Digital Commons Network^™

Developing Deaf Students Fraction Skills Requires Understanding Magnitude And Whole Number Division, Keith Mousley, Ronald R. Kelly

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Research has shown that fraction magnitude and whole number division are important precursors to learning and understanding fractions. Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students are consistently challenged with learning fractions from K-12 through college. Sixty DHH college students were tested for both their understanding of magnitude between two fractions and their ability to calculate whole number division. The results showed that both understanding the magnitude between two fractions and whole number division are significantly associated with accurately calculating arithmetic functions of fractions with like denominators and different denominators that required them to add, subtract, multiply, and divide two fractions. Understanding fraction …

Female Students View The Knowledge Of Foreign Languages As More Important For Careers In Tourism Than Male Students?, Nikolina Božinović, Joško Sindik

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The proficiency in multiple foreign languages is a basic assumption for successful communication in tourism. Tourism and mobility have a significant and important role, where intercultural contacts contribute to the development of intercultural dialogue. This paper attempts to explore gender differences in the perceptions of students from the Rochester Institute of Technology, RIT Croatia regarding the importance of knowing various foreign languages in tourism. The results obtained could help in raising the awareness of the importance of the role of learning and teaching foreign languages, with potential effects in developing and promoting tourism in Croatia. The key research finding is …

Prosocial Religion And Games: Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

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In a time when religious legal systems are discussed without an understanding of history or context, it is more important than ever to help widen the understanding and discourse about the prosocial aspects of religious legal systems throughout history. The Lost & Found (www.lostandfoundthegame.com) game series, targeted for an audience of teens through twentysomethings in formal, learning environments, is designed to teach the prosocial aspects of medieval religious systems—specifically collaboration, cooperation, and the balancing of communal and individual/family needs. Set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the 12th century, the first two games in the series address laws in Moses Maimonides’ …

Work Only We Can Do: Professional Responsibility In An Age Of Automation, Sherman J. Clark

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Automation can help us do our work as lawyers; but in the process, it should also force us to be more thoughtful about what our work really is or ought to be.' The challenge for the profession, as I see it, is not simply to survive the advent of new technology, nor even merely to make effective use of new tools. While addressing those immediate concerns, we should also welcome the concomitant opportunity to develop and refine our understanding of what it means to be a good and ethical lawyer. As technological developments free us from and prevent us from …

Examining The Effects Of A Virtual Character On Learning And Engagement In Serious Games, Vihanga Gamage, Cathy Ennis

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Virtual characters have been employed for many purposes including interacting with players of serious games, with a purpose to increase engagement. These characters are often embodied conversational agents playing diverse roles, such as demonstrators, guides, teachers or interviewers. Recently, much research has been conducted into properties that affect the realism and plausibility of virtual characters, but it is less clear whether the inclusion of interactive agents in serious applications can enhance a user’s engagement with the application, or indeed increase efficacy. In a first step towards answering these questions, we conducted a study where a Virtual Learning Environment was used …

Developing A Theoretical Framework For Policy Development, Implementation And Evaluation, Marie Brennan

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Three institutes ITT, ITB and DIT explored the benefits of collaborating and seeking designation as a technological university for Dublin following the publication of the Hunt Report in 2011. A high-level steering group was formed that would guide the alliance partners towards the goal of Technological University for Dublin. Support teams and working groups were set up to draw on the expertise of staff from across the 3 institutes. One workshop was set up to discuss the development of a teaching, learning and assessment strategy for a technological university. Further research carried out into the creation of a teaching, learning …

Visual-Vestibular Integration During Self-Motion Perception In Younger And Older Adults, Robert Ramkhalawansingh, John Butler, Jennifer Campos

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Younger adults integrate visual and vestibular cues to self-motion in a manner consistent with optimal integration; however, little is currently known about whether this process changes with older age. Our objective was to determine whether older adults, like younger adults, display evidence of optimal visual-vestibular integration, including reductions in bimodal variance (visual-vestibular) compared with unimodal variance (visual or vestibular alone), and reliability-based cue weighting. We used a motion simulator and a head-mounted display to introduce a 2-interval forced-choice heading estimation task. Older (65+ years) and younger adults (18–35 years) judged which of two movements was more rightward. Movements consisted of …

Judges Behaving Badly - Clinics Fighting Back: The Struggle For Special Immigrant Juveniles In State Dependency Courts In The Age Of Trump, Bernard P. Perlmutter

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No abstract provided.

