Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating The Impact Of Peer Review And Participation Awareness In An Online Collaborative Document Authoring Environment, Greg Baatard

Theses : Honours

Online Learning Environments (OLEs) have been widely adopted by higher education facilities, offering distance education with the potential to support the social and collaborative aspects deemed crucial to modern constructivist pedagogy. Groupware, a form of software which aims to facilitate group work, has been the subject of much research, from both educational and enterprise perspectives. This research introduced Reportal, an online groupware system designed to facilitate the collaborative authoring of a document. Reportal's peer review and participation awareness features were the focus of this research, and their impact was measured against the elements of online collaboration, a typology established by …

A Message From The Editors, The Editors

Ecological and Environmental Anthropology (University of Georgia)

The complex nature of ecological and environmental problems requires a multi-faceted approach to their understanding and solution. Ecological and environmental anthropology sounds interdisciplinary, but what exactly does that mean? And how does that differ from multidisciplinary? Numerous articles over the past 30 or so years have talked about this type of research and some researchers have braved the unknown to produce high-quality, interesting, and useful work. However, for various institutional reasons, true integration of methods and theories across disciplines remains difficult to achieve.

Review Of Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder By Richard Louv, Colleen Marie O'Brien

Ecological and Environmental Anthropology (University of Georgia)

Like many other children growing up in the suburban United States during the 1970s, my childhood memories include swinging from tree limbs, tromping through the woods, and constructing tree forts in the far stretches of our neighborhood. But what happens when an entire generation of children grows up without such memories? Richard Louv, a New York Times journalist and founder of Connect for Kids, an internet-based child advocacy organization, explores this question in Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder. According to Louv, children today are more adept at naming cartoon characters than native …

Understanding Farmers’ Forecast Use From Their Beliefs, Values, Social Norms, And Perceived Obstacles*, Q. Steven Hu, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Gary D. Lynne, Alan Tomkins, William J. Waltman, Michael J. Hayes, Kenneth Hubbard, Ikrom Artikov, Stacey Hoffman, Donald A. Wilhite

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Although the accuracy of weather and climate forecasts is continuously improving and new information retrieved from climate data is adding to the understanding of climate variation, use of the forecasts and climate information by farmers in farming decisions has changed little. This lack of change may result from knowledge barriers and psychological, social, and economic factors that undermine farmer motivation to use forecasts and climate information. According to the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the motivation to use forecasts may arise from personal attitudes, social norms, and perceived control or ability to use forecasts in specific decisions. These attributes are …

Efficient Mining Of Group Patterns From User Movement Data, Yida Wang, Ee Peng Lim, San-Yih Hwang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a new approach to derive groupings of mobile users based on their movement data. We assume that the user movement data are collected by logging location data emitted from mobile devices tracking users. We formally define group pattern as a group of users that are within a distance threshold from one another for at least a minimum duration. To mine group patterns, we first propose two algorithms, namely AGP and VG-growth. In our first set of experiments, it is shown when both the number of users and logging duration are large, AGP and VG-growth are …

Fuzzy Interval Matrices, Neutrosophic Interval Matrices And Their Applications, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The new concept of fuzzy interval matrices has been introduced in this book for the first time. The authors have not only introduced the notion of fuzzy interval matrices, interval neutrosophic matrices and fuzzy neutrosophic interval matrices but have also demonstrated some of its applications when the data under study is an unsupervised one and when several experts analyze the problem. Further, the authors have introduced in this book multiexpert models using these three new types of interval matrices. The new multi expert models dealt in this book are FCIMs, FRIMs, FCInMs, FRInMs, IBAMs, IBBAMs, nIBAMs, FAIMs, FAnIMS, etc. Illustrative …

Introduction To N-Adaptive Fuzzy Models To Analyze Public Opinion On Aids, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

“AIDS is not simply a physical malady, it is also an artifact of social and sexual transgression, violated taboo, fractured identity—political and personal projections. Its key words are primarily the property of the powerful. AIDS: Keywords – is my attempt to identify and contest some of the assumptions underlying our current ‘knowledge’. In this effort I am joined by many AIDS activists including people living with AIDS— Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. “A syndrome is a pattern of symptoms pointing to a “morbid state” which may or may not be caused by infectious agents; a disease, on the other hand is, …

Factors Influencing The Participation In Environmental Stewardship Programs: A Case Study Of The Agricultural And Forestry Sectors In Louisiana, Carrie Castille Mendoza

