Digital Commons Network^™

Comparing A Narrative And Didactic Approach To An Invasive Species Education Video, Tim Campbell, Bret Shaw, Amulya Rao, Jenna Klink, Feiran Chen

The Journal of Extension

Video is a common tool for engaging audiences in Extension topics, yet evaluation of the different video production approaches is lacking. We compared learning and emotional outcomes after boaters in the Great Lakes watched either a narrative or didactic video focused on how to prevent the spread of an aquatic invasive species. There were differences in how each approach affected viewers, indicating that there can be utility in both approaches to video production. Extension staff that are creating videos should have these outcomes in mind to promote desired behaviors.

Appendix D Comparison Of Historical Coc Results To Groundwater Remedial Goals, Stantec Consulting Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Co-Operative Evaluation Of Northern Hemisphere Grassland Germplasm In Inner Mongolia And The Western United States, Larry K. Holzworth, Gu Anlin, J Scheetz, J Carlson

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Inner Mongolia, Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the western United States (USA) have deteriorated or altered grasslands needing revegetation and stabilisation for soil protection and sustained production. The semi-arid and arid grasslands of Inner Mongolia and the western USA are ecologically similar in structure and function. Bach can contribute elite germplasm for revegetation programs on both continents. Evaluation trials were established jointly in Inner Mongolia and in the northern intermountain west USA by Chinese and American scientists during 1991 and 1993. Entries included Asian and North American plant materials. Results of these co­operative trials show many species having high …

Indigenous Populations Of Lolium Perenne L. Identification, Evaluation And Conservation, G Spatz, A Oetmann, C Paul

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

One hundred indigenous ryegrass populations were identified along 2 geographical gradients in Germany (west-east and north-south), Each population was sampled by collecting 180 tillers in 1991. The total 18 000 tillers were cultivated and will be examined as spaced plants (ex situ) in 1992 Nine selected populations were investigated in situ 1991. The results of the i11 situ investigations show high variability between and within the populations. The most valuable populations will be conserved as gene reserves within their environments (i11 situ). Promising material will in future be handed over to private breeders.

Seed Production And Autumn Germination As Determinants Of The Success Of Subterranean Clover In A Cool Temperate Environment, M L. Smetham, S Hines, D W. Jack

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

A field experiment examined seed production and autumn germination of subterranean clovers (Trifolium subterraneum L.) In an area of New Zealand with a mean annual rainfall of 62S mm and dry summers. In the fourth autumn, out of 42 accessions, only 10 produced more than the 1000 seedlings/m2 and had seed reserves in excess of the 240 kg/ha considered necessary for success. Of the named cultivars only the early-flowering cv. Geraldton exceeded these thresholds whereas cv. Seaton Park, Woogenellup, Mount Barker and Tallarook did not. All lines had In excess of 50% hard seed 3 weeks after the autumn …

New Panicum Maximum Cultivars For Diverse Ecosystems In Brazil, L Jank, J C.G Costa, Y H. Savidan, C B. Do Valle

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

In 1982 a collection of 426 accessions of Panicum maximum (guinea grass) representative of its natural variability, was introduced co Brazil through a co-operative agreement with Prance. After 2 years of agronomic and morphological evaluation of this germplasm in small plots in Campo Grande, MS, 25 accessions were selected to be tested in diverse ecosystems throughout Brazil. The national network of evaluation was established in January 1988, over 7 states of the country: 2 in the humid tropics, 3 in the savannas, 1 towards the north-east coast and 1 in the subtropics. Agronomic variables studied were dry season and year-round …

Agronomic Evaluation Of Brachiaria Germplasm In Brazil, C B. Do Valle, S Calixto, M C. Amexquita

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Increasing demands for new cultivars of grasses adapted to the acid soils of tropical savannas and resistant to spittlebugs (Homoptera:Cercopidae) led CIAT to organise collections of Brachiaria spp. germplasm in eastern Africa in the 1980s. Over 800 accessions were assembled and distributed to various countries. Bmpresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropeculiria (BMBRAPA) received about 300 accessions which are being evaluated with the objective of selecting superior Brachiaria cultivars to be released to farmers. This paper reports on the agronomic performance of 184 accessions belonging to 5 different species, evaluated for 2 years in small plots, in Campo Grande, MS, Brazil. Parameters …

Plant Improvement: The Evaluation And Extension Processes, A S. Laidlaw, K.F M. Reed

