CSCI 8970 – Colloquium Series – Fall 2010 – Sixth Event

Safety, Security, and Reliability in Medical Device Systems

Monday, October 18, 2010

Presenter:  Dr. Mats Heimdahl

Dr. Mats Heimdahl lecture dealt with the concept of safety and the difficulties at times of development software that will understand both situations and exceptions to situations. Unfortunately, as a result of human error and at times of poor planning and software/hardware development lives have been lost. It is Dr. Mats Heimdahl to engineer systems that prevent this from happening, as such the University of Minnesota Engineering Center current received a 5 million dollar grant to improve the safety, security and reliability in Medical Device Systems.

Dr. Heimdahl career as a software engineer began with the desire of being part of something cool. In 1984, Graphic interfaces and GUI was the top of the line technology. Yet, overtime he developed an interest in improving software to increase their safety.…

CSCI 8970 – Colloquium Series – Fall 2010 – Seventh Event

Modular Data Center Network Design and Implementation

Monday, October 25, 2010

Presenter:  Chuanxiong Guo, Microsoft Asia

Last Monday, the University of Minnesota had the privilege of receiving Chuanxiong Guo, a well respected computer scientist from Microsoft Research Asia. Chuanxiong Guo work focuses on Data Centers and their networking complications. Currently he is focused on DCN architecture and topology design, and in particular on the Dcell, Bcube, MDCube and technologies such as DNC Management, visualization, protocol. He is currently working with a large number of graduate interns.

His talk focused on Modular Data Center Network Design and Implementation, the Bcube and MDCube, and the DNC platform (SeverSwitch). He started his talk with some background information, including the recent growth of Data Centers as a key infrastructure component for cloud computing. The USA is currently building a lot of data centers around the world.…

 Global Youth Leadership and Community Engagement (GYLCE)

10/14/2010

Global Youth Leadership and Community Engagement (GYLCE) is a six-unit cohort course that takes place over three semesters (spring, summer, and fall). Students take courses at the University of Minnesota (spring and fall) and at FLASCO University in Buenos Aires, Argentina (four week July/August summer session). This course is designed to introduce students to the theory and practice of youth-engagement and empowerment to address issues that affect their lives, their communities, and the broader global society. The course examines these issues through the lens of youth leadership whereby young people (ages 25 and under) are seen as having assets, talents, knowledge, creativity, and understanding that can be harnessed and applied to make positive advances in their lives and in society.  The course takes a global view by exploring some of the national youth engagement and youth leadership initiatives now underway in various countries.…

CSCI 8970 – Colloquium Series – Fall 2010 – Fifth Event

Database Support for Private and Personalized Location-based Services

Monday, October 11, 2010

Presenter:  Dr. Mohamed F. Mokbel

The fifth colloquium presentation of CSCI 8970 dealt with private and personalized location-based services. Dr. Mohamed F. Mokbel is currently working on a project that allows individuals to obtain services through the use of GPS technology without completely giving away their position or location. The Casper project does this by reducing the service-privacy trade off. While some individuals do not care about privacy and are interested only in obtaining a service (they obtain 100% service), other individuals are concerned about retaining various degrees of privacy, yet as privacy increases service tends to decrease. Casper’s location anonymizer diminishes this trade off by allowing users to switch their privacy requirements at any time. Cloaked in a wide location, an individual will receive four answers to their query, where some of which will be closer to various points within one’s cloaking area.…

October 11, 2010

Chapter 18: Groupthink: The Desperate Drive for Consensus at Any Cost
Irving L. Janis (1971)  pp185-192

HEADINGS:
1. “Groupy” pp185 – 186
2. 1984 p186
3. Kill p186
4. Norms p186
5. Stress pp186-187
6. Symptoms pp187-190
7. Products p190
8. Support pp190 – 191
9. Pride p191
10. Remedies p191-192
11. How p192

The term groupthink was coined by Irving L. Janis. Through his research he developed a theory by which he accounted for individuals’ collective rationalization. To him, group think could have various negative effects such as the deterioration of mental efficiency, moral judgment, and reality testing. By thinking as a group, the group ignores alternative viewpoints. It is important for an organization to understand the problems that arise from groupthinking and reduce their influence by promoting critical evaluation, avoid stating clear preferences, outside experts should be encouraged to visit and challenge the views of the group members, group members should invest time in developing alternative scenarios.…

Employing a meme framework, please evaluate the utility for your proposed term paper topic of four roles: the Hurdler; the Collaborator; the Director; and the Experience Architect. (Try to compose your evaluations within a total of two pages.)

