Custom File Research Articles

Advances in a Distributed Approach for Ocean Model Data Interoperability

An infrastructure for earth science data is emerging across the globe based on common data models and web services. As we evolve from custom file formats and web sites to standards-based web services and tools, data is becoming easier to distribute, find and retrieve, leaving more time for science. We describe recent advances that make it easier for ocean model providers to share their data, and for users to search, access, analyze and visualize ocean data using MATLAB® and Python®. These include a technique for modelers to create aggregated, Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata convention datasets from collections of non-standard Network Common Data Form (NetCDF) output files, the capability to remotely access data from CF-1.6-compliant NetCDF files using the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Observation Service (SOS), a metadata standard for unstructured grid model output (UGRID), and tools that utilize both CF and UGRID standards to allow interoperable data search, browse and access. We use examples from the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS®) Coastal and Ocean Modeling Testbed, a project in which modelers using both structured and unstructured grid model output needed to share their results, to compare their results with other models, and to compare models with observed data. The same techniques used here for ocean modeling output can be applied to atmospheric and climate model output, remote sensing data, digital terrain and bathymetric data.

Quality control in the recording and matching of personal names

This paper addresses means of reducing the confusion and errors that can arise as a result of differences in the way that an individual's personal name may have been recorded. This may result in not being able to trace a customer, not being able to identify that customer on external files, duplication of mailings and incomplete information on customer records. Name and address matching is a process that has been used since the early days of the direct marketing industry to address these problems. However, with the evolution of rapid addressing systems, the process of deduplicating records on a customer file has increasingly focused on the reconciliation of different versions of the same address to the comparative neglect of strategies for reconciling different versions of the same name. By contrast, it is difficult to find any literature that describes strategies or tools for assuring the quality of the name element — and in particular the personal name element — of a name and address record. The paper outlines the principal sources of inconsistency in the personal name field and discusses strategies for verifying the validity of entries found in this field. It outlines the ways of distinguishing valid variants of a common name from values resulting from data entry errors, whether mistakes in phonetic interpretation, in transcription or in transliteration. Though the findings of the paper are relevant globally, the paper focuses principally on the United Kingdom.

The Mizar Mathematical Library in OMDoc: Translation and Applications

The Mizar Mathematical Library is one of the largest libraries of formalized and mechanically verified mathematics. Its language is highly optimized for authoring by humans. As in natural languages, the meaning of an expression is influenced by its (mathematical) context in a way that is natural to humans, but harder to specify for machine manipulation. Thus its custom file format can make the access to the library difficult. Indeed, the Mizar system itself is currently the only system that can fully operate on the Mizar library. This paper presents a translation of the Mizar library into the OMDoc format (Open Mathematical Documents), an XML-based representation format for mathematical knowledge. OMDoc is geared towards machine support and interoperability by making formula structure and context dependencies explicit. Thus, the Mizar library becomes accessible for a wide range of OMDoc-based tools for formal mathematics and knowledge management. We exemplify interoperability by indexing the translated library in the MathWebSearch engine, which provides an applicable theorem search service (almost) out of the box.

Characteristics and mobile Internet use intensity of consumers with different types of advanced handsets: An exploratory empirical study of iPhone, Android and other web-enabled mobile users in Germany

This work explores personal characteristics and mobile Internet (MI) use behaviors of consumers equipped with four distinct types of advanced handsets for accessing the Internet via cellular radio infrastructures of mobile network operators (MNO). Furthermore, it investigates the extent to which personal and mobile appliance characteristics explain variance in actual MI use intensity. Data on two demographic variables, three MNO relationship characteristics and actual MI use intensity (average monthly volume of mobile IP traffic generated by a subscriber in May and June 2011) of 9321 adult consumers with a flat MI pricing scheme are extracted from customer files of the German subsidiary of a large international MNO. 959, 2213, 2410 and 3739 of the sample members use an Apple iPhone 3, an Apple iPhone 4, a model running with Google’s Android operating system (OS) and other MI-enabled mobile OS/phone types, respectively. Compared to the adult population in Germany, persons at least 50 years of age are clearly underrepresented among MI adopters with the four studied device types. Differences between the four phone type groups with regard to gender, age, time from enrollment and MI use experience emerge as statistically significant, but they achieve only minor substantial relevance. MI use intensity is highly positively skewed: In each of the four appliance groups, a small number of users disproportionately add to the total MI traffic generated by the subjects. Consumers’ advanced OS/handset type strongly contributes towards explaining MI use intensity variance. iPhone subscribers generate more traffic than Android customers who in turn show a higher MI activity level than individuals running other web-enabled mobile models. Age is the only studied personal characteristic consistently showing a (negative) association with MI usage, which both is statistically and materially significant. Conclusions are drawn for MNO on MI marketing issues. Implications of study limitations for research on MI adoption and use behaviors on the MI are also outlined.

