Financial Health Of Grain Operations After Adding A Hog Barn, Elliott James Dennis

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

There is strong local and national interest in adding hog barns to existing row crop operations. Declining on farm income over the past several years has accelerated this interest. Grain operations cite diversifying farm income, adding another family to the farm operation, and/or replace commercial fertilizer expense as the primary reasons for adding a hog barn.

While there is industry demand to increase hog contract growing, these agreements can possess significant benefits and risks to producers. This is the second of a four part series which will discuss some financial and legal implications of adding a hog barn to an …

Hog Barn Density And Location In U.S. And Nebraska, Elliott James Dennis

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

There is strong local and national interest in adding hog barns to existing row crop operations. Declining on farm income over the past several years has accelerated this interest. Grain operations cite diversifying farm income, adding another family to the farm operation, and/or replace commercial fertilizer expense as the primary reasons for adding a hog barn.

While there is industry demand to increase hog contract growing, these agreements can possess significant benefits and risks to producers. This is the first of a four part series which will discuss some financial and legal implications of adding a hog barn to an …

Global Optimization Algorithms For Image Registration And Clustering, Cuicui Zheng

Dissertations

Global optimization is a classical problem of finding the minimum or maximum value of an objective function. It has applications in many areas, such as biological image analysis, chemistry, mechanical engineering, financial analysis, deep learning and image processing. For practical applications, it is important to understand the efficiency of global optimization algorithms. This dissertation develops and analyzes some new global optimization algorithms and applies them to practical problems, mainly for image registration and data clustering.

First, the dissertation presents a new global optimization algorithm which approximates the optimum using only function values. The basic idea is to use the points …

Changing The Focus: Worker-Centric Optimization In Human-In-The-Loop Computations, Mohammadreza Esfandiari

Dissertations

A myriad of emerging applications from simple to complex ones involve human cognizance in the computation loop. Using the wisdom of human workers, researchers have solved a variety of problems, termed as “micro-tasks” such as, captcha recognition, sentiment analysis, image categorization, query processing, as well as “complex tasks” that are often collaborative, such as, classifying craters on planetary surfaces, discovering new galaxies (Galaxyzoo), performing text translation. The current view of “humans-in-the-loop” tends to see humans as machines, robots, or low-level agents used or exploited in the service of broader computation goals. This dissertation is developed to shift the focus back …

An Automated Feedback System To Support Student Learning Of Conceptual Knowledge In Writing-To-Learn Activities, Ye Xiong

Dissertations

As a pedagogical strategy, Writing-to-Learn (WTL) intends to use writing to improve students’ understanding of course content. However, most of the existing feedback systems for writing are mainly focused on improving students’ writing skills rather than their conceptual development. In this dissertation, an automatic approach is proposed to generate timely, actionable, and individualized feedback based on comparing knowledge representations extracted from lecture slides and individual students’ writing assignments. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in the feedback generation: to help students assimilate new knowledge into their existing knowledge better, their current knowledge is modeled as a set of matching …

What Are Total Export Commitments Telling Us About Beef’S Potential In 2020: Positive Signs?, Elliott James Dennis

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

Overarching Market Conditions

The recent cattle on feed report suggests that cattle feedlots are coming closer to sorting through much of the backlog associated with plant closures and shutdowns as a result of plant workers testing positive for COVID-19 and plants implementing CDC and OSHA worker health recommendations. For example, the number of cattle on feed over 90 days has dipped below 2019 levels for the first time since April. However, cattle on feed over 120 days is still about 10% higher than 2019. The result of cattle being on feed longer is sustained record level dressed weights for both …

Drought Decisions: Profit Maximizing Decisions During And After Drought Conditions, Robert Tigner, Elliott James Dennis

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

In summary, using available price risk management tools can effectively reduce some of the market price risk variability that is inherent in agricultural production that are caused by either production or price risk.

Research On The Logistics Development Model Of Shanghai Free Trade Zone, Yuhong Xie

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Tech Policy And Legal Theory Syllabus, Yafit Lev-Aretz, Nizan Packin

Open Educational Resources

Technology has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. Currently, virtually all business industries are powered by large quantities of data. The potential as well as actual uses of business data, which oftentimes includes personal user data, raise complex issues of informed consent and data protection. This course will explore many of these complex issues, with the goal of guiding students into thinking about tech policy from a broad ethical perspective as well as preparing students to responsibly conduct themselves in different areas and industries in a world growingly dominated by technology.