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Registration and evaluation systems throughout the world range from voluntary registration to compulsory schemes involving assessment of taxonomic and agronomic characteristics. Evaluation can be confined to agronomic tests simulated under grazing management or extended to feeding-value trials. Criteria include adaptation to climate and soils, persistence and seasonal growth, annual dry matter production, resistance to pests and diseases, and association with beneficial organisms. The need for stress (e.g. drought, low nutrients, acidity, salinity, heat or cold) to be given more emphasis in programmes in specific localities is suggested. In developing regions the emphasis is screening a wide range of grasses and …

Trec Ikat 2023: A Test Collection For Evaluating Conversational And Interactive Knowledge Assistants, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Zahra Abbasiantaeb, Shubham Chatterjee, Jeffrey Dalton, Leif Azzopardi

Computer Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Conversational information seeking has evolved rapidly in the last few years with the development of Large Language Models (LLMs), providing the basis for interpreting and responding in a naturalistic manner to user requests. The extended TREC Interactive Knowledge Assistance Track (iKAT) collection aims to enable researchers to test and evaluate their Conversational Search Agent (CSA). The collection contains a set of 36 personalized dialogues over 20 different topics each coupled with a Personal Text Knowledge Base (PTKB) that defines the bespoke user personas. A total of 344 turns with approximately 26,000 passages are provided as assessments on relevance, as well …

An Interactive Multimedia Educational Program For Pasture Management, P G. Tow, Corina Mulholland, P Marriott, D A. Shelton

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Developing abilities in pasture management decision making is important for all students of pasture agronomy, whether they plan to work in management, extension or research. Such problem-based learning fosters an ability to understand and apply principles, and to integrate and use information from various sources. A computerassisted, problem based, multimedia educational programme, “Pasture Management” has been developed to complement limited field exercises in pasture assessment and management. It comprises illustrated case studies and supporting information. Students interact with the programme by choosing alternative management options, calling up images and text as required to assist them. The programme supplies feedback for …

Michigan Grazier Networks, An Educational Outreach Of The Michigan Hay And Grazing Council, R H. Leep, T Miller, H Liss

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The objective of this educational program was to create a farmer to farmer learning process which would facilitate educational programming in grazing land management for new and intermediate experienced graziers in Michigan. An evaluation of the 1995 educational experiences of program participants was conducted in December, 1995, utilizing an assessment program called Optionfinder.

Land Evaluation For Sustainable Land Use By Remote Sensing And Gis Case Study: Assessment Of Soil Erosion In Pakistan, Y Yamamoto, S Uchida, T Suyama, A Shoji

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

In the northern part of Punjab in Pakistan, severe soil erosion has caused land degradation and has disturbed sustainable land use systems. Since much of this erosion has been marked near rivers, watersheds and topography are considered to be related to soil erosion. We applied the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing to the assessment of an erodible area. GIS is very useful for conducting spatial data analysis using map data. Remotely sensed data provides the information about land surfaces. In this study, the distance from the river, weighted by the slope estimated by GIS, and the standard deviations …

Evaluation Of Grass Species In Pure Cultures And In Mixture With White Clover, M Zimkova

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Four cultivars of three grass species and five grass/white clover mixtures were evaluated in field small-plot trials on persistence and dry matter production (DM) in 1993-95. Of pure grass species the meadow fescue (Festuca pratensis) was the most productive though its persistence has declined in the third year (3.2 points in 1995). Both perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne)/white clover (Trifolium repens) mixtures have been well performing with 1.3 - 2.4 points for persistence and with yields of 6.4 - 9.56 t DM/ha-1.

Recent Developments In The Use Of Near Infra-Red Spectroscopy For The Evaluation Of Grass Silage, N W. Offer, D S. Percival, C Thomas

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

This work assessed the potential of near infra-red spectroscopy (NIRS) to predict the voluntary intake and fermentation characteristics of grass silage. NIRS spectra were obtained from dried milled (Dry) or fresh samples by two methods (Wet1 - vertical transport mechanism and Wet2 - rotating cup drawer). Prediction errors (SECV as a percentage of mean values) were 5.5, 6.5 and 2.5 for Dry, Wet1 and Wet2 respectively for intake by dairy cows (n=28). Corresponding values were 10.3, 16.1 and 10.9 for lambs (n=88). The Wet2 method gave more accurate predictions than Wet1 except for predictions of ADF and unfermentable metabolisable energy …

Effects Of Color Of Facilities On Evaluation Of Farm Landscape, Y Hosokawa, K Toda

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The objective of this study was to make clear the color of farm facilities, being harmonious with the landscape. For the color design of farm facility, the questionnaire was given to 429 subjects by the 8-ordered choices from each figure painted 8 colors, i.e., red, yellow­ red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and black, in each landscape element of the roof of barn, the board of fence, the steel tower and the plastic-pack of silos by using the image processor. The harmonious color chosen were red in the roof of barn and mostly white in both fence, steel tower silo, …

Lodging Resistance Evaluation In Lolium Multiflorum, Katsuo Egara, Kazuhiro Tase, Makoto Kobayashi, Hiroki Fujii

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

The objective of this study was to develop a simple technique to evaluate lodging resistance in Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) for genetic improvement. Significant relationships were recognized between the pushing resistance index and actual lodging degree (ALD), and between the breaking resistance index and ALD, at the 0.1 and 5 percent levels, respectively.