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Considerable research has been conducted to evaluate the adoption of agricultural best management practices and their overall impact on improving environmental quality. However, limited studies have been conducted to evaluate the behavioral factors that influence the adoption of these practices in the context of educational programs The goal of this study is to determine the factors that influence farmer conservation behavior that might lead to an increased probability of improving agriculture and forestry watersheds. A conceptual model was developed to identify the: 1) identify landowner participation in watershed conservation projects, and 2) determine the factors influencing agriculture and forestry landowners …

Computer-Aided Diagnostic Systems For Digital Mammograms, Nicholas Jabari Lee

LSU Master's Theses

A computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system that uses a unique shape-based classification scheme, the Ellipse-Closed Curve Fitting (ECCF) algorithm, is developed for digital mammogram image analysis. The system is developed to work as a post-processing extension to a previously developed CAD system that locates and segments mass lesions, or tumors, found in digital mammograms into separate images. The ECCF system is implemented in the MATLAB mathematical scripting language and is thus capable of running on multiple platforms. The ECCF algorithm detects edges in tumor images and casts them into closed curve functions. Parameters for an ellipse of best fit for a …

Delineating Hurricane Vulnerable Populations In Orleans Parish, Louisiana, Stephanie Pedro

LSU Master's Theses

Since settlement first began, equality issues between different social classes have been evident in the location of where residents settled in New Orleans. This research seeks to answer the question: What socioeconomic indicators are prevalent in the areas most-at-risk to flooding which could inhabit populations least able to evacuate? I will use Census 2000 block group data from the socioeconomic sample data (SF3) collected in 2000, along with other economic and GIS data from the New Orleans region to statistically represent the distribution of risk by selecting indicators predicted to be in flood zones from a classification tree analysis. Then, …

Application Of Cognitive Engineering Principles To The Redesign Of A Dichotomous Identification Key For Parasitology

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Dichotomous identification keys are used throughout biology for identification of plants, insects, and parasites. However, correct use of identification keys can be difficult as they are not usually intended for novice users who may not be familiar with the terminology used or with the morphology of the organism being identified. Therefore, we applied cognitive engineering principles to redesign a parasitology identification key for the Internet. We addressed issues of visual clutter and spatial distance by displaying a single question couplet at a time and by switching to the appropriate next couplet after the user made a choice. Our analysis of …

E-Healthcare In Abc County Health Department (Abcchd): Trade-Offs Analysis And Evaluation, Keng Siau, Hwee-Joo Kam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The issue of privacy stirred a tumultuous uproar when the ABC County Health Department (ABCCHD) was planning for an e-Healthcare system that utilized information technology to streamline the administration process of patients. ABCCHD had hired a software vendor, Info-Health, a company that specialized in information system development for the healthcare industry to help in the project. The privacy of patients with Sexually Transmitted Diseases/Human Immunity System was a thorny issue in the implementation of the e-Healthcare system. A trade-off between privacy and cost was discussed and debated. Three alternatives, with varying degrees of privacy and cost, were considered.

Multiagent Teamwork: Hybrid Approaches, Praveen Paruchuri, Emma Bowring, Ranjit Nair, Jonathan Pearce, Nathan Schurr, Milind Tambe, Pradeep Varakantham

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Today within the multiagent community, we see at least four competing methods to building multiagent systems: beliefdesireintention (BDI), distributed constraint optimization (DCOP), distributed POMDPs, and auctions or game-theoretic methods. While there is exciting progress within each approach, there is a lack of cross-cutting research. This article highlights the various hybrid techniques for multiagent teamwork developed by the teamcore group. In particular, for the past decade, the TEAMCORE research group has focused on building agent teams in complex, dynamic domains. While our early work was inspired by BDI, we will present an overview of recent research that uses DCOPs and distributed …

The Analysis Of Core Competence For Chinese Oil Shipping Company, Binmeng. Mo

World Maritime University Dissertations

During the past decade, China’s crude oil import has risen sharply, which demands the immediately matching shipping capacity of the domestic oil shipping companies. Therefore, how to steer the Chinese oil shipping enterprises towards a promising development is a very big problem facing the Chinese entrepreneurs. This paper has tried to provide some practical suggestion to improve Chinese oil shipping companies’ core competence based on the analysis of Chinese Shipping Tanker Company, which is typical representative for this industry. After having studied the measuring methods of the core competence and the index system building principles, the author constructs a complete …