The Torture Of Children And Adolescents Living And Dying In Guatemala’S Institutions, Madeleine M. Plasencia

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In this article, Professor Madeleine Plasencia examines the legal context of treatment of disabled children in Guatemala living in institutionalized environments. The article explores evidence that children confined in orphanages and other public care facilities in Guatemala endure conditions that violate the provisions against torture and other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment provided under various international instruments, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The article discusses the growing world-wide desperation from poverty and food scarcity that drives families to place their children with and without disabilities in state-supported institutions. The article argues that foreign funding and …

The Contribution Of Higher Education-Based Technology Start-Up Incubators To The Co-Production Of Knowledge, Innovation And Growth: Experiences From The Edge, Anthony Paul Buckley, Stephen Davis

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Start-up incubators are one of a number of micropolicy interventions used by states to support their technology entrepreneurs. Since 2000, the number of incubators in the United States has almost trebled while that in Europe has more than doubled. This article outlines the challenges involved in attempting to evaluate the contribution of the higher education technology start-up incubator process. It advocates theory-based evaluation (TBE) methodology as a possible solution for effective evaluation (and policy learning) in complex research settings such as this, where a study is unable, for myriad reasons, to meet the stringent requirements of experimental research design. TBE …

Implementation Of A Quit Smoking Programme In Community Adult Mental Health Services–A Qualitative Study, Annette Burns, Margaret Webb, Greg Stynes, Tom O'Brien, Daniela Rohde, Judith Strawbridge, Luke Clancy, Frank Doyle

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Little is known about the experiences of people with severe mental health difficulties in smoking cessation interventions. This study aimed to review the implementation of a smoking cessation programme across 16 community mental health day services. The aim was to establish the experience from both service user and facilitator perspectives and refine implementation for future groups. In-depth interviews were conducted with 20 service users and four focus groups held with 17 facilitators. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data for emergent themes in relation to key enablers and barriers to implementation. Data from service users and facilitators revealed that …

Developing A Unified Approach To Sustainable Consumption Behaviour: Opportunities For A New Environmental Paradigm, Vivienne Byers, Alan Gilmer

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Politicians and national policy makers seek to encourage individuals to engage in a wide range of pro-environmental practices to address both discrete environmental problems and major global challenges such as climate change. Theoretically, the field of behavioural management in environmental consumption which seeks to change holarchic open human systems, is much contested. This paper proposes to develop a synthesized conceptual framework embracing a unified approach that addresses the systematic, structural, and institutional perspectives on how consumption, through public policy initiatives, can be developed and changed to reflect a deeper ecological foundation. This approach considers the debate regarding policy and behavioural …

Smokers And Ex-Smokers Have Shared Differences In The Neural Substrates For Potential Monetary Gains And Losses, Liam Nestor, Ella Mccabe, Jennifer Jones, Luke Clancy, Hugh Garavan

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Despite an increased understanding of nicotine addiction, there is a scarcity of research comparing the neural correlates of non-drug reward between smokers and ex-smokers. Long-term changes in reward-related brain functioning for non-drug incentives may elucidate patterns of functioning that potentially contribute to ongoing smoking behaviour in current smokers. Similarly, examining the effects of previous chronic nicotine exposure during a period of extended abstinence may reveal whether there are neural correlates responsible for non-drug reward processing that are different from current smokers.

