A Hybrid Machine Learning Model for Predicting USA NBA All-Stars

Throughout the modern age, sports have been a very important part of human existence. As our documentation of sports has become more advanced, so have the prediction capabilities. Presently, analysts keep track of a massive amount of information about each team, player, coach, and matchup. This collection has led to the development of unparalleled prediction systems with high levels of accuracy. The issue with these prediction systems is that they are proprietary and very costly to maintain. In other words, they are unusable by the average person. Sports, being one of the most heavily analyzed activities on the planet, should be accessible to everyone. In this paper, a preliminary system for using publicly available statistics and open-source methods for predicting NBA All-Stars is introduced and modified to improve the accuracy of the predictions, which reaches values close to 0.9 in raw accuracy, and higher than 0.9 in specificity.

Pump Technology Interchange As Embraced by Dr. S. Gopalakrishan, Vice President, Technology Flowserve Pump Division

Himself a major technical team player in a for-profit corporation, the stance adopted by Dr. S. Gopalakrishnan vis à vis the wider engineering community is examined and found to be instructive for technology leadership in general. First, in the context of his particular experience, are highlighted the mutual benefits of a corporation maintaining relationships with universities. Then come the similar advantages of his participation in professional societies and symposia and the attendant contributions to the open literature, including the competitive drive for doing so. Such activity fortuitously led him to the more direct relationships with competitors that characterize a research consortium of manufacturers in the same industry.

Political Image of the Regional Leader on Instagram

The article is devoted to the study of the features of modern political communication in the context of society networkization. The interaction of a regional political leader and society in the sign-symbolic space of political communication is considered.The purpose of this paper is to identify the main image-role semantic constructs, which are reflected in the messages of the head of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation, posted by him on the popular Internet platform for social media Instagram. In addition to establishing the most actively used semantic image-role constructs, the research determines the degree of it`s popularity and the level of it`s approval among the audience of this Internet platform.The qualitative and quantitative type of content analysis was chosen as the main applied research method. In addition to it, a comparative analysis method is used. The conceptual basis of the research is formed by the theory of the information society, as well as the concepts of “network image”, “digitalization policy” and “network identity”.According to the results of the conducted content analysis, it was found that more often than others in the messages posted on the studied official Internet page of the political leader in Instagram, such an image-role construct as an “organizer” is presented. This corresponds to the type of leadership characteristic of this political leader. Among the entries that aroused a relatively increased attention of the audience of the Internet platform, there are messages where a number of image-role constructs are presented, including: “crisis manager”, “organizer”, “team player”, “builder”, “open leader, hearing society” and “business executive”. Such a uniform distribution of the audience’s interest in it`s functional and semantic constructs may be explained by the fact that the head of the region is actively paying attention to each of the designated thematic areas.The highest level of approval from the audience of the Internet platform was received by the messages, which reflected such image-role constructs as “family man” and “leader looking to the future”. Considering the relatively inactive use of the designated semantic constructs by the head of the region in the messages posted on his official Instagram page, it is noted that an increase in the number of messages, which would reflect these image-role constructs, may enhance the leader’s positive image and, as a result, the level of his support in society.

Barnabas: A leadership model for the Nigerian society

It has usually been accepted that the success of any organisation or nation depends on the ability of its leader to govern and manage its affairs. The failure of most developing countries, especially Nigeria, has often been blamed on bad leadership. Most Nigerians are of the opinion that the leadership problem in Nigeria has been the major impediment in the nation’s development. Most people also agree that corruption and bad governance, which are prevalent in Nigeria today, are the results of leadership failure. The consensus among scholars, critics and observers of the Nigerian state is that the current situation of the nation is the result of lack of good and purposeful leadership. It is because of leadership failure in the country that Nigerians today clamor for good and purposeful leadership. This paper is a contribution to the search for the long-awaited leader. This paper examines Barnabas’ character using the narrative method.Contribution: This article reveals that Barnabas was a bridge-builder, team player, non-discriminatory and not power or position drunk and these are the traits that should be used as a model in selecting or electing leaders within ecclesiastical and secular circles.

The Interdisciplinary Research Team not the Interdisciplinarist

Worldwide there is a growing interest in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. This overview paper addresses some of the pitfalls and barriers to being an interdisciplinary researcher. Being involved in interdisciplinary research is not an easy option for an individual discipline expert. It requires individual skills, ability to see beyond one’s discipline and perhaps personality characteristics such as a great team player. Interdisciplinary research may involve a mixed-methods approach underpinned by conflicting, and according to some incommensurable, research philosophies. The paper uses some examples from our own experiences of working in interdisciplinary teams to illustrate its potential.

Novel Display Design for Spatial Assessment in Virtual Environments

In this work in progress paper, we share novel conceptual display design ideas (pending validation and testing) to aid users with their spatial assessment in either two or three-dimensional spaces such as Virtual Reality (VR) environments. The example scenario used is to help a remote human team player (2nd user) to work with an asset Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and human team player (1st user) in the field. The scenario’s goal is to deliver relief packages (i.e., medical, clothing, and food supplies) at a fixed location in an urban and hostile terrain containing adversary UAV and their human team players. Inspired by the Lens theory and Ecological Interface Design principles, the proposed display design ideas allow the user to retain past and present asset and adversary location information whilst knowing when the adversary was too close to assets and civilians and the precision of display views based on the number of sensors available.