Cooperative Evaluation Of Inner Mongolia, Prc, Grassland Germplasm In The Western Usa, J G. Scheetz, L St. John, M E. Stannard, S R. Winslow

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Replicated dryland studies were established at three USDA, NRCS, Plant Materials Centers in the USA northern intermountain west by Chinese and American scientists. Forty-six Asian and 16 USA grasses, legumes, and shrubs were included. These plantings were evaluated for vigor, percent stand, and foliage height in 1994 and 1995, and for biomass production in 1995. Generally, USA grasses outperformed Asian grasses, while Inner Mongolian legumes show the highest potential for use in the intermountain west.

Cooperative Evaluation Of Western Hemisphere Grassland Germplasm In Inner Mongolia, Prc, L K. Holzworth, Gu Anlin, J G. Scheetz, M E. Majerus

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Replicated studies were established jointly by Chinese and American scientists in central Inner Mongolia. Both Asian and North American plant materials were included. Results of the Chinese plots show USA saline-tolerant species have potential to assist the Chinese with saline soil reclamation. On saline sites, USA cultivars rated the best stands and had the highest yields. Generally, Chinese desert steppe species outperformed USA upland entries with the Chinese legumes establishing the best stands and producing the most biomass.

Cooperative Evaluation Of Western Hemisphere Grassland Germplasm In Inner Mongolia, Prc, L K. Holzworth, Gu Anlin, J G. Scheetz, M E. Majerus

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Replicated studies were established jointly by Chinese and American scientists in central Inner Mongolia. Both Asian and North American plant materials were included. Results of the Chinese plots show USA saline-tolerant species have potential to assist the Chinese with saline soil reclamation. On saline sites, USA cultivars rated the best stands and had the highest yields. Generally, Chinese desert steppe species outperformed USA upland entries with the Chinese legumes establishing the best stands and producing the most biomass.

Germplasm Evaluation Of An Eurasia Steppe Native Specie--Sheepgrass (Leymus Chinensis), Gongshe Liu, Xiaoxia Li, Dongmei Qi, Liqin Cheng, Shuangyan Chen, Xianjun Peng, Hui Liu

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel) is an advantageous perennial native grass in China and other northern Eurasian countries having steppe. As an important forage grass of great value in animal husbandry, sheepgrass is well known for its abundant foliage, high palatability and high nutritive content. Sheepgrass is also valuable in grassland restoration and conservation since it is a perennial grass with a rhizome network to fix the soil and can survive well in stressful environments. Terefore, the collection, evaluation and utilization of sheepgrass are necessary for protecting grassland biodiversity, for establishing artificial pasture, restoring degraded grassland, and the development …

An Unsupervised Machine Learning Algorithm For Clustering Low Dimensional Data Points In Euclidean Grid Space, Josef Lazar

Senior Projects Spring 2024

Clustering algorithms provide a useful method for classifying data. The majority of well known clustering algorithms are designed to find globular clusters, however this is not always desirable. In this senior project I present a new clustering algorithm, GBCN (Grid Box Clustering with Noise), which applies a box grid to points in Euclidean space to identify areas of high point density. Points within the grid space that are in adjacent boxes are classified into the same cluster. Conversely, if a path from one point to another can only be completed by traversing an empty grid box, then they are classified …

Evaluating Digital Creativity Support For Children: A Systematic Literature Review, Marte Hoff Hagen, Daniela Soares Cruzes, Letizia Jaccheri, Jerry Alan Fails

Computer Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Creativity, the process of creating something new and valuable, benefits children by improving their skills and development, encouraging interaction and engagement, and enabling the generation and expression of novel ideas. In recent years, interactive digital tools have emerged to support the user’s creativity in the open-ended creation of new artifacts. However, the question of evaluating the creativity happening in the interplay between children, digital tools, and products is still open. This systematic literature review investigated the evaluations of digital creativity support tools for children and identified 81 peer-reviewed relevant articles from the last 10 years. This research contributes to practitioners …