Personal characteristics and mobile Internet use intensity of consumers with computer-centric communication devices: An exploratory empirical study of iPad and laptop users in Germany

Prior research on adopters of ubiquitous Internet access via cellular radio infrastructures of mobile network operators (MNO) has primarily focused on consumers equipped with enhanced web-enabled phones. In contrast, this work investigates personal characteristics and mobile Internet (MI) use behaviors of consumers who chose computer-centric appliance types for MI access. Two variants of tablet PCs (Apple’s iPad1 and iPad2) and laptops are distinguished as computer-centric communication device categories. Data on two demographic variables, three MNO relationship characteristics and actual MI use intensity (average monthly volume of mobile IP traffic generated by a subscriber in May and June 2011) of 2001 consumers with a flat MI pricing scheme were extracted from customer files of the German subsidiary of a large international MNO. 1371, 367 and 263 of the sample members used an iPad1, an iPad2 and a laptop, respectively for MI access. Compared to the adult population in Germany, persons aged between 17 and 35years and males are overrepresented among MI adopters with the three studied device types. MI use intensity is highly positively skewed: in each of the three appliance groups, a small number of users disproportionately contributes to the total MI traffic generated by the subjects. MI use intensity is the main variable discriminating between Apple tablet versus laptop MI subscribers. On average, laptop users generate three times more MI traffic than iPad customers. MI use intensity does not differ significantly between iPad1 and iPad2 customers. Age and length of business relationship with the collaborating MNO are the two only studied personal characteristics, which consistently display a significant (negative) association with MI use intensity across the three appliance groups. Conclusions are drawn for MNO on aligning marketing measures to the peculiarities of users with different types of computer-centric MI devices and for scholarly research seeking to enhance the understanding of the influence of various appliance categories on MI adoption and use behaviors.

BrainLiner: A Platform for Neurophysiological Data Sharing and Manipulation

BrainLiner: A Platform for Neurophysiological Data Sharing and Manipulation

DIGITAL ONCOLOGY PATIENT RECORD - HETEROGENEOUS FILE BASED APPROACH

Introduction: Oncology patients need extensive followup and meticulous documentation. The aim of this study was to introduce a simple, platform independent file based system for documentation of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in oncology patients and test its function. Material and methods: A file-name based system of the type M1 M2 M3.F2 was introduced, where M1 is a unique identifier for the patient, M2 is the date of the clinical intervention/event, M3 is an identifier for the author of the medical record and F2 is the specific software generated file-name extension. Results: This system is in use at 5 institutions, where a total of 11 persons on 14 different workstations inputted 16591 entries (files) for 2370. The merge process was tested on 2 operating systems when copied together all files sort up as expected by patient, and for each patient in a chronological order, providing a digital cumulative patient record, which contains heterogeneous file formats. Conclusion: The file based approach for storing heterogeneous digital patient related information is an reliable system, which can handle open-source, proprietary, general and custom file formats and seems to be easily scalable. Further development of software for automatic checks of the integrity and searching and indexing of the files is expected to produce a more user-friendly environment.

Recent USPS Standard Means Implementing Stricter Mailing Requirements

This article discusses the Move Update standards implemented by the U.S. Postal Service and the possibility of increased postal fees for utilities as a result. It requires utilities and other companies to update customer and member addresses kept on file within 95 days immediately preceding a mailing, but also now assesses a fine on those mailings deemed noncompliant. However, the mandate encourages utilities to maintain their customer files and keep addresses updated, thus saving money in the long run.

Analisis Dan Perancangan Sistem Informasi Pendaftaran Pelanggan Baru Dan Order Berbasis Web Pada PT. Dolphin S.I.C.M Tangerang

Computer technology updates unit process revolution in manual implementation to computer technology which called computerization. PT. DOLPHIN is a company which moving in chocolate industry which still use manual registration I’ll now. With this method, still find mistake with this method a mistake which always found is registration now customer process. Less product promotions and less promotion company promotions to customers. This all mistakes are the problem which can be affecting the company do not growth. Because of computerization registration system new customer and product order base on web can be a erectly solutions in solve PT. DOLPHIN problems for process new customer registrations. Analysis and constructions system with united modeling language and system which build program language PHP from result of this research, found a system between of data base system which conduction to help for set up customer file and customer order, so with this system can changed input system. Keywords: Information System, Customer Registration, Order

Should I Keep a Secret? The Effects of Trade Secret Protection Procedures on Employees' Obligations to Protect Trade Secrets

Organizations' trade secrets (which can be chemical formulae, recipes, customer files, machinery designs, or many other types of information) are often valuable, enduring sources of competitive advantage. In this study, the influence of organizations' formal efforts to protect trade secrets on employees' beliefs about their obligations to protect those secrets was investigated. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered by means of survey interviews with 111 employees of two high-tech organizations. Employees' obligations were influenced by their levels of familiarity with, and their perceptions of the enforcement of, two types of trade secret protection procedures (TSPPs): trade secret access restriction procedures (ARs) and trade secret handling procedures (HPs). Employees' levels of familiarity with ARs were negatively related to their felt obligations to protect trade secrets, but the opposite was true for HPs: Employees' levels of familiarity with HPs were positively related to the obligations they felt to protect trade secrets. For both types of TSPPs, the relationship between familiarity and felt obligations was moderated by employees' perceptions of the degree to which the TSPPs were enforced.