Referencing your proposed term paper topic, please write an evaluation of the StoryTech material with respect to its utility in constructing cultural meanings, cultural simulations, cultural innovations, and cultural designs. (Try to compose your evaluation within a total of two pages.)

October 11, 2010

While I am interested in the growing use of mmorpgs and other computer games as an educational tool, I decided to change focus for the term paper topic in this class and develop a plan for implementing an innovative educational program in the Dominican Republic.

The Hurdler: Having a hurdler’s mentality allows an individual to transverse obstacles, and to continue moving despite complications. When looking for a new location in which to research, it is likely that various attempts to establish a connection will prove fruitless, yet perseverance allows an individual to increase his likelihood of success.…

Please write a short evaluation of the meme material in Wikipedia, focusing on this question: How useful is the meme concept with respect to its utility in constructing cultural meanings, cultural simulations, cultural innovations, and cultural designs?

Employing a meme framework, please evaluate the utility for your developing career of four roles: the Devil’s Advocate; the Anthropologist; the Experimenter; and the Cross-Pollinator.

October 4, 2010

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According to Wikipedia, the word ‘meme’ originates from the Greek word μιμητισμός (/mɪmetɪsmos/) for “something imitated” (Wikipedia). The word functions as a unit of culture which is transmitted in society through imitable phenomena (speech, gestures, rituals, writing, etc…). Coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, a meme is comparable within human society to a gene within a human being.  Yet, one of the strongest criticisms of memes has been the ambiguity and differing sizes a meme can take. A meme can be a word, a phrase, an idea, a book, or any other unit of culture which is created and then transferred to others through imitation.…

Problem Summary: How a principal’s limited leadership abilities within a highly coupled, culturally diverse organization led to an increased feeling of isolation, unappreciation, and alienation by a group of staff members, all of whom shared a common identity, by which they believed themselves to be grouped, secluded and ignored by the rest of the staff members from the administration’s decision making process. Poor leadership exacerbated cultural differences between staff members encouraging the development of an out-group, in-group dichotomy within the school.

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Hope Ranch Middle School, located in Ocala, Florida, opened its doors as a public charter middle school in 2008. The school promoted the increased use of technology in education, the importance of afterschool academic programs in math and science, and the correlation between hard work and academic success. This science and math academy was very successful during its initial year, including finishing the school year as an “A” school as a result of its FCAT scores.…

CSCI 8970 – Colloquium Series – Fall 2010 – Third Event

Probabilistic Models for Matrix Analysis

Monday, September 27, 2010

Dr. Banerjee’s presentation dealt with the new forms in which researchers are analysis matrixes, in particular, the use of Bayesian network analysis methods. Data matrixes had been able to process single label classifications, and optimized a problem to cluster similar values, yet the goal of Dr. Banerjee process is to not simply fit the data to the best model but analyze all possible straight lines. After evaluating different linear relationships, some of the lines will gain and lose weight according to how much they are used. Using gene expression analysis, it is possible to find some valuable data in the matrix. Through the use of a dirichlet distribution of all possible mixed memberships, and the use of plate diagrams, the use of a Bayesian co-clustering process permits for an accurate and rapid evaluation of data.…

#39 – The Z organization, William G. Ouchi

William G. Ouchi paper highlights the positive aspects of type “Z” organizations. Being “clan-like” these organizations tend to promote trust between their members and a greater degree of cooperation among staff members than Type “A” organizations. Through offering lifetime job positions and inclusion through social events outside the job area, communication among the different levels of the organization tends to be more fluid and supportive. These business practices have deep cultural origins in both Japan and China where through kinship networks, individuals participate in communal lending systems where members would contribute an amount to the group (the example given is of only 12 members) and in return, in a particular week they would receive the sum of contributions given by other members for that week.

While the individuals who received loans at the beginning of the lending circle, benefited from an interest free loan for a longer extent of time than other individuals and individuals did not benefit from the arrangement to the same degree, this form of lending continues to perpetuate itself.…