This book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays studying the intersections of identities, mobilities, and technologies within the context of knowledge production in Sudan--one of the most ...conflict-ridden and socially diverse landscapes in the world. The essayists look at the effects of diverse technologies such as social media, mobile telephony, trains, and gold mining on the social and economic identities of one of the world's most highly mobile populations.
Youth activism in the last decade has become increasingly associated with new media technologies. The "Arab Spring", it can be argued, prompted much interest among academics, policymakers and others ...on the intersection between youth, activism and social media. Although oftentimes seen as threats to authoritarian states, youths have become agents of change in the eyes of international foreign policy developers who claim to be keen on progressive and inclusive governance. This paper reflects on the role of social media in the recent (2011-2013) activism of Sudanese youth, who have taken centre stage at demonstrations calling for regime change, and adopting mechanisms similar to their counterparts in the Middle East/North Africa. While political forms of activism may have been more prominent in the Arab Spring, this paper argues that social media plays a key role in both political and community engagements of contemporary urban Sudanese youth, perhaps pointing to future possibilities.
The need for accurate software prediction systems increases as software becomes much larger and more complex. We believe that the underlying characteristics: size, number of features, type of ...distribution, etc., of the data set influence the choice of the prediction system to be used. For this reason, we would like to control the characteristics of such data sets in order to systematically explore the relationship between accuracy, choice of prediction system, and data set characteristic. It would also be useful to have a large validation data set. Our solution is to simulate data allowing both control and the possibility of large (1000) validation cases. The authors compare four prediction techniques: regression, rule induction, nearest neighbor (a form of case-based reasoning), and neural nets. The results suggest that there are significant differences depending upon the characteristics of the data set. Consequently, researchers should consider prediction context when evaluating competing prediction systems. We observed that the more "messy" the data and the more complex the relationship with the dependent variable, the more variability in the results. In the more complex cases, we observed significantly different results depending upon the particular training set that has been sampled from the underlying data set. However, our most important result is that it is more fruitful to ask which is the best prediction system in a particular context rather than which is the "best" prediction system.
The essay investigates the ethical principles of the responsible conduct of STEM research at Africana universities to engage those principles in discharging the ethical responsibilities of ...universities to their supporting communities. The model's ethical platform for ethical STEM studies follows W.E.B Du Bois 'community-based vision of historically Black college and university (HBCU) and by extension African university missions. The underlying hypothesis is that a constellation of seven program activities will (1) increase the ethical STEM research output of Africana universities and (2) ensure the broad ethical impact of that research on the under-resourced communities that justify in part Africana universities 'raison d'etre. The role of STEM faculty in preparing and supporting students, alumni, and the community is also discussed. The essay concludes with uses of appropriate ICTfor the model's last three activities with emphasis on technologies for universal broadband access in underresourced communities, computation-capable cell phones, Massive Open Online Course technologies, and computer-based tutorial programs.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
We discuss how academically-based interdisciplinary teams can address the extreme challenges of the world’s poorest by increasing access to the basic necessities of life. The essay’s first part ...illustrates the evolving commitment of research universities to develop ethical solutions for populations whose survival is at risk and whose quality of life is deeply impaired. The second part proposes a rationale for university responsibility to solve the problems of impoverished populations at a geographical remove. It also presents a framework for integrating science, engineering and ethics in the efforts of multidisciplinary teams dedicated to this task. The essay’s third part illustrates the efforts of Howard University researchers to join forces with African university colleagues in fleshing out a model for sustainable and ethical global development.
We discuss how academically-based interdisciplinary teams can address the extreme challenges of the world’s poorest by increasing access to the basic necessities of life. The essay’s first part ...illustrates the evolving commitment of research universities to develop ethical solutions for populations whose survival is at risk and whose quality of life is deeply impaired. The second part proposes a rationale for university responsibility to solve the problems of impoverished populations at a geographical remove. It also presents a framework for integrating science, engineering and ethics in the efforts of multidisciplinary teams dedicated to this task. The essay’s third part illustrates the efforts of Howard University researchers to join forces with African university colleagues in fleshing out a model for sustainable and ethical global development. (Author abstract)
Traditionally, researchers have used either off-the-shelf models such as COCOMO, or developed local models using statistical techniques such as stepwise regression, to obtain software effort ...estimates. More recently, attention has turned to a variety of machine learning methods such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), case-based reasoning (CBR) and rule induction (RI). This paper outlines some comparative research into the use of these three machine learning methods to build software effort prediction systems. We briefly describe each method and then apply the techniques to a dataset of 81 software projects derived from a Canadian software house in the late 1980s. We compare the prediction systems in terms of three factors: accuracy, explanatory value and configurability. We show that ANN methods have superior accuracy and that RI methods are least accurate. However, this view is somewhat counteracted by problems with explanatory value and configurability. For example, we found that considerable effort was required to configure the ANN and that this compared very unfavourably with the other techniques, particularly CBR and least squares regression (LSR). We suggest that further work be carried out, both to further explore interaction between the end-user and the prediction system, and also to facilitate configuration, particularly of ANNs.