Quantitative Fine-Grained Human Evaluation Of Machine Translation Systems: A Case Study On English To Croatian, Filip Klubicka, Antonio Toral, Victor Manuel Sanchez-Cartagena

Articles

This paper presents a quantitative fine-grained manual evaluation approach to comparing the performance of different machine translation (MT) systems. We build upon the well-established Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) error taxonomy and implement a novel method that assesses whether the differences in performance for MQM error types between different MT systems are statistically significant. We conduct a case study for English-to- Croatian, a language direction that involves translating into a morphologically rich language, for which we compare three MT systems belonging to different paradigms: pure phrase-based, factored phrase-based and neural. First, we design an MQM-compliant error taxonomy tailored to the relevant …

Experienced Mental Workload, Perception Of Usability, Their Interaction And Impact On Task Performance, Luca Longo

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No abstract provided.

Pseudorehearsal In Actor-Critic Agents With Neural Network Function Approximation, Vladimir Marochko, Leonard Johard, Manuel Mazzara, Luca Longo

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Catastrophic forgetting has a significant negative impact in reinforcement learning. The purpose of this study is to investigate how pseudorehearsal can change performance of an actor-critic agent with neural-network function approximation. We tested agent in a pole balancing task and compared different pseudorehearsal approaches. We have found that pseudorehearsal can assist learning and decrease forgetting.

Towards Dynamic Interaction-Based Reputation Models, Almas Melnikov, Manuel Mazzara, Victor Rivera, Jooyoung Lee, Luca Longo

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In this paper, we investigate how dynamic properties of reputation can influence the quality of users’ ranking. Reputation systems should be based on rules that can guarantee high level of trust and help identify unreliable units. To understand the effectiveness of dynamic properties in the evaluation of reputation, we propose our own model (DIB-RM) that utilizes three factors: forgetting, cumulative, and activity period. In order to evaluate the model, we use data from StackOverflow which also has its own reputation model. We estimate similarity of ratings between DIB-RM and the StackOverflow reputation model to test our hypothesis. We use two …

Solitary Troubles, Alexander A. Reinert

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Solitary confinement is one of the most severe forms of punishment that can be inflicted on human beings. In recent years, the use of extreme isolation in our prisons and jails has been questioned by correctional officials, medical experts, and reform advocates alike. Yet for nearly the entirety of American history, judicial regulation of the practice has been extremely limited. This Article explains why judges hesitate to question the use of solitary confinement, while also providing a path forward for greater scrutiny of the practice.

The “New” District Court Activism In Criminal Justice Reform, Jessica A. Roth

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Historically, the debate over the judicial role has centered on the constitutional and administrative law decisions of the United States Supreme Court, with an occasional glance at the Federal Courts of Appeals. It has, moreover, been concerned solely with the “in-court” behavior of Article III appellate judges as they carry out their power and duty “to say what the law is” in the context of resolving “cases and controversies.” This Article seeks to deepen the discussion of the appropriate role of Article III judges by broadening it to trial, as well as appellate, judges; and by distinguishing between an Article …

It’S Not All About Price: Factors Associated With Roll-Your-Own Tobacco Use Among Young People - A Qualitative Study, Elizabeth Breslin, Joan Hanafin, Luke Clancy

Articles

Background: Smoking prevalence in Ireland is falling in all age groups, but the prevalence of roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco use is rising among young people. This qualitative study aims to explore and understand the factors associated with young people's use of RYO products. Methods: Semi-structured individual and focus group interviews were conducted with young people aged 16-22 years. Participants were recruited from a higher education institution and youth organisations working with early school leavers across Dublin. In total, there were 62 participants in the study, consisting of 22 individual interviews and eight focus group interviews with 40 participants. Categoric and thematic …

A U.S.-Mexican Law School For Deportees: A Response To Amy Kimpel, Richard Delgado

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No abstract provided.

Rodrigo And Ressentiment: I Don't Want It If You Are Going To Get It, Too - Why Classical Economic And Political Theory Fails To Explain The Obamacare Vote, But Legal Realism And Cls Can, Richard Delgado

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No abstract provided.

