Digital Commons Network^™

Domestic Violence In Culturally And Linguistically Diverse (Cald) Communities: Perceptions, Therapeutic Approaches And Responses Of Frontline Workers In New South Wales (Nsw), Oluwatoyin A. Dedeigbo

Theses

Domestic violence is a universal public health concern (VicHealth, 2011; World Health Organisation [WHO], 2013). Domestic violence cuts across all countries, regardless of economic, social, cultural or religious differences (Ali et al., 2020; VicHealth, 2011; WHO 2013). Men are often responsible for perpetrating domestic violence against women (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2019; Australia Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW], 2018).

The effects of domestic violence on victims can be serious and long-term; affecting their physical and mental wellbeing, and lingering even after the exposure to violence has ended (Mitchell, 2011). That is, the effect on victims’ mental health is …

Historical – Grammatical Analysis Of Worship In Spirit And Truth, Steven Sunthang

Theses

Since the creation of humankind, God interacts and communicates with them, blessing them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and have dominion over the creation (Gen. 1:28). God provides clear instructions how to approach him and their surroundings. The method of approaching God is later called “worship.” Over a period of time, humans learned “worship” by themselves, without necessarily following the proper guidelines from God. As a consequence, certain form of worship displeased God. Later, God who became flesh in Jesus (John 1:14) set the rule for worship, that is, “in spirit and truth,” a phrase that is subject …

Study Of The Health Needs Of Older Women Experiencing Homelessness In The Perth Metropolitan Area, Gloria Sutherland

Theses

Women aged over 50 years represent the most rapidly growing cohort of the Australian homeless population. Despite an increasing awareness of older Australian women being at risk of homelessness, little is known of how their health contributes to, and changes due to their homelessness. Drawing on the principles of the World Health Organisation’s social determinants of health, this study sought to investigate the personal life circumstances of older homeless women who live in the Perth metropolitan area, their healthcare needs and to identify any barriers to their accessing healthcare.

The study used a convergent mixed methods approach using quantitative and …

The Confluence Of Short-Term Immersion And Intercultural Competence: Positive Impacts For Australian Preservice Teachers, Julie Maakrun

Theses

Increasing global migration across geographical, linguistic and cultural borders has resulted in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms in Australia. In response, teacher education programs are exploring ways to enhance preservice teachers’ ability to engage with cultural diversity appropriately and effectively. One way is through the provision of short-term immersion programs. As experiential learning, such programs allow opportunities for students to be embedded in the breadth and depth of human experience, to better understand themselves and the ‘cultural other’. These programs also enable an examination of personal beliefs, habits, and values, which may assist students in moving from a rigid dualist …

Exploring The Validity Of Script Concordance Testing To Assess The Clinical Reasoning Of Medical Students, Micahel Sh Wan

Theses

Assessment of clinical reasoning is often challenging, as it is a complex process of thinking and decision making. Script Concordance Testing (SCT), using authentic clinical scenarios with diagnostic or management uncertainties, has been developed to assess clinical reasoning. As SCT is a relatively new assessment modality, more empirical evidence is needed to support the validity of SCT scores.

This thesis examines key aspects of the validity of SCT scores in the assessment of the clinical reasoning ability of medical undergraduates. A review of the current literature informs the use, design and standard setting of SCT, as well as evidence for …

Comparison Of Allergen Legislation Between India And Ireland, Naresh Machha

Theses

2 Abstract Food allergen is one of the major issues in countries like Ireland and India. In Ireland, allergen and ingredients labelling are considered as the topmost problems in the Irish food business. The problems can be solved under a strict framework guided by strong regulations. The problem is bigger in India than Ireland as in India, there is no proper legalized standard in the context of food allergens so the people who are allergic to certain food products are on high risk. Labelling is a major issue in India due to pluralism and diverse linguistic barriers. Ireland operated FSAI …

Reclaiming The R-Word : Romanization As A Framework For Culture Change In The Roman Provinces, Mary Lauryn Davis

Theses

The concept of Romanization, or Rome’s process of making its newly conquered provinces more like Rome, has fallen out of favor in recent decades and has been replaced by a succession of postcolonial frameworks that progressively decenter Rome from the transformation process. I argue, against this new orthodoxy, that Rome was actively responsible for imposing profound social changes on its provincial populations that resulted in a shift toward Roman culture in the interest of Roman imperialism. This affected every segment of every conquered population, though the details of individual experiences varied widely, as can be seen in analysis along geographical, …

Narratives Of Creativity Among Social Care Educators In Irish Higher Education, Louisa Goss

Theses

Research on creativity in the delivery of social care highlights growing evidence of its importance for the wellbeing and quality of life of those in receipt of care, as well as benefits for the workforce. However, what is less well understood and overlooked in the literature is how creativity is conceptualised and operationalised in practice and education. This thesis attends to this gap in research from the perspective of social care educators. With the aim of deepening understanding of higher education teachers’ construction of creativity, the study explores small stories about creativity from six educators teaching into an undergraduate degree …

Funsigns - An Interactive Educational Tool To Learn Sign Language, Shiqi Fang

Theses

This thesis aims to provide an educational and interactive tool where deaf children and their hearing parents can learn, bond, enjoy and interact with each other.