Business organizations formulate business strategies to identify the strategic objectives they aim to accomplish, and business managers develop business plans as a roadmap to guide them through the ...process of attaining these objectives. However, the environment is increasingly becoming more complex and rapidly changing and the economy have already transformed in some parts of the world to become knowledge based. Managers are therefore becoming increasingly aware of the need to manage their knowledge in a more structured way and of the need to think of ways to effectively and efficiently manage their knowledge to sustain the company's competitive advantage and survival. There is evidence that Knowledge Management (KM) can have a favorable impact on organizational performance, however, the factors need to be clearly defined, and correlations need to be measured exactly to make the maximum benefits of KM initiatives. The purpose of this research project is to assess the impact of KM on the business strategy and the overall organizational performance at different organizations in Sudan working on different industrial sectors. The research found that KM practices were used inside Sudanese organizations, however, that was done in unstructured way to get more benefit from it. Having those KM practices in house provides significant opportunities for improving those practices inside Sudanese organizations. Top management commitment, organizational culture and Human Resources Management (HRM) have been identified as the major influences on KM and its practices. The research highlighted the need for the recognition of employees' efforts in order to encourage learning and development of new ideas. It also highlighted the need for conscious efforts to manage Knowledge sharing and learning, inside Sudanese Organization. The oral culture of Sudanese people makes the face to face exchange of knowledge, the major methods of transferring information and knowledge inside Sudanese organizations. The research recommended that KM practices can be introduced inside organizations by making it part of the work processes, hence, guarantee its benefits and outcomes.
On Building Prediction Systems for Software Engineers Shepperd, Martin; Cartwright, Michelle; Kadoda, Gada
Empirical software engineering : an international journal,
11/2000, Letnik:
5, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Building and evaluating predictionsystems is an important activity for software engineering researchers.Increasing numbers of techniques and datasets are now being madeavailable. Unfortunately ...systematic comparison is hindered bythe use of different accuracy indicators and evaluation processes.We argue that these indicators are statistics that describe propertiesof the estimation errors or residuals and that the sensible choiceof indicator is largely governed by the goals of the estimator.For this reason it may be helpful for researchers to providea range of indicators. We also argue that it is useful to formallytest for significant differences between competing predictionsystems and note that where only a few cases are available thiscan be problematic, in other words the research instrument mayhave insufficient power. We demonstrate that this is the casefor a well known empirical study of cost models. Simulation,however, could be one means of overcoming this difficulty.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Cloud computing is a new technology that transfer the computing process from personal computers into cloud servers over the internet. Nevertheless, as the client information data is stored in the ...cloud provider servers, the confidentiality of the information become a new concern. Different algorithms based on Encryption is presented previously to provide cloud clients with confidentiality. The main idea of encryption algorithms for cloud data is to permit cloud clients queries to be handled using encrypted data without decryption. This paper presents a new security mechanism using hybrid method of encryption algorithms and a distribution system to enhance cloud database confidentiality. A vertical fragmentation technique is adopted from alsirhani's model for distributing data over clouds. However, to overcome a weakness in alsirhani's model where compromises to a fragment can still make data meaningful. Instead, the proposed model uses a hybrid fragmentation technique to make data on fragments meaningless if compromised. The proposed model distributes the cloud database among the clouds using the provider views and level of confidentiality that is delivered by the employed encryption algorithms. To evaluate the proposed searchable encryption and hybrid fragmentation model, the study developed a Java application for simulating the hybrid cloud. The simulation combines public and private clouds; as essential processes is conducted inside the private cloud. The evaluation of the work was conducted by comparing the proposed model with existing solutions in query response and security characteristics. Preliminary results showed that the proposed searchable encryption and hybrid fragmentation model provides a secure mechanism that enhances data confidentiality in terms of faster response and additional security.
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