Automated License Plate Recognition Using Existing University Infrastructure And Different Camera Angles, Andre Calitz, Matthew Hill

The African Journal of Information Systems

Number or license plate recognition has become an essential technology for traffic and security applications. Providing access control at any organization or academic institution improves the level of security. However, providing security personnel to manually control the access of vehicles at an academic institution is costly, time-consuming, and to a limited extent, error prone. This study investigated the use of an automated vehicle tracking system, incorporating experimental computer vision techniques for license plate recognition that runs in real-time to provide access control for vehicles and provide increased security for an academic institution. A vehicle monitoring framework was designed by using …

The Impact Of Autonomous Vehicles, Preston Loveland

Marriott Student Review

In this article, Preston Loveland delves into the innovations of autonomous vehicles. He outlines the safety, benefits, and public opinion of self-driving cars while inviting the reader to become part of this innovation.

Music March Madness: Predicting The Winner Of Locura De Marzo, Kevin Mentzer, Zachary Galante, Brenna Rojek, Rachel Cardarelli

Information Systems and Analytics Department Faculty Journal Articles

Each Spring, thousands of middle and high school students enrolled in Spanish classes vote for their favorite songs in the annual Locura De Marzo competition. This alternative March Madness competition gives us an opportunity to build and test models to predict which songs will win which furthers the Hit Song Science literature. Using decision trees and support vector machine (SVM) models we find similarities with the challenge of predicting the popular NCAA Basketball bracket including the importance of seed and the difficulty in predicting a “perfect” bracket

Embedding Robotic Process Automation Into Process Management: Case Study Of Using Taskt, Anand Jeyaraj, Vikram Sethi

Management Information Systems Faculty Publications

XYZ Company routinely faced penalties imposed by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for non-compliance in depositing federal withholding taxes related to the managed benefits plans for its clients. Since the rules for depositing the federal taxes were complex and differed between the benefits plans, it was common for XYZ Company to accrue penalties imposed by the IRS. Desiring to eliminate penalties by complying 100% with the IRS guidelines, XYZ Company considered various solutions. Finally, XYZ Company implemented a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution using the open source tool—taskt—to achieve 100% compliance in depositing federal withholding taxes and eliminate …

Feeder Cattle Future Price Spreads: Opportunities To Hedge?, Elliott James Dennis

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

First paragraph:

Feeder cattle future price spreads across all months have recovered to near pre-COVID-19 levels as quarantine restrictions and packing plant capacity issues have been mostly sorted out. For example, for the week of July 17, 2010 [sic], prices reached levels not seen since the beginning of March 2020. Pasture and corn progress are two factors that have the potential to push prices lower in the next coming months. Given current market conditions, producers have some options to lock in a margin.

A Systematic Review Of Natural Language Processing For Knowledge Management In Healthcare, Ganga Prasad Basyal, Bhaskar P. Rimal Dr., David Zeng

Research & Publications

Driven by the visions of Data Science, recent years have seen a paradigm shift in Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP has set the milestone in text processing and proved to be the preferred choice for researchers in the healthcare domain. The objective of this paper is to identify the potential of NLP, especially, how NLP is used to support the knowledge management process in the healthcare domain, making data a critical and trusted component in improving health outcomes. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art NLP research with a particular focus on how knowledge is created, captured, shared, …

Bpm Maturity And Digital Leadership: An Exploratory Study, Joyce Van Ee, Ibtissam El Attoti, Pascal Ravesteyn, Benny M.E. De Waal

Communications of the IIMA

When organizations start to digitize, this often means that processes will be changed. The management paradigm that is centered on the continues review and improvement of organizational processes is Business Process Management (BPM). To digitize processes, an organization should have the right competences to deal with both technological and process changes. However, currently, it is not known which competences are needed by leaders to guide an organization with digital process transformation initiatives. Hence, this paper consists of an explorative study based on interviews with five experts to find out if and how the competences related to digital leadership can guide …

Business Intelligence Illustrated Using Crime Data As An Instructional Tool, Ruth Robbins

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

In the Management Information Systems classroom, faculty are encouraged to provide a student focused learning environment that focuses on utilizing business and industry practices as tools. Examples should incorporate concepts which students can readily comprehend. With this in mind, the City of Houston Uniform Crime Report Statistics spreadsheet and database data is being utilized in a College of Business MIS program. In this paper, examples will be described which provide illustrations showing how this ever changing Crime Report data provides an instructional landscape that students can readily recognize and which can also be used as a tool that reinforces learning. …

