Although graduation rates have interested stakeholders, educational researchers, and policymakers for some time, little progress has been made on the overall graduation rate at four-year state colleges. Even though selective admission based on academic indicators such as high school GPA and ACT/SAT have widely been used in the USA for years, and recent statistics show that less than 40% of students graduate from four-year state colleges in four years in the US. The authors propose using an ensemble of analytic models that considers cost as a better form of analysis that can be used as input to decision support systems to inform decision makers and help them choose intervention methods. This article uses ten years of data for 10,000 students and applies ten analytical models to find the best predictor of at-risk students. This research also uses the receiver operating characteristic curve to help determine the most cost-effective trade-off between false positive and false negative levels.

This study explores the factors that influence individuals’ sustained participation in crowdsourcing contests. By conducting an empirical study using data from an online crowdsourcing contest platform, Kaggle, we found that tenure, previous performance, price amount, number of competitors, and competition duration have a statistically significant effect on individuals’ continued participation. This research contributes to the literature by identifying the factors influencing individuals’ sustained participation in crowdsourcing contests that have both collaborative and competitive components.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a main cause of dementia, is commonly seen in aging populations with a strong genetic component. AD is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders; it is a genetically and clinically heterogeneous disease. Specific demographic factors and genetic variants have been identified in non-Hispanic populations; however, limited studies have observed the Hispanic population. Therefore, we focused on investigating a known gene, APOE, associated with AD-related phenotypes and two psychiatric diseases (depression and anxiety) within the U.S. Hispanic population in our current study. A total of 1382 subjects were studied based on data collected from the Texas Alzheimer’s Research and Care Consortium (TARCC, N = 1320) and the Initial Study of Longevity and Dementia from the Rio Grande Valley (ISLD-RGV, N = 62). Questionnaires regarding demographics, medical history, and blood/saliva samples were collected. We genotyped the APOE gene. The current findings indicated that APOE-ε4 was associated with not only AD (p < 0.0001) but also with anxiety (p < 0.0001) and depression (p = 0.0004). However, APOE-ε3 was associated with depression (p = 0.002) in the Hispanic population. We provide additional evidence in which APOE-ε4 increased the risk for AD in Hispanics. For the first time, APOE alleles show increased risks for anxiety and depression in Hispanics. Further research is warranted to confirm the current findings.

Acknowledging environmental sustainability as one of the most critical global challenges in our time, information systems (IS) scholars and practitioners have begun to address environmental problems by developing and implementing various green information systems. Besides pro-environmental IT artifacts, we argue that user-oriented green practices play a crucial role in ameliorating the adverse effects that result from making, using, and disposing electronic devices. To that end, we examine user intentions toward engaging in pro-environmental behaviors that can penetrate the electronic device lifecycle, which includes choosing, using, and disposing such devices. In particular, we adopt the extended theory of planned behavior as a lens and suggest ecological beliefs among users can determine their ecological attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control, which, in turn, can shape their pro- environmental behavior. Also, ecological knowledge appears to play an influential role in changing user intentions to perform pro-environmental practices. We also revisit relevant green IT and green IS literature while providing future research directions.