More than 90% of children which severe to profound hearing losses are born to normally hearing families. When parents are told that their child is deaf, their dreams are crushed and a grief response may be triggered (Weaver, K. A., & Starner, T, 2011). Due to this lack of knowledge when faced with a deaf family member for the first time, parents tend to base their perceptions on obsolete stereotypes which can greatly affect …

Towards An Intelligent System For Software Traceability Datasets Generation, Waleed Abdu Zogaan

Theses

Software datasets and artifacts play a crucial role in advancing automated software traceability research. They can be used by researchers in different ways to develop or validate new automated approaches. Software artifacts, other than source code and issue tracking entities, can also provide a great deal of insight into a software system and facilitate knowledge sharing and information reuse. The diversity and quality of the datasets and artifacts within a research community have a significant impact on the accuracy, generalizability, and reproducibility of the results and consequently on the usefulness and practicality of the techniques under study. Collecting and assessing …

Analyzing Sentiments To Improve Transportation Services Using Nlp, Abdulnasser Ahli

Theses

In the 21st century, social media apps like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Waze, Instagram, etc. are used by people to post their activities, sentiments, and feedback. Likewise, people are posting their experiences either positive or negative feedback or recommendation to improve the existing services of public transportation such as Buses, Tram, Metro, Taxis, Marines. Moreover, people are also posting about traffic conditions and accidents on the social media. However, at present most of the authorities depend on surveys and customer complaints to improve to knew people sentiments. This has very limited information because they cannot reach to all customers. Therefore, in …

Deepfake Detection And Low-Resource Language Speech Recognition Using Deep Learning, Bao Thai

Theses

While deep learning algorithms have made significant progress in automatic speech recognition and natural language processing, they require a significant amount of labelled training data to perform effectively. As such, these applications have not been extended to languages that have only limited amount of data available, such as extinct or endangered languages. Another problem caused by the rise of deep learning is that individuals with malicious intents have been able to leverage these algorithms to create fake contents that can pose serious harm to security and public safety. In this work, we explore the solutions to both of these problems. …

The Impact Of Dynamic Written Corrective Feedback On Arab Efl Intermediate Students’ Writing Accuracy, Esraa Abdulrahman Alyousef

Theses

This thesis is concerned with finding the impact of applying dynamic written corrective feedback (DWCF) on Arab intermediate EFL learners’ writing accuracy. The current study focuses on the writing components of content, organization, grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics. The main objective of this thesis is to examine how DWCF can affect intermediate EFL learners’ writing accuracy. The research included 38 grade eight learners as participants of the study. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The quantitative data was collected via the use of pre-post test research instruments while the survey research instrument gathered the qualitative data. The study found …

Word Importance Modeling To Enhance Captions Generated By Automatic Speech Recognition For Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Users, Sushant Kafle

Theses

People who are deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) benefit from sign-language interpreting or live-captioning (with a human transcriptionist), to access spoken information. However, such services are not legally required, affordable, nor available in many settings, e.g., impromptu small-group meetings in the workplace or online video content that has not been professionally captioned. As Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems improve in accuracy and speed, it is natural to investigate the use of these systems to assist DHH users in a variety of tasks. But, ASR systems are still not perfect, especially in realistic conversational settings, leading to the issue of trust and …

Improving Automatic Speech Recognition On Endangered Languages, Kruthika Prasanna Simha

Theses

As the world moves towards a more globalized scenario, it has brought along with it the extinction of several languages. It has been estimated that over the next century, over half of the world's languages will be extinct, and an alarming 43% of the world's languages are at different levels of endangerment or extinction already. The survival of many of these languages depends on the pressure imposed on the dwindling speakers of these languages. Often there is a strong correlation between endangered languages and the number and quality of recordings and documentations of each. But why do we care about …

Representing Mathematical Concepts Associated With Formulas Using Math Entity Cards, Abishai Dmello