People Analytics And Disruptive Technologies Are Transforming Human Resources Roles, Madhu Bala Sahoo

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Human Resources Information Systems that collect, store, and analyze people data are beginning to view the role of people analytics and other related technologies favorably as they provide new, timely and objective insights which aid in bringing about a transformational change in the roles of HR. People analytics is thus an excellent platform for HR to achieve its long awaited ‘Strategic Partner’ role. Organizations of all sizes and types are adopting and adapting to people analytics. Several well-known companies have recently demonstrated the benefits of using people analytics for HR functions. However, people analytics is not without roadblocks of unethical …

An Evaluation Of Three Online Chatbots, Mahesh Vanjani, Jamison Posey, Milam Aiken

Southwestern Business Administration Journal

Chatbots enable machines to emulate human conversation. While research has been done to examine how human-like communication with chatbots can be, heretofore comparisons of the systems with humans have not accounted for abnormal behavior from the users. For example, the people using the chatbot might be lying or trying to, in turn, imitate a computer’s response. Results of a study comparing transcripts from three chatbots and two humans show that student evaluators were able to correctly identify two computer transcripts, but failed on one. Further, they incorrectly guessed that one of the humans was a chatbot. The study also presents …

The Form, Function And Materiality Of Portable It In Inter-Organizational Control, Gamel O. Wiredu

The African Journal of Information Systems

Extant explanations of inter-organizational (IO) control are based on functional assumptions of information technology (IT) at the expense of structural assumptions. By focusing on structural assumptions, this paper explains how and why the formal and material properties of portable IT shape IO control. Based on analysis of portable IT mediation between a government agency and traders for tax administration, it was found that portable IT, with the support of the IO structure, reduces IO control. This occurs because portable IT invites users to subvert its connectivity and visibility with the support of the IO structure. Portable IT and IO structures …

Clarifying Is Project Complexity Through Factor Analysis, Nazeer Joseph, Carl Marnewick

The African Journal of Information Systems

Research shows that the information systems domain is underrepresented in project complexity as it has only eight percent representation within the project complexity landscape. Emphasis is placed mostly on generic project management and engineering project management. This begs the question of how well IS project complexity is understood in literature? The goal of this research is to perform the groundwork for developing new theoretical foundations for information systems (IS) project complexity by enriching previous work. Complexity theory was applied to develop a comprehensive theoretical model for IS project complexity. The IS project complexity (ISPC) model was developed and revealed that …

A Coordinated Communication & Awareness Approach For Information Security Incident Management: An Empirical Study On Ethiopian Organizations, Keshnee Padayachee, Elias Worku

The African Journal of Information Systems

The coordination of communication and awareness efforts in the process of Information Security Incident Management (ISIM) has been identified as a critical means of enhancing information security protection in organizations. This paper aims to explore the nuances of organizational information security with respect to the coordination of communication and awareness efforts among organizational stakeholders towards achieving a shared, interactive, and participatory ISIM. According to the findings of the study in the organizations sampled, it has been identified that reporting, communication, and awareness efforts within ISIM were found to be largely uncoordinated. The exploratory findings provided a rationale for the proposal …

Predicting Factors Contributing To Road Traffic Accident And Implying Driver’S Driving Behavior In Addis Ababa City,, Shimelis Shiferaw Deneke Mr., Shimelis Shiferaw Deneke Mr, Abdurahman Ali Endalkachew Mr, Shimelis Shiferaw Deneke, Abdurehman Ali

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

This study tries to uncover which factor could be associated with Addis Ababa City rode traffic accident and implicate drivers driving behaviors based on the data collected from post-accident. Which is the capital city of Ethiopia. The main objective of this research is Appling data mining technique to explore on factors that could associated with drivers related factors with road traffic accident to provide an insight way to reduce road traffic accident. The data was collected from road traffic accident from the real-world data collected at accident time in Addis Ababa City/Ethiopia. Totally 4285 datasets with 20 attributes were used. …

Business - It Strategic Alignment Improvement Framework: A Case Study On An Ethiopian Bank, Menelik Belete, Yonas Hagos

