participation in the classroom setting. Further, the findings suggest that students are comfortable in using this tool, and perceived the experience as enjoyable.

ABSTRACT:
The research documented in this paper attempted to answer the question of how relevant the content of the Computing courses offered within programs of the Computing Department at the National University of Samoa (NUS) were to meet the needs of industry and the workforce. The RINCCII study which was conducted in 2013 to 2014, surveyed 13 institutions and 19 graduates from the Computing programs. Findings from the survey indicated that the current course offerings within the Computing department are relevant to the needs of industry and the workplace. However there are aspects or topics which need inclusion or better coverage. The study also recommended regular surveys to gauge relevance of curricula to needs of industry.

ABSTRACT:
There is a lot of technological buzz over the past few years regarding taking care of lettuce and hydroponic greenhouse plants and fish. We first review and discuss the recent technologies in the field of hydroponics, especially the hydroponic sensor curriculum project. The College of Engineering at The University of Akron developed a sensor that can detect hydrology, ph, electrical conductivity, nutrient levels, and temperature of hydroponic plants & aquaponic systems. The sensor can optimize the healthy monitoring of plants and fish in greenhouses, homes, schools, and universities anywhere in the world. The goal is to provide sustainable monitoring for growing healthy greenhouse foods 24/7. In this paper, we propose a sustainable solution for optimizing plant growth by using computer simulations and smart phone applications for plant growers and fisheries to access data in real-time and provide guidance on how to manage healthy environments for plants, such as “electric conductivity is lower than the standard for the tomato, so please add 5ml of nutrients”. The app will be extended to social media connection, which is enabled by the web access features, where the user can network with hydroponic and aquarium user groups to share information (how to grow a lettuce), ask questions (where can I buy seeds), and gaming for virtual fish and plant growing. The app can be used on a computer, a smart phone or a tablet and provides numerous features that currently need many separate apps, especially in emerging areas such as hydroponics and aquaponics. The data visualization component in the app can enhance the analysis of the variables and data collection. Using the app, plant growers can track results and grow better crops. The app also provides hands-on interactive simulations that connect to the national science standards, providing optimal use of nutrients by taking care of greenhouse plants and fish for hydroponics and aquaponics.

ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to a theory of value co-creation by integrating a case observation and conceptual insights from literature that are concerned with co-creation phenomena. A value creation taxonomy is introduced as a reference model which is used to describe an ongoing paradigm shift from traditional industrial production towards Bottom-up economics. On this basis, a conceptual framework is derived for comparing how traditional value chain elements might be rearranged by organizations relying on value co-creation. The underlying research work also aims to apply the authors' framework in order to illustrate how completely new business models arise and how traditional (manufacturing) companies could be enabled to make use of value co-creation patterns observed in the 36 cases under consideration. Each case is employing its own distinct approach to value creation.

ABSTRACT:
Creative projects in various fields are often subjected to afterthe- fact ‘post-mortem’ assessments to better understand their successes and failures. Names for these include project retrospectives or post occupancy evaluations (POEs) depending on their field of origin. This case study from the architecture field will show the utility of engaging in multiple rounds of post-mortem activities in order to assess the solution from multiple stakeholder perspectives and in doing so, more fully recognize its strengths and weaknesses.

The design of a homeless shelter bedroom was subjected to two POE analyses: a ‘demand side’ focused study that analyzed user accommodation, and a ‘supply side’ study that addressed issues including budget and funding. The two POEs yielded both corroborative and contrasting findings that sometimes worked at cross purposes. Three evaluation tactics emerged that could be extended to other fields’ post mortem assessment activities: 1) conduct two or more POEs; 2) vary the POE criteria so that one is deep and focused ‘demand side’ user analysis and the other is ‘supply side’ operational and installation issues; and 3) conduct the POEs over a broad time period.

ABSTRACT:
Data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has shown that the obesity rate doubled among adults within the past two decades. This upsurge was the result of changes in human behavior and environment.