Theses

We introduce Math Entity Cards, a modified version of existing Entity Cards specifically tailored for Math Information Retrieval. Math Entity Cards help connect formulas to titles and description and make the navigation between formulas and text related to formulas, seamless. These cards are populated from a new knowledge base, created by extracting and combining formulas, titles and descriptions from three different sources, Wikidata, Wiktionary & ProofWiki. We demonstrate a novel approach of using entity cards for auto-complete by integrating our cards into a Math-Aware Search Interface: MathSeer. This helps create a new ecosystem for consuming information during formula editing and …

App Review Analysis Via Active Learning: Reducing Supervision Effort Without Compromising Classification Accuracy, Venkatesh Thimma Dhinakaran

Theses

Automated app review analysis is an important avenue for extracting a variety of requirements-related information. Typically, a first step toward performing such analysis is preparing a training dataset, where developers(experts) identify a set of reviews and, manually, annotate them according to a given task. Having sufficiently large training data is important for both achieving a high prediction accuracy and avoiding over-fitting. Given millions of reviews, preparing a training set is laborious.We propose to incorporate active learning, a machine learning paradigm,in order to reduce the human effort involved in app review analysis. Our app review classification framework exploits three active learning …

Aesthetics Of Food: The Role Of Visual Framing Strategies For Influence Building On Instagram, Shuhan Yang

Theses

This thesis employs quantitative content analysis to investigate how social media influencers use aesthetic image design to engage followers. The study investigates the ten most-followed food influencers on Instagram in the United States. The study looks at the effectiveness of visual framing strategies, focusing on the images (N = 120) of influencers which have received more than 10,000 likes in 2017. Results show that food influencers prefer to post images about cooked food, without any decorations, using high contrast colors and close-up shots. Raw food images were found to be associated with cluttered composition and far away shoots, whereas cooked …

A(Meme)Rican Politics: Gender Representation In Political Memes Of The 2016 Election, Taylor C. Lincoln

Theses

Utilizing the lens of feminist theory, this research examines gender representation in the political memes of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States. Using a mixed-methods approach, I first examine the use of the #election2016 on Twitter (N = 2,108) through a network analysis to understand the driving actors of discourse surrounding the election. A textual analysis was used to examine the views and opinions through the vocabulary and terms utilized within that network. Finally, a content analysis was conducted to interpret the latent messages and representations of gender within the memes (n = 100). Results show that political …

Impact Of Education Policies On Stem Education For Deaf/Hard Of Hearing Students, Valerie Horn

Theses

The thesis is focused on STEM education and education policy for students who are deaf/hard of hearing. The research broadly examines the impacts of legislation such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) on science education for deaf/hard of hearing students. Additionally, the thesis argues that the benefits of greater accessibility in STEM for deaf/hard of hearing students would be beneficial.

The findings considered STEM education in the deaf/hard of hearing community and how their perspectives and practices may improve science education. Deaf students’ personal experiences and available services in schools may spark …

Scanning Single Shot Detector For Math In Document Images, Parag Shrikrishna Mali

Theses

We introduce the Scanning Single Shot Detector (ScanSSD) for detecting both embedded and displayed math expressions in document images using a single-stage network that does not require page layout, font, or, character information. ScanSSD uses sliding windows to generate sub-images of large document page images rendered at 600 dpi and applies Single Shot Detector (SSD) on each sub-image. Detection results from sub-images are pooled to generate page-level results. For pooling sub-image level detections, we introduce new methods based on the confidence scores and density of detections. ScanSSD is a modular architecture that can be easily applied to detecting other objects …

Predicting The Emotional Intensity Of Tweets, Intisar M. Alhamdan

Theses

Automated interpretation of human emotion has become increasingly important as human-computer interactions become ubiquitous. Affective computing is a field of computer science concerned with recognizing, analyzing and interpreting human emotions in a range of media, including audio, video, and text. Social media, in particular, are rich in expressions of people's moods, opinions, and sentiments. This thesis focuses on predicting the emotional intensity expressed on the social network Twitter. In this study, we use lexical features, sentiment and emotion lexicons to extract features from tweets, messages of 280 characters or less shared on Twitter. We also use a form of transfer …

A Comparative Study Of Russian Trolls Using Several Machine Learning Models On Twitter Data, Kannan Neten Dharan Kannan Neten Dharan

Theses

Ever since Russian trolls have been brought into light, their interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections has been monitored and studied thoroughly. These Russian trolls have fake accounts registered on several major social media sites to influence public opinions. Our work involves trying to discover patterns in these tweets and classifying them by using different machine learning approaches such as Support Vector Machines, Word2vec and neural network models, and then creating a benchmark to compare all the different models. Two machine learning models are developed for this purpose. The first one is used to classify any given specific tweet …

Politics And