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

In recent years, the bank sector is heavily relies on IT and has been investing a lot to easily reach their customer and gain the competitive advantages. Unfortunately, due to alignment gap between the business and IT strategy, they were not able to maximize their IT return value. The purpose of this study is finding internal and external challenges that hinders business and IT strategy alignment in the context of an Ethiopian Bank, A. The study conducted as a qualitative case study. The main finding shows that vendor dependency, lack of proper system evaluation, lack of clear national regulation, external …

Adoption And Challenges Of Mobile Banking Systems In Ethiopia: The Case Of Cooperative Bank Of Oromiya, Ebisa Beyene

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

The incorporation of information system into organizations for the purpose of getting competitive advantage, easing workload, providing intangible (soft) work place and coping up with technological advancement has become an indispensable for organizations. Due to these many companies (like banks) are getting advantages of information communication technology implementation like Mobile Banking (M-banking), Internet banking, Automatic Teller Machine, etc. Accordingly Ethiopian commercial banks have implemented Mbanking system into their service system. This research examine adoption of M-banking system in Ethiopia focusing on Cooperative bank of Oromiya with respect to the challenges which can influence the bank from taking advantage and expected …

Information Technology Disaster Recovery Plan (Itdrp) Framework For Banks In Ethiopia, Nigussie Tariku, Lemma Lessa

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

IT services and solutions in the banking sector should be protected to keep the business continuity in a disastrous scenario. This study aims to develop an Information Technology Disaster Recovery Plan (IT DRP) framework in the case of Ethiopian Banks. Qualitative case study method is employed to investigate current best practices and challenges in Ethiopian banks. The findings indicated that Banks do not have IT DRP in place. Lack of framework, lack of focused group, lack of experiences, and lack of standardization are some of the challenges identified. Accordingly, the IT DRP framework is proposed for Banks of Ethiopia. The …

Factors Affecting Mobile Payment Adoption By Merchants In Ethiopia, Firehiwot Abebe, Lemma Lessa

African Conference on Information Systems and Technology

Nowadays the world witnessed a rapid growth in mobile commerce and widespread use of mobile devices. The growth of mobile commerce depends on widely accepted mobile payment systems. However, this trend is not well experienced in developing countries like Ethiopia. Even though merchants somehow benefited from the rapid growth in electronics commerce and use of mobile devices in ecommerce, they still hesitate to effectively employ in their day to day transactions. Little research has been conducted to examine and explain the merchants' views on the new payment technology. In this paper, we explore the factors that affect merchants’ adoption of …

An Agile Framework For Teaching With Scrum In The It Project Management Classroom, Daniel E. Rush, Amy J. Connolly

IT and Supply Chain Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents a framework for teaching a complete, semester-long IT project management course with traditional PMI-based content (sans software development) while featuring Scrum as the organizing logic for accomplishing coursework. This framework adapts widely-used Scrum practices from industry for use in the classroom, including how to organize student teams, homework, and activities. Organizing an existing course with Scrum is intended to maximize student learning of traditional project management content, as well as the difficult-to-teach, socially-complex, “soft” skills that lead to Scrum team success. This deep integration of Scrum into a traditional, predictive IT project management course goes well beyond …

Outcomes Of Platform Openness In Complementary Markets, Franck Loic Soh Noume

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mobile platform ecosystems are hyper-competitive environments. They provide important entrepreneurial opportunities for businesses that develop mobile apps. Platform openness is foundational in mobile platform ecosystems as it enables interactions between complements and platform. Although there are several studies on the impact of platform openness, our understanding of the outcomes of platform openness remains limited. In this dissertation, we examine thoroughly underexplored facets of platform openness as well as understudied outcomes. In the first essay, we investigate the impact of platform openness on incumbent complements’ performance outcomes. We unravel important causal mechanisms related to competition dynamics between new entrants and incumbent …

Introduction To The R-Package: Usdampr, Elliott James Dennis, Bowen Chen

Extension Farm and Ranch Management News

Why the Need for the Package? In the 1990’s, concern over growing packer concentration and a hog industry market shock resulted in discontent among producers and packers. As a result, the United States Congress passed the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 (1999 Act) [Pub. L. 106-78, Title IX] which is required to be reauthorized every five years. See here for a full history of the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Background.

Market reports were publicly issued in the form of .txt files with varying frequency from April 2000 to April 2020. Current and historical data were also housed in a USDA-AMS …