From Libertinism to Marital Commitment: The Economics of Marital Search with Heterogeneous Agents

The actual characteristics and desires of candidates or marriage cannot be clearly identified without careful examination (Anderson & Hamori 2000). Accordingly, the classified advertisement system looks like a ‘market or lemons’ (Akerlof 1970), which sharply contrasts with the matchmaking agency system. The continued existence of classified advertisement system just proves it furthers the goals of certain singles—namely, libertine females and libertine males. The present paper uses two databases: the first database consists of a sample of personal advertisements extracted from a specialized publication; the second database is the customer file of a matchmaking agency. This paper predicts which variables will determine the commitment level desired by individuals and why matchmaking agencies’ customers are more sincere than advertisers.

Ethical issues in web data mining

Web mining refers to the whole of data mining and related techniques that are used to automatically discover and extract information from web documents and services. When used in a business context and applied to some type of personal data, it helps companies to build detailed customer profiles, and gain marketing intelligence. Web mining does, however, pose a threat to some important ethical values like privacy and individuality. Web mining makes it difficult for an individual to autonomously control the unveiling and dissemination of data about his/her private life. To study these threats, we distinguish between `content and structure mining' and `usage mining.' Web content and structure mining is a cause for concern when data published on the web in a certain context is mined and combined with other data for use in a totally different context. Web usage mining raises privacy concerns when web users are traced, and their actions are analysed without their knowledge. Furthermore, both types of web mining are often used to create customer files with a strong tendency of judging and treating people on the basis of group characteristics instead of on their own individual characteristics and merits (referred to as de-individualisation). Although there are a variety of solutions to privacy-problems, none of these solutions offers sufficient protection. Only a combined solution package consisting of solutions at an individual as well as a collective level can contribute to release some of the tension between the advantages and the disadvantages of web mining. The values of privacy and individuality should be respected and protected to make sure that people are judged and treated fairly. People should be aware of the seriousness of the dangers and continuously discuss these ethical issues. This should be a joint responsibility shared by web miners (both adopters and developers), web users, and governments.

Boosting I/O performance of internet servers with user-level custom file systems

Previous studies have shown that disk I/O times are one of the major performance bottlenecks of Internet servers such as proxy cache servers. Most conventional file systems do not work well for such systems because of their very high overheads. Although Special-purpose operating systems may achieve high performance, it is very difficult and expensive to design and maintain. They also have very poor portability. In this paper we propose to built user-space, customized file systems for Internet servers so as to achieve high-performance, low-implementation-cost and good portability at the same time. To provide an example of such systems, we presented a novel scheme called WPSFS that can drastically improve I/O performance of proxy servers and other applications. WPSFS is an application-level software component of a proxy server which manages data on a raw disk or disk partition. Since the entire system runs in the user space, it is easy and inexpensive to implement. It also has good portability and maintainability. With efficient in-memory meta-data data structures and a novel file system called Page-structured file system(PFS) , WPSFS achieves 9-20 times better I/O performance than the state-of-the-art SQUID server running on a Unix Fast File System, and 4-10 times better than the improved SQUIDML.

Production Responses to Bovine Somatotropin in Northeast Dairy Herds ,

The commercial response to bovine somatotropin was examined in northeast dairy herds from 1990 to 1998 (4-yr preapproval and 4-yr postapproval). With DHI records and Monsanto customer files, a control group (never purchased Posilac) and a bovine somatotropin (bST) group (used on at least 50% of cows) were identified. A total of 340 herds were involved and, over the 8-yr period, there were over 80,000 cows, 200,000 lactations, and 2million test days. Herd management comparisons demonstrated the response to bST was relatively constant each year of the postapproval period. Assuming 100% of cows were supplemented, response to bST over a 305-d lactation equaled 894kg of milk, 27kg of milk fat, and 31kg of milk protein. Comparisons of lactation curves were used to identify where the bST response occurred in the lactation cycle. Analysis demonstrated the responses in milk, milk fat, and protein yield were minimal in the early phase of lactation, and then gradually increased until reaching a plateau over the last half of the lactation cycle. Persistency of lactation was also improved by bST, indicating the opportunity exists to extend lactation with combined use of bST and altered reproductive management. Average age and days in milk did not differ between control and bST herds. Thus, stayability and herd-life of animals were not altered by bST treatment. Somatic cell count (SCC) linear scores were minimally affected in herds utilizing bST and the pattern of SCC over the lactation cycle was unaffected. Overall bST improved lactation yield and persistency consistently over the 4-yr postapproval period with no effects on cow stayability and herd-life.