Learning Successful Strategies In Repeated General-Sum Games, Jacob W. Crandall

Theses and Dissertations

Many environments in which an agent can use reinforcement learning techniques to learn profitable strategies are affected by other learning agents. These situations can be modeled as general-sum games. When playing repeated general-sum games with other learning agents, the goal of a self-interested learning agent is to maximize its own payoffs over time. Traditional reinforcement learning algorithms learn myopic strategies in these games. As a result, they learn strategies that produce undesirable results in many games. In this dissertation, we develop and analyze algorithms that learn non-myopic strategies when playing many important infinitely repeated general-sum games. We show that, in …

Empirical Likelihood Inference For The Area Under The Roc Curve, Gengsheng Qin, Xiao-Hua Zhou

UW Biostatistics Working Paper Series

For a continuous-scale diagnostic test, the most commonly used summary index of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is the area under the curve (AUC) that measures the accuracy of the diagnostic test. In this paper we propose an empirical likelihood approach for the inference of AUC. We first define an empirical likelihood ratio for AUC and show that its limiting distribution is a scaled chi-square distribution. We then obtain an empirical likelihood based confidence interval for AUC using the scaled chi-square distribution. This empirical likelihood inference for AUC can be extended to stratified samples and the resulting limiting distribution …

Obesity, Self-Complexity, And Compartmentalization: On The Implications Of Obesity For Self-Concept Organization, Bruce E. Blaine, C. E. Johnson

Statistics Faculty/Staff Publications

The relationship between obesity and structural aspects of the self-concept was examined in adult women. Participants were 119 adult women [age range: 18-73, M=26.9; body mass index (BMI) range: 16.2-54.7, M=27.3] who completed measures of self-esteem, self-complexity, and the spontaneous self-concept. BMI was associated with less complex and more compartmentalized self-knowledge and more frequent mention of weight-stereotypic traits as self-descriptive. The findings are discussed in the context of research on obesity- related stigma.

The John Muir Newsletter, Winter 2005/2006, The John Muir Center For Environmental Studies

Muir Center Newsletters (1981-2015)

Radical Transcendentalism: Emerson, Muir and the Experience of Nature by James Brannon Palo Alto Center for Science and the Humanities, Palo Alto, CA ©2006 The uniquely American Transcendentalist School which formed in Harvard-influenced 1830's Cambridge brought a New Idea regarding man, spirit, and nature to a young country struggling to find its own voice. As its chief proponent, Ralph Waldo Emerson conveyed a philosophy that was considered radical in its time. The young John Muir, raised in an environment of harsh Puritan sensibilities and Christian dogma, took strongly to the Transcendental ideas as he was introduced to them at the …

Full Issue, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Discovering Informative Connection Subgraphs In Multi-Relational Graphs, Cartic Ramakrishnan, William Milnor, Matthew Perry, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

Discovering patterns in graphs has long been an area of interest. In most approaches to such pattern discovery either quantitative anomalies, frequency of substructure or maximum flow is used to measure the interestingness of a pattern. In this paper we introduce heuristics that guide a subgraph discovery algorithm away from banal paths towards more "informative" ones. Given an RDF graph a user might pose a question of the form: "What are the most relevant ways in which entity X is related to entity Y?" the response to which is a subgraph connecting X to Y. We use our heuristics to …

Expert Testimony In Capital Sentencing: Juror Responses, John H. Montgomery, J. Richard Ciccone, Stephen P. Garvey, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant’s abnormal mental state and (2) the aggravating factor of a defendant’s potential for future violence. This study was an exploration of the responses of capital jurors to psychiatric/psychologic expert testimony during capital sentencing. The Capital Jury Project is …

Acknowledgements, The Mcnair Team

McNair Scholars Research Journal

No abstract provided.

A Study Of How Precursor Key Concepts For Organic Chemistry Success Are Understood By General Chemistry Students, Patrick Gerard Meyer

Dissertations

This study examines college student understanding of key concepts that will support future organic chemistry success as determined by university instructors. During four one-hour individual interviews the sixteen subjects attempted to solve general chemistry problems. A think-aloud protocol was used along with a whiteboard where the students could draw and illustrate their ideas. The protocols for the interviews were adapted from the Covalent Structure and Bonding two-tiered multiple choice diagnostic instrument (Peterson, Treagust, & Garnett, 1989) and augmented by the Geometry and Polarity of Moleculessingle-tiered multiple choice instrument (Furió & Calatayud, 1996). The interviews were videotaped, transcribed, and coded …

Fractal Dimensions In Perceptual Color Space: A Comparison Study Using Jackson Pollock’S Art, Jonas R. Mureika

