Improving Information Quality Through it Alignment Planning: A Case Study

This article describes how a medium-sized, Midwestern power company implemented an IT alignment planning process. the IT alignment planning process was a successful four-year activity that involved, first, a pilot implementation and then a companywide implementation of the IT alignment planning process. Designed to be flexible and to dovetail with corporate strategic planning processes, IT alignment planning achieved acknowledgment and approval in all divisions of the company. the IT alignment planning process improved and facilitated communication on IT and IT projects throughout the company, from the executive level to the operational level, and brought the IT and client units closer together.     

Moving towards a fuel cell vision for the UK

A new national initiative, Fuel Cells UK, has been established to act as a focus for the development of a fuel cell industry in Britain, and to liaise and partner more effectively with national and regional initiatives around the world. The first step is to create a ‘unified vision’ for the UK fuel cell sector, for both the short term and the long term, to guide industry, academia and government on the way to a world-class fuel cell industry.     

Stress in Dairy Farming and the Adoption of New Technology.

Previous studies have identified a number of different farm stressors and have reported gender and age differences in levels of stress. This study aimed to determine stress experienced by New Zealand dairy farmers, particularly in relation to adoption of new technology and its relationship to age and gender. Measures of farm stress and adoption of technology were completed by 985 dairy farmers. The highest levels of stress were reported for time pressures, machinery breakdown, weather, and government policies. Stress related to new technologies occurred rarely. Women reported more stress and higher levels of stress for understanding new technologies. There was also an increase in severity of stress with age related to new technologies. Overall, stress levels were moderate and may reflect favorable economic conditions. The findings suggest a need to tailor stress interventions to meet specific needs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Quality of manual data collection in Java software: an empirical investigation

Data collection, both automatic and manual, lies at the heart of all empirical studies. The quality of data collected from software informs decisions on maintenance, testing and wider issues such as the need for system re-engineering. While of the two types stated, automatic data collection is preferable, there are numerous occasions when manual data collection is unavoidable. Yet, very little evidence exists to assess the error-proneness of the latter. Herein, we investigate the extent to which manual data collection for Java software compared with its automatic counterpart for the same data. We investigate three hypotheses relating to the difference between automated and manual data collection. Five Java systems were used to support our investigation. Results showed that, as expected, manual data collection was error-prone, but nowhere near the extent we had initially envisaged. Key indicators of mistakes in manual data collection were found to be poor developer coding style, poor adherence to sound OO coding principles, and the existence of relatively large classes in some systems. Some interesting results were found relating to the collection of public class features and the types of error made during manual data collection. The study thus offers an insight into some of the typical problems associated with collecting data manually; more significantly, it highlights the problems that poorly written systems have on the quality of visually extracted data.     

Network and device-level impacts: performance and reliability of active I/O storage systems

Distributed active storage architectures are designed to offload user-level processing to the peripheral from the host servers. In this paper, we report preliminary investigation on performance and fault recovery designs, as impacted by emerging storage interconnect protocols and state-of-the-art storage devices. Empirical results obtained using validated device-level and interconnect data demonstrate the significance of the said parameters on the overall system performance and reliability.     

Lateral hyperstriatal lesions disrupt simultaneous but not successive conditional discrimination learning of pigeons (Columba livia).

Explored, in 2 experiments, the effects of lateral vs medial laminar lesions of the hyperstriatum in pigeons; medial lesions were largely confined to the hyperstriatum accessorium, and lateral lesions to the hyperstriatum dorsale and hyperstriatum ventrale. In Exp 1, lateral, but not medial, lesions disrupted acquisition of a simultaneous conditional discrimination; both medial and lateral lesions disrupted reversal of the discrimination. The reversal deficits of the medial and lateral groups were quantitatively similar, and both groups showed exaggerated positional responding. In Exp 2, neither medial nor lateral lesions disrupted acquisition of a successive conditional discrimination. Lateral hyperstriatal damage does not obtain a general disruption of conditional learning; it is speculated that the lateral hyperstriatum may play a critical role in configural learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

REST Eye for the SOA Guy

This paper discusses the representational state transfer (REST) and service-oriented architecture (SOA) debate. The author tries to explain REST from the viewpoint of someone steeped in SOA, with the intention of helping SOA people understand the value the REST camp so rightfully touts     

Factors influencing learning through play in ICT settings

Using a mixed method approach of questionnaires, observations and field notes, the authors have studied a number of settings during the past two years which have focussed on the development of ICT capability through play. Some of these have involved children identified as disaffected or disadvantaged, whilst others have involved initial teacher education students. In this paper, we consider some of the results obtained from the most recent of these settings, relate these to those obtained from the other settings, and explore further a number of inter-related issues which have arisen from the analysis. We particularly focus on the effect of learners’ self-esteem and self-efficacy; the influence of gender-related characteristics; the role of interaction between learners during activity; and the value of reflection.