A stochastic RFM model

A central problem in database marketing is how to choose which customers in the firm's database to target with an offer. This paper presents a simple stochastic RFM model to carry out such a task. By making a few straightforward assumptions about the customers in the database, the stochastic model provides a means of (1) ranking customers in terms of their expected contribution (or lifetime value) and (2) deciding how deep to go in the customer file to make the offer. The model provides a more insightful alternative to scoring or segmenting customers than regression or cross-tabulation methods. The approach is demonstrated with an example from the market research industry.

New customer acquisition: prospecting models and the use of commercially available external data

Research on improved direct mail targeting has focused primarily on the segmenting of house/customer lists. However, continued expansion of the customer file requires acquisition of new customers. This article briefly described commercially available databases and then explores the linking of them to (necessarily) limited, individual-based survey data, to provide segmentation to enhance the process of efficient targeting of prospects (non-customers). Two methodological issues are also examined: the choice of a statistical model to be used to form a scoring equation during the linking process, and the treatment of missing values, a frequent occurrence in commercially available databases.

Multi-source updating and fusion of geographic databases

It is increasingly important to deal with updated geographic databases in order to ascertain any spatial analysis for decision making in urban planning. However, if updating a conventional database (e.g., changing the delivery address in a custom file) can be done by means of a SQL-type language or via a form interface, in the domain of geographic databases, updating means different things and cannot be performed easily. The essential reason is because updating information is not only elementary, but rather coming from different sources such as newly made measures, aerial photos, scanned maps, and so on. Indeed, in this case, updating or multisource integration can mean: • local cartographic updates — that is to say, to integrate newly made measures into a database storing old measures: in this case, sometimes some points or some segments must move a little bit, possibly replacing segments by piece-wise lines and so on, possibly by means of elastic transformations; • global updates — for instance, using aerial photos in order not only to detect clandestine buildings but also to automatically shift all points of the database; this can be done by defining control points; • extension of the coverage — in other words, when we have to fuse maps of two neighbouring zones whose boundaries do not meet, it is necessary to select control points and to perform rubber-sheeting at the vicinity of the boundary based on those control points; • updating for measurement or topological error correction — that is, reconstruction of badly structured databases based essentially on topologic information; this can be achieved on a single layer (e.g., transformation of a spaghetti-like cadaster into a real parcel-oriented cadaster, closure of polygons) or on multiple layers (e.g., to ensure that a building is not astride the neighbouring parcels). In this paper, we will give an overview of problems to be solved together with some solutions in order to perform such different kinds of updating.

Segmentation in direct marketing channels: a transaction-patterns based method

This paper presents a method designed to segment a customer file for direct marketing using behavioral data. The results of this method are tested against the traditional Recency-Frequency-Monetary Amount segmentation model, as well as other parameters of consumer behavior. Strategic applications and future research orientations are suggested.

Software integration technologies in CIM

Two CASE-tools for Computer-Integrated Manufacturing are proposed: CIMVIEW, for high level, functional, top-down integration, company-specific analysis and modelling; and CIMGLUE, for low level, bottom-up integration, and interfacing of existing applications. In CIMVIEW the user interactively builds an SA/SD dataflow model of the functions of the company. The functional decomposition of ‘bubles’ is internally converted into Lisp representation. The contents of the dataflow ‘arrows’ is derived interactively from the actual customer files or scanned paper documents and converted into hierarchic Lisp lists. The result is a Lisp model of the company functions under investigation. This model can be utilized by Lisp-based tools for many purposes, including symbolic simulation, animation, metrics, data consistency and usage checks, and the automatic generation of the interface specifications, or the automatic generation of modified forms after simplification of the dataflows. CIMGLUE is a general tool to build representation conversion programs between almost any software packages, A and B. The conversion program is built interactively, utilizing examples of package A output and package B input. Both CIMGLUE and CIMVIEW tools are described at a general level for different implementations. A CIMVIEW-prototype has been implemented based on Common Lisp and Common Windows. In the STIF (semantically transparent interfacing) method, the probably variable definitions of the transferred items are isolated outside the interface as much as possible, instead of using cross-references inside the interface. This is done by embedding some elements of the definition language of application A into the definition language of application B. A method of semantically transparent interfacing, STIF, is also defined, and two cases in which it has been applied are briefly described.

Mine the direct marketing riches in your database.

Companies are ignoring a wealth of untapped marketing gold embedded in their internal customer files. If this information can be extracted from a database, it could become a key source of sales leads.