Comparative Analysis Of Teacher Effects Parameters In Models Used For Assessing School Effectiveness: Value-Added Models & Persistence, Merlin J. Kamgue

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Longitudinal measures for students have become increasingly popular to estimate the effects of individual teachers and schools. Value-added models are one of the approaches using longitudinal data to evaluate teachers and schools. In the value-added model (VAM) literature, many statistical approaches have been developed and used to estimate teacher or school effects on student learning. This study opted to use a Bayesian multivariate model for evaluating teacher effects. The generalized persistence models can handle longitudinal data, not vertically scaled, allowing for a below-par teacher’s effects correlation across test administrations. This study first generated longitudinal students’ test score data and used …

Computerized Psychological Testing: Designing And Developing An Efficient Test Suite Using Hci And Reinforcement Learning Techniques, William Henry Hoskins

Theses and Dissertations

In this work we discuss the design and development of the Carolina Automated Reading Evaluation (CARE), created to facilitate the finding of deficits in the reading ability of children from four to nine years of age. Designed to automate the process of screening for reading deficits, the CARE is an interactive computer-based tool that helps eliminate the need for one-on-one evaluations of pupils to detect dyslexia and other reading deficits and facilitates the creation of new reading tests within the platform. While other tests collect specific data points in order to determine whether a pupil has dyslexia, they typically focus …

Final 2021 Unreclaimed Sites Sampling Ur-32 Site Evaluation Summary Report, Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Beyond Algorithms: A User-Centered Evaluation Of A Feature Recommender System In Requirements Engineering, Oluwatobi Lasisi

Theses and Dissertations

Several studies have applied recommender technologies to support requirements engineering activities. As in other application areas of recommender systems (RS), many studies have focused on the algorithms’ prediction accuracy, while there have been limited discussions around users’ interactions with the systems. Since recommender systems are designed to aid users in information retrieval, they should be assessed not just as recommendation algorithms but also from the users’ perspective. In contrast to accuracy measures, user-related issues can only be effectively investigated via empirical studies involving real users. Furthermore, researchers are becoming increasingly aware that the effectiveness of the systems goes beyond recommendation …

Modelling Of Herbage Intake And Milk Production By Grazing Dairy Cows, Rémy Delagarde, M. O'Donovan

IGC Proceedings (1993-2023)

Key-points

1. Models predicting intake and performance of grazing ruminants from animal, sward, grazing and supplements characteristics are rare, but they are now included in several decision support systems (DSS).

2. An evaluation of the performance and accuracy of published models are rarely undertaken by their authors, but this is proposed in this paper.

3. There is still a need for experimental research but also for the development of generic and dynamic models to predict intake and performance over a wide range of grazing conditions.

The Proof Is In The Pudding – Using Perceived Stress To Measure Short-Term Impact In Initiatives To Enhance Gender Balance In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Sarah Jane Delany

Academic Posters Collection

The problem of gender imbalance in computing higher education has forced academics and professionals to implement a wide range of initiatives. Many initiatives use recruitment or retention numbers as their most obvious evidence of impact. This type of evidence of impact is, however, more resource heavy to obtain, as well as often requires a longitudinal approach. There are many shorter term initiatives that use other ways to measure their success.

First, this poster presents with a review of existing evaluation measures in interventions to recruit and retain women in computing education across the board. Three main groups of evaluation come …

Identity Term Sampling For Measuring Gender Bias In Training Data, Nasim Sobhani, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference Papers

Predictions from machine learning models can reflect biases in the data on which they are trained. Gender bias has been identified in natural language processing systems such as those used for recruitment. The development of approaches to mitigate gender bias in training data typically need to be able to isolate the effect of gender on the output to see the impact of gender. While it is possible to isolate and identify gender for some types of training data, e.g. CVs in recruitment, for most textual corpora there is no obvious gender label. This paper proposes a general approach to measure …

Effectiveness Evaluation Method Of Space-Based Information Systems Based On Sem, Chi Han, Wei Xiong, Wenwen Liu, Xiaolan Yu, Ping Jian

Journal of System Simulation

Abstract: Aiming at the nonlinear emergence of effectiveness of the coupling and interaction of space-based information system (SIS), an operational effectiveness evaluation (OEE) model based on structural equation modeling (SEM) is proposed. Through the analysis of capacity requirements and system composition, the internal connections of sub-systems are obtained, and the effectiveness evaluation index system is constructed. By considering the synergistic interaction within SIS, the linear and nonlinear SEMs are constructed respectively to evaluate the effectiveness, and the analytical model of OEE is established on the basis of the corresponding parameter equations. With the background of integrated joint operations under …