Anu Gokhale

Offshore Outsourcing: A Delphi Study

Abstract Organizations examine offshoring — the organizational and technological ability to relocate specific tasks to another country and coordinate a geographically dispersed network of activities — as a business strategy toward globalization. The impacts of offshoring are highly controversial. This study used the Delphi technique to identify the positive and negative effects of offshoring on U.S. economy and workforce, and articulate a sustainable strategy to reduce the negative impacts. Managers and executives at several medium and large organizations in the Midwest region of the United States were involved. The four-phase study generated consensus among the respondents. Statistical analysis methods included a hierarchical cluster analysis, mean, median, mode, and percent of agreement calculations. A face-to-face discussion in phase 4 clarified some issues and helped the group as a whole to outline strategies for putting in place the essential elements of a framework to mitigate the negative impacts of offshoring.

Maintaining Positive Attitudes toward Science and Technology in First‐Year Female Undergraduates: Peril and promise

This study investigated attitude changes of 18‐year‐old first‐year college students at a large state‐operated institution in the USA during their initial semester in college. Attitudes of 375 students enrolled in a non‐science first‐year student seminar during the Fall of 2004 were measured, using a new instrument designed to focus on five attitude constructs especially relevant to female engagement with science and technology (S & T). The authors found that students whose seminar included visits with S & T professionals, plus at least four weeks of context‐based S & T content, maintained modestly positive attitudes toward S & T. Students whose seminars included the science content but not the visits from professionals also maintained relatively positive attitudes, except that the females became less accepting of female participation in S & T. Notably, females enrolled in seminars that did not include any of these interventions declined significantly in all five attitudes toward S & T, even though 95% of these students were simultaneously enrolled in required introductory natural science courses. Thus, introducing context‐based science content into the curriculum appears to be helpful in maintaining positive attitudes toward S & T in 18‐year‐old US female college students, while more traditional natural science pedagogy is associated with attitude decline in these students. This result is socially significant because females continue to be under‐represented in several S & T fields at the level of first university degree, in many regions of the world.

Interventions for increasing male and female undergraduate interest in information technology

There is a continuing worldwide need for developing a larger and more diverse workforce in the broad field of information technology (IT). We report on two activities conducted by the project within selected classes of a postsecondary finite mathematics course: 1) a student-written blog about practical applications of computing, and 2) after-class seminar sessions with professionals about the importance of computing in the work world. It was found that the hundreds of students who actively participated in these activities were significantly more likely to enroll in a computing course or declare a computing-related major than were non-participating students, despite the fact that the two groups of students displayed identical attitudes toward computing at the start of the term. The study demonstrates that relevant blogs and sessions with professionals can be effective tools for recruiting students, including women, who otherwise would not have chosen to complete more course work in computing. Blog reading or meeting with computing professionals can generate interest in IT.Study population was drawn from general education mathematics course.Participating students were significantly more likely to enroll in IT courses or majors.Both male and female students were affected positively.Female students were more dramatically affected than males.

Framework for Geospatial Query Processing by Integrating Cassandra with Hadoop

Nowadays we are moving towards digitization and making all our devices such as sensors, cameras connected to Internet producing big data. This big data has variety of data and has paved the way for the emergence of NoSQL databases, like Cassandra for achieving scalability and availability. Hadoop framework has been developed for storing and processing distributed data. In this work, we mainly investigated on storage and retrieval of geospatial data by integrating Hadoop and Cassandra using prefix-based partitioning and Cassandra’s default partitioning algorithm, i.e. Murmur3Partitioner techniques. Geohash value is generated that acts as a partition key and also helps in effective search. Hence, the time taken for retrieving data is optimized. When user requests for spatial queries like finding nearest locations, searching in Cassandra database starts using both partitioning techniques. A comparison on query response time is made so as to verify which method is more effective. Results showed that prefix-based partitioning technique is efficient than Murmur3 partitioning technique.

Perceptions of Science and Technology: A Comparison of Criminal Justice and Traditional Science and Technology Majors

Due to the increased demands for science and technology (S&T) in criminal justice (CJ) occupational preparation and in response to the growing interest of students in forensics, this study explores the attitudes of CJ majors towards S&T. Despite the acknowledgment that S&T skills are helpful in gaining employment, CJ majors reported less favorable attitudes than S&T majors, reporting: less interest in gaining S&T knowledge, fewer social benefits of S&T, and greater concerns that S&T are dangerous to society than traditional forensic science majors. While these findings raise some fundamental questions about the suitability of increased representation of S&T courses within CJ curriculum, authors argue that CJ curricular goals must continue to evolve to foster innovative students who are academically prepared to meet the twenty-first century challenges of their future careers.