Partial least squares (PLS) regression and support vector machine (SVM) models were conducted to determine the relationship between U.S. county-level adult obesity rate and multiple risk factors. The outcome variable was the adult obesity rate. The 23 risk factors were categorized into four domains of the social ecological model including biological/behavioral factor, socioeconomic status, food environment, and physical environment.

Of the 23 risk factors related to adult obesity, the top eight significant risk factors with high normalized importance were identified including physical inactivity, natural amenity, percent of households receiving SNAP benefits, and percent of all restaurants being fast food. The study results were consistent with those in the literature.

The study showed that adult obesity rate was influenced by biological/behavioral factor, socioeconomic status, food environment, and physical environment embedded in the social ecological theory. By analyzing multiple risk factors of obesity in the communities, may lead to the proposal of more comprehensive and integrated policies and intervention programs to solve the population-based problem.

ABSTRACT:
This paper explores the role that societal culture may play in terms of acting as an inhibitor or enabler when creating conditions conducive to innovative enterprise. To further understanding of this concept, the paper’s authors explore different cultural influences and traditions of the country of Germany and the Canadian province of Ontario against the backdrop of the introduction of a government green energy policy and how local business reacts to new opportunities forthcoming from this shift in policy direction. The authors contend that the current Ontario psyche has contributed to an overall cultural drag on innovative activities. They demonstrate that in no place is this cultural impact more evident than the apparent lack of home-grown innovative activity surrounding green energy entrepreneurship; where, in spite of progressive and favourable provincial government policy, continued manufacturing growth is led by offshore companies The Ontario experience is in sharp contrast to current and historical German activity, when it comes to local innovation and advances in green energy. While Germany officially enacted their green energy act at the turn of the last century, experts agree that the German tenure with going green is in fact 35 to 40 years in the making. Although it has been contended that unique historical conditions such as postwar reconstruction and the reunification of the former East and West Germany have been significant contributing factors to Germany’s embracing of sustainable energy, the authors of this paper contend that cultural factors such as the German sense of naturfreund; an overwhelming sense of being a nature-lover, may also play a significant role. In their exploration the authors build upon Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory unpacking specific cultural components, as they compare actions and responses made by German and Ontarian policy-makers and business decision-makers.

ABSTRACT:
Pre-service teachers (K-12) developed and taught lesson plans that met the state and national science and technology standards by integrating Excel and PowerPoint into their lesson. A sample of 74 pre-service teachers in our science education program were required to integrate technology (Excel) as they developed science and math lesson plans with graphing as a requirement. These students took pre-test and post-test (n=74) to determine their understanding of Excel in relation to the need of current technology for todays’ science classroom. The test results showed that students obtained content gains in Excel graphing in all the inquiry-based lab experiments. They also gained experience in developing math skills, inquiry-based science lesson plans, and communication and presentation skills.

ABSTRACT:
Based on the analysis of global earthquake data bank for the last thirty years, a global tectonic activity indicator was proposed comprising a weekly globally averaged mean earthquake magnitude value. It was shown that 84% of indicator variability is a harmonic oscillation with a fundamental period of 37.2 years, twice the maximum period in the tidal oscillation spectrum (18.6 years). From this observation, a conclusion was drawn that parametric resonance (PR) exists between global tectonic activity and low-frequency tides. The conclusion was also confirmed by the existence of the statistically significant PR response at the second lowest tidal frequency i.e. 182.6 days. It was shown that the global earthquake flow, with a determination factor 93%, is a sum of two Gaussian streams, nearly equally intense, with mean values of 23 and 83 events per week and standard deviations of 9 and 30 events per week, respectively. The Earth periphery to ‘mean time interval between earthquakes’ ratios in the first and the second flow modes described above match, by the order of magnitude, the sound velocity in the fluid (~1500 m/s) and in elastic medium (5500 m/s).