Physics Faculty Works

The fractal dimensions of color-specific paint patterns in various Jackson Pollock paintings are calculated using a filtering process that models perceptual response to color differences (L*a*b* color space). The advantage of the L*a*b* space filtering method over traditional red-green-blue (RGB) spaces is that the former is a perceptually uniform (metric) space, leading to a more consistent definition of “perceptually different” colors. It is determined that the RGB filtering method underestimates the perceived fractal dimension of lighter-colored patterns but not of darker ones, if the same selection criteria is applied to each. Implications of the findings to Fechner’s “principle of …

The Application Of Category Theory And Analysis Of Receiver Operating Characteristics To Information Fusion, Steven N. Thorsen

Theses and Dissertations

Multisensor data fusion is presented in a rigorous mathematical format, with definitions consistent with the desires of the data fusion community. A model of event-state fusion is developed and described. Definitions of fusion rules and fusors are introduced, along with the functor categories of which they are objects. Defining fusors and competing fusion rules involves the use of an objective function of the researcher's choice. One such objective function, a functional on families of classification systems, and in particular, receiver operating characteristics (ROCs), is introduced. Its use as an objective function is demonstrated in that the argument that minimizes it …

Improving The Quality Of Conceptual Modeling Using Cognitive Mapping Techniques, Keng Siau, X. Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Conceptual modeling involves the understanding and communication between system analysts and end-users. Many factors may affect the quality of conceptual modeling processes as well as the models per se. Human cognition plays a pivotal role in understanding these factors and cognitive mapping techniques are effective tools to elicit and represent human cognition. In this paper, we look at the use of cognitive mapping techniques to improve the quality of conceptual modeling. We review frameworks on quality in conceptual modeling and examine the role of human cognition in conceptual modeling. The paper also discusses how human cognition is related to quality …

Neutrosophic Methods In General Relativity, Florentin Smarandache, Dmitri Rabounski, Larissa Borissova

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this work the authors apply concepts of Neutrosophic Logic to the General Theory of Relativity to obtain a generalisation of Einstein’s fourdimensional pseudo-Riemannian differentiable manifold in terms of Smarandache Geometry (Smarandache manifolds), by which new classes of relativistic particles and non-quantum teleportation are developed. Fundamental features of Neutrosophic Logic are its denial of the Law of Excluded Middle, and open (or estimated) levels of truth, falsity and indeterminancy. Both Neutrosophic Logic and Smarandache Geometry were invented some years ago by one of the authors (F. Smarandache). The application of these purely mathematical theories to General Relativity reveals hitherto unknown …

Autism And Parental Marital Satisfaction: The Role Of Adequacy Of Resources, Geneeta Kaliah Chambers

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The goal of the present study was to expand on the existing literature exploring families with children who have developmental disabilities, particularly autism. Previous studies have been constrained by univariate approaches that have failed to adequately capture the nuances of family functioning. Using an ecological/context approach, stemming from an ongoing research program conducted within a university-based treatment center, the present study attempted to improve on the conceptualization of interrelationships among family members and the role that contextual factors play within that dynamic. Specifically, the present study explored the influence of children’s level of autism on parents’ reports of their marital …

Education In The Environment: A Hands-On Student Research And Outdoor Learning Experience: Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending November 30, 2005, Margaret N. Rees

Reports (PLI Education)

During the past three-months, the focus of the university’s efforts has included the following highlights:

• Forever Earth was scheduled 15 times in the past quarter.
• Twelve Discover Mojave Outdoor World events were completed; a draft Year 2 schedule was completed.
• An Outdoor World assessment report compiled and results were presented at a professional academic conference.
• The Phase I Education in the Environment Strategy document was completed.
• A Phase II action plan is underway by the Environmental Education Committee.
• A place-based education conference, “Our Places Tell Stories,” will be held in January 2006.
• Survey data is being collected from Clark County …

Marketing Military Service Benefits Segmentation Based On Generalized And Restricted Exchange, Caroline Fisher, Kimball P. Marshall

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

Willingness to engage in exchange is based on desired benefits. In typical commercial transactions, restricted exchange benefits dominate. However, public policy, social marketing situations might require consideration of both restricted and generalized exchange benefits. Applying factor analysis, cluster analysis and cross-tabulation, this paper reports research that has successfully segmented a young adult target market regarding interest in military service based on considerations of generalized and restricted exchange motivations. This research contributes to a growing body of literature on generalized exchange as a key conceptual element for social marketing. Results demonstrate the utility of the generalized exchange concept in identifying amarket …