Retheorizing Actions For Targeted Hate Speech: A Comment On Professor Brown Comments, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic

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No abstract provided.

Adminization: Gatekeeping Consumer Contracts, Yonathan A. Arbel

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Large companies and debt collectors frequently file unmeritorious claims against consumers Recent highprofile actions brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau "CFPB" against JP Morgan Citibank and large debt collectors illustrate the breadth and importance of this phenomenon Due to the limited financial power of individuals consumers often do not defend against such baseless claims which results in the entry of millions of default judgments every year To combat this problem policymakers and scholars have explored a variety of courtbased solutions that would make it easier for consumers to defend in court but these prove ineffectualTo solve the problem of …

Violent Videos: Criminal Defense In A Digital Age, Amy F. Kimpel

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No abstract provided.

Dans La Serre: Framing The Greenhouse In Le Jour Se Lève (1939) And La Règle Du Jeu (1939), Barry Nevin

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Beyond the year of their production, their notoriously foreboding references to contemporary national and international politics, and their shared status as canonised classics of French cinema, Marcel Carné’s Le Jour se lève (1939) and Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939) both portray the romantic union of two parties within a greenhouse. This article aims to elaborate on these images in two central ways: first, it theorises glass in cinema with reference to the writings of André Bazin and Gilles Deleuze; second, it situates Carné and Renoir’s greenhouses within their respective dramatic, aesthetic and political contexts. In both cases, the …

The Culture Of Misdemeanor Courts, Jessica A. Roth

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The misdemeanor courts that preside over the majority of criminal cases in the United States represent the “front porch” of our criminal justice system. These courts vary in myriad ways, including size, structure, and method of judicial appointment. Each also has its own culture – i.e., a settled way of doing things that reflects deeper assumptions about the court’s mission and its role in the community – which can assist or impede desired policy reforms. This Article, written for a Symposium issue of the Hofstra Law Review, draws upon the insights of organizational culture theory to explore how leaders can …

Socioeconomic Status Discrimination, Danieli Evans

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This Article makes the case for protecting socioeconomic status (SES) under discrimination statutes that govern employment, housing, education, voting, public accommodations, and credit/lending. While others have argued that poverty should be a protected class under the Fourteenth Amendment, the courts have rejected this idea. The possibility of protecting SES under discrimination statutes has received little consideration. I argue that this idea deserves more serious attention. I advance four arguments in favor of adding SES to the list of protected traits. Two moral, one political, and one legal.

First and most straightforward, the values animating discrimination law apply to poverty: Existing …

A Study Of Hormonal Effects In Cervical Smear Samples Using Raman Spectroscopy, D. Traynor, P. Kearney, I. Ramos, C. M. Martin, J. J. O'Leary, Fiona Lyng

Articles

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful tool that has the potential to be used as a screening method for cervical cancer. It is a label-free, low-cost method providing a biochemical fingerprint of a given sample. The objective of this study was to address patient-to-patient variability contributed by hormonal effects due to the menstrual cycle, the use of hormone-based contraceptives (HC) and the onset of menopause, and to determine if these changes would affect the ability to successfully identify dyskaryotic cells. Raman spectra were recorded from unstained ThinPrep cervical samples (45 cytology negative and 15 high-grade dyskaryosis (high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion, HSIL) …

Human Activity Detection Patterns: A Pilot Study For Unobtrusive Discovery Of Daily Working Routine, Hicham Rifai, Paula Kelly, Yoshiki Shoji, Damon Berry, Matteo Zallio

Articles

Information technology is increasingly becoming an integral part of contemporary life. Most tasks that are performed over the course of a day, involve the use of different types of connected devices. About two billion contemporary consumers use smartphones [1]. These smartphones contain a variety of sensors that can collect information about their users such as their mobility patterns, daily activities and occupancy patterns [2]. Occupancy is an important aspect in developing responsive environments and for optimizing building performance. This work investigates the extent to which smartphones can be used to collect occupancy data in a work …