ABSTRACT:
The monitoring and control of urban critical infrastructures consists of the protection of assets such as houses, offices, government and private buildings, with low cost, high quality and high dependability. In order to satisfy all these requirements at the same time, the control of a number of assets has to be performed by means of automated systems based on networks of heterogeneous sensors. This new concept idea is based on the use of unmanned operations at each of the many remote assets (each asset is monitored through a network of sensors) and a man-in-the-loop automated control in a central site (Operational Center), which performs alarm detection and system management.

ABSTRACT:
In problem solving, there is a search for the appropriate solution. A state space is a problem domain consisting of the start state, the goal state and the operations that will necessitate the various moves from the start state to the goal state. Each move operation takes one away from the start state and closer to the goal state. In this work we have attempted implementing this concept in adversarial problem solving, which is a more complex problem space. We noted that real world adversarial problems vary in their types and complexities, and therefore solving an adversarial problem would depend on the nature of the adversarial problem itself. Specifically, we examined a real world case, “the prisoner’s dilemma” which is a critical, mutually independent, decision making adversarial problem. We combined the idea of the Thagard’s Theory of Explanatory Coherence (TEC) with Bayes’ theorem of conditional probability to construct the model of an opponent that includes the opponent’s model of the agent. A further conversion of the model into a series of state space structures led us into the use of breadth-first search strategy to arrive at our decision goal.

ABSTRACT:
A business organization’s objective is to make better decisions at all levels of the firm to improve performance. Typically organizations are multi-faceted and complex systems that use uncertain information. Therefore, making quality decisions to improve organizational performance is a daunting task. Organizations use decision support systems that apply different business intelligence techniques such as statistical models, scoring models, neural networks, expert systems, neuro-fuzzy systems, case-based systems, or simply rules that have been developed through experience. Managers need a decision-making approach that is robust, competent, effective, efficient, and integrative to handle the multi-dimensional organizational entities. The decision maker deals with multiple players in an organization such as products, customers, competitors, location, geographic structure, scope, internal organization, and cultural dimension [46]. Sound decisions include two important concepts: efficiency (return on invested resources) and effectiveness (reaching predetermined goals). However, quite frequently, the decision maker cannot simultaneously handle data from different sources. Hence, we recommend that managers analyze different aspects of data from multiple sources separately and integrate the results of the analysis. This study proposes the design of a multi-attribute-decision-support-system that combines the analytical power of two different tools: data envelopment analysis (DEA) and fuzzy logic. DEA evaluates and measures the relative efficiency of decision making units that use multiple inputs and outputs to provide non-objective measures without making any specific assumptions about data. On the other hand fuzzy logic’s main strength lies in handling imprecise data. This study proposes a modeling technique that jointly uses the two techniques to benefit from the two methodologies. A major advantage of the DEA approach is that it clearly identifies the important factors contributing to the success of a decision. In addition, I also propose the use of a neuro-fuzzy model to create a rule-based system that can aid the decision-maker in making decisions regarding the implications of a decision. One of the important characteristics of neuro-fuzzy systems is their ability to deal with imprecise and uncertain information. The neuro-fuzzy model integrates the performance values of a set of production units derived by ranking using DEA to create IF-THEN rules to handle fluctuating and uncertain scenarios. Thus, a decision maker can easily analyze and understand any decision made by the neuro-fuzzy model in the form of the easily interpretable IF-THEN rules.

[46] M. PorterCompetitive Strategy: techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, The Free Press, New York, 1980.

