An Approach with a Queue System to the Pandemic Period Study

Epidemics still happen,being the annual influenza outbreaks examples of such occurrences.To estimate the epidemic period length is imperative because,in this period,it is necessary to strengthen the health care,through extra availability in human and material resources.So,a huge increase of expenses occurs.As a pandemic is an epidemic with a great population and geographical dissemination,more appropriately this happens with the pandemic period.Mainly using results on the M|G|∞queue busy period,it is presented an application of this queue system to the pandemic period’s parameters and distribution function study.

The Association between Researchers’Conceptions of Research and Their Strategic Research Agendas

Purpose:In studies of the research process,the association between how researchers conceptualize research and their strategic research agendas has been largely overlooked.This study aims to address this gap.Design/methodology/approach:This study analyzes this relationship using a dataset of more than 8,500 researchers across all scientific fields and the globe.It studies the associations between the dimensions of two inventories:the Conceptions of Research Inventory(CoRI)and the Multi-Dimensional Research Agenda Inventory—Revised(MDRAI-R).Findings:The findings show a relatively strong association between researchers’conceptions of research and their research agendas.While all conceptions of research are positively related to scientific ambition,the findings are mixed regarding how the dimensions of the two inventories relate to one another,which is significant for those seeking to understand the knowledge production process better.Research limitations:The study relies on self-reported data,which always carries a risk of response bias.Practical implications:The findings provide a greater understanding of the inner workings of knowledge processes and indicate that the two inventories,whether used individually or in combination,may provide complementary analytical perspectives to research performance indicators.They may thus offer important insights for managers of research environments regarding how to assess the research culture,beliefs,and conceptualizations of individual researchers and research teams when designing strategies to promote specific institutional research focuses and strategies.Originality/value:To the best of the authors’knowledge,this is the first study to associate research agendas and conceptions of research.It is based on a large sample of researchers working worldwide and in all fields of knowledge,which ensures that the findings have a reasonable degree of generalizability to the global population of researchers.

Initial coin offerings(ICOs):Why do they succeed?

Recent literature has addressed initial coin offering(ICO)projects,which are an innovative form of venture financing through cryptocurrencies using blockchain technology.Many features of ICOs remain unexplored,leaving much room for additional research,including the success factors of ICO projects.We investigate the success of ICO projects,with our main purpose being to identify factors that influence a project’s outcome.Following a literature review,from which several potential variables were collected,we used a database comprising 428 ICO projects in the banking/financial sector to regress several econometric models.We confirmed the impacts of several variables and obtained particularly valuable results concerning project and campaign variables.We confirmed the importance of a well-structured and informative white-paper.The proximity to certain markets with high availability of financial and human capital is also an important determinant of the success of an ICO.We also confirm the strong dependency on cryptocurrency and the impact of cryptocurrency valuations on the success of a project.Furthermore,we confirm the importance of social media in ICO projects,as well as the importance of human capital characteristics.Our research contributes to the ICO literature by capturing most of the success factors previously identified and testing their impacts based on a large database.The current research contributes to the building of systems theory and signaling theory by adapting their frameworks to the ICO environment.Our results are also important for regulators,as ICOs are mainly unregulated and have vast future potential,and for investors,who can benefit from our analysis and use it in their due diligence.

Modified UNet Model for Brain Stroke Lesion Segmentation on Computed Tomography Images

The task of segmentation of brain regions affected by ischemic stroke is help to tackle important challenges of modern stroke imaging analysis.Unfortunately,at the moment,the models for solving this problem using machine learning methods are far from ideal.In this paper,we consider a modified 3D UNet architecture to improve the quality of stroke segmentation based on 3Dcomputed tomography images.We use the ISLES 2018(Ischemic Stroke Lesion Segmentation Challenge 2018)open dataset to train and test the proposed model.Interpretation of the obtained results,as well as the ideas for further experiments are included in the paper.Our evaluation is performed using the Dice or f1 score coefficient and the Jaccard index.Our architecture may simply be extended to ischemia segmentation and computed tomography image identification by selecting relevant hyperparameters.The Dice/f1 score similarity coefficient of our model shown58%and results close to ground truth which is higher than the standard 3D UNet model,demonstrating that our model can accurately segment ischemic stroke.The modified 3D UNet model proposed by us uses an efficient averaging method inside a neural network.Since this set of ISLES is limited in number,using the data augmentation method and neural network regularization methods to prevent overfitting gave the best result.In addition,one of the advantages is the use of the Intersection over Union loss function,which is based on the assessment of the coincidence of the shapes of the recognized zones.

A Selection Process as a Game

The aim of this paper is to exemplify how to solve the problem of selecting a candidate up to his/her acceptance trough game theory.The originality this paper proposes is how this problem will be approached:It will be treated as a single game which is made up of two parts,going as far as to state that the payoffs in the first part of the game will be the mediators of the second part of the game.

相互关联的官僚机构?——比较全球气候谈判期间的在线和离线网络

在传统意义上,国际公共行政影响力的衡量是通过“离线”数据、访谈、调查或官方文件等进行的。然而,有新近的文献认为影响力也可以“在线”观察到,其数据基于推特(Twitter)等在线社交网络。我们的贡献旨在将这两条线拉得更近。我们将来自大型数据调查离线数据与来自推特的在线数据进行三角剖分,以检验“国际公共行政部门在全球治理中的作用”这一议题中,它们在多大程度上为之提供了独特的理论和方法论见解。作为一个案例研究,我们使用了全球气候治理的政策领域,对于该领域中的国际公共行政部门影响的相关研究已引起越来越多的学术兴趣。我们的研究结果表明,国际公共行政部门在“离线”和“在线”网络中都拥有着潜在影响力。虽然相比在推特网络中的作用,国际公共行政部门更经常是问卷调查网络中的核心参与者,但这些部门在上述两个网络中都构成了特定议题信息的主要来源。

Sifu-a cybersecurity awareness platform with challenge assessment and intelligent coach

Software vulnerabilities,when actively exploited by malicious parties,can lead to catastrophic consequences.Proper handling of software vulnerabilities is essential in the industrial context,particularly when the software is deployed in critical infrastructures.Therefore,several industrial standards mandate secure coding guidelines and industrial software developers’training,as software quality is a significant contributor to secure software.CyberSecurity Challenges(CSC)form a method that combines serious game techniques with cybersecurity and secure coding guidelines to raise secure coding awareness of software developers in the industry.These cybersecurity awareness events have been used with success in industrial environments.However,until now,these coached events took place on-site.In the present work,we briefly introduce cybersecurity challenges and propose a novel platform that allows these events to take place online.The introduced cybersecurity awareness platform,which the authors call Sifu,performs automatic assessment of challenges in compliance to secure coding guidelines,and uses an artificial intelligence method to provide players with solution-guiding hints.Furthermore,due to its characteristics,the Sifu platform allows for remote(online)learning,in times of social distancing.The CyberSecurity Challenges events based on the Sifu platform were evaluated during four online real-life CSC events.We report on three surveys showing that the Sifu platform’s CSC events are adequate to raise industry software developers awareness on secure coding.