ABSTRACT:
In the theory presented by PMBoK© - Project Management Book of Knowledge the Project Management [1] features - among others - the Disciplines of Scope and Quality. The Discipline of Scope, to become effective, must provide the execution of a hypothetical step (not defined in its text but perceived by the present author of this paper) that can be termed as Planning Stage of Project Result. The Discipline of Quality, to become effective, must provide the execution of an also hypothetical step (also not defined in its text but also perceived by the same present author of this paper) that can be termed as Validation Stage of Product Delivery.In the theory presented by PMBoK© - Project Management Book of Knowledge the Project Management [1] features - among others - the Disciplines of Scope and Quality. The Discipline of Scope, to become effective, must provide the execution of a hypothetical step (not defined in its text but perceived by the present author of this paper) that can be termed as Planning Stage of Project Result. The Discipline of Quality, to become effective, must provide the execution of an also hypothetical step (also not defined in its text but also perceived by the same present author of this paper) that can be termed as Validation Stage of Product Delivery.In the theory presented by PMBoK© - Project Management Book of Knowledge the Project Management [1] features - among others - the Disciplines of Scope and Quality. The Discipline of Scope, to become effective, must provide the execution of a hypothetical step (not defined in its text but perceived by the present author of this paper) that can be termed as Planning Stage of Project Result. The Discipline of Quality, to become effective, must provide the execution of an also hypothetical step (also not defined in its text but also perceived by the same present author of this paper) that can be termed as Validation Stage of Product Delivery.

The importance of both Stages is crucial to building a solution that complies with the expectations presented by Stakeholders in the Project Result (which, as already said, are recorded in the Discipline of Scope in accordance with the Planning Stage) and should meet the intended requirements of compliance in Product Delivery (which, as already said, are recorded in the Discipline of Quality in accordance with Validation Stage).

In the execution of Validation Stage of Product Delivery structured in the Discipline of Quality, which occurs immediately as predecessor of the placement of the solution built in Operational Phase Production is used, as reference to parameterize the expected quality, the degree of compliance with the requirements (Essential and/or Desirable) specified in the Planning Stage of Project Result structured in the Discipline of Scope.

Independently of the nature of the Project (if this is to execute a solution for the Civil Construction, Software Development, Product Implementation or others Areas), may be perceived some Exogenous Variables that interfere with the achievement with success of Validation Stage of Product Delivery structured in the Discipline of Quality.

The perception of these Exogenous Variables, which can interfere with Deadlines and Costs initially planned for the implementation of Validation Stage of Product Delivery, is the result of the accumulation of experiences throughout the professional career of more than 40 (forty) years of author this work in projects of various types, besides their additional Technical Certifications in the field of Project Management (PMP© - Project Management Professional/PMI© - Project Management Institute) and System Testing (CTFL© - Certified Tester Foundation Level/ISTQB© - International Software Testing Qualifications Board). As result of their assessments and surveys in this theme, the author identified and classified the Exogenous Variables perceived between 2 (two) Aspects, which are, the Circumstantial Aspects of the Project and the Specific Aspects of the Team. For each of the 2 (two) Aspects (which are defined in the text of this article in details), 3 (three) Topics are treated (and also defined in the same article with precision). This paper also presents an Information Collection Form entitled "Evaluation of Impacting Factors in Deadlines and Project Costs" that proposes percentages calculated in benchmarking (but, that can be reviewed according to the reality found), which enables also, and principally, be a checklist as confirmation of the occurrence of the points raised in this paper, so that even other decision-making, regarding the direction of the Project could be thought. The importance of both Stages is crucial to building a solution that complies with the expectations presented by Stakeholders in the Project Result (which, as already said, are recorded in the Discipline of Scope in accordance with the Planning Stage) and should meet the intended requirements of compliance in Product Delivery (which, as already said, are recorded in the Discipline of Quality in accordance with Validation Stage). In the execution of Validation Stage of Product Delivery structured in the Discipline of Quality, which occurs immediately as predecessor of the placement of the solution built in Operational Phase Production is used, as reference to parameterize the expected quality, the degree of compliance with the requirements (Essential and/or Desirable) specified in the Planning Stage of Project Result structured in the Discipline of Scope.

Independently of the nature of the Project (if this is to execute a solution for the Civil Construction, Software Development, Product Implementation or others Areas), may be perceived some Exogenous Variables that interfere with the achievement with success of Validation Stage of Product Delivery structured in the Discipline of Quality.

The perception of these Exogenous Variables, which can interfere with Deadlines and Costs initially planned for the implementation of Validation Stage of Product Delivery, is the result of the accumulation of experiences throughout the professional career of more than 40 (forty) years of author this work in projects of various types, besides their additional Technical Certifications in the field of Project Management (PMP© - Project Management Professional/PMI© - Project Management Institute) and System Testing (CTFL© - Certified Tester Foundation Level/ISTQB© - International Software Testing Qualifications Board).

As result of their assessments and surveys in this theme, the author identified and classified the Exogenous Variables perceived between 2 (two) Aspects, which are, the Circumstantial Aspects of the Project and the Specific Aspects of the Team. For each of the 2 (two) Aspects (which are defined in the text of this article in details), 3 (three) Topics are treated (and also defined in the same article with precision).

This paper also presents an Information Collection Form entitled "Evaluation of Impacting Factors in Deadlines and Project Costs" that proposes percentages calculated in benchmarking (but, that can be reviewed according to the reality found), which enables also, and principally, be a checklist as confirmation of the occurrence of the points raised in this paper, so that even other decision-making, regarding the direction of the Project could be thought. The importance of both Stages is crucial to building a solution that complies with the expectations presented by Stakeholders in the Project Result (which, as already said, are recorded in the Discipline of Scope in accordance with the Planning Stage) and should meet the intended requirements of compliance in Product Delivery (which, as already said, are recorded in the Discipline of Quality in accordance with Validation Stage). In the execution of Validation Stage of Product Delivery structured in the Discipline of Quality, which occurs immediately as predecessor of the placement of the solution built in Operational Phase Production is used, as reference to parameterize the expected quality, the degree of compliance with the requirements (Essential and/or Desirable) specified in the Planning Stage of Project Result structured in the Discipline of Scope. Independently of the nature of the Project (if this is to execute a solution for the Civil Construction, Software Development, Product Implementation or others Areas), may be perceived some Exogenous Variables that interfere with the achievement with success of Validation Stage of Product Delivery structured in the Discipline of Quality. The perception of these Exogenous Variables, which can interfere with Deadlines and Costs initially planned for the implementation of Validation Stage of Product Delivery, is the result of the accumulation of experiences throughout the professional career of more than 40 (forty) years of author this work in projects of various types, besides their additional Technical Certifications in the field of Project Management (PMP© - Project Management Professional/PMI© - Project Management Institute) and System Testing (CTFL© - Certified Tester Foundation Level/ISTQB© - International Software Testing Qualifications Board). As result of their assessments and surveys in this theme, the author identified and classified the Exogenous Variables perceived between 2 (two) Aspects, which are, the Circumstantial Aspects of the Project and the Specific Aspects of the Team. For each of the 2 (two) Aspects (which are defined in the text of this article in details), 3 (three) Topics are treated (and also defined in the same article with precision). This paper also presents an Information Collection Form entitled "Evaluation of Impacting Factors in Deadlines and Project Costs" that proposes percentages calculated in benchmarking (but, that can be reviewed according to the reality found), which enables also, and principally, be a checklist as confirmation of the occurrence of the points raised in this paper, so that even other decision-making, regarding the direction of the Project could be thought.

[1]PMI. PMBoK® - A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge (Um Guia para Gerenciamento de Projetos) . PMI - Project Management Institute, 5a. Edição,

ABSTRACT:
Events represent a significant source of information on the web; they deliver information about events that occur around the world in all subjects and areas. These events can be collected and organized to provide valuable and useful information for decision makers, researchers, as well as for any person seeking knowledge. In this paper, we discuss an ongoing research to target stock markets domain to observe and record changes (events) when they happen, collect them, understand the meaning of each one of them, and organize the information along with meaning in a well-structured format. By using Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) technique, we have identified four factors for each event in this paper: verb of action and three roles associated with it, entity name, attribute, and attribute value. We have generated a set of rules and techniques to support our approach to analyze and understand the meaning of the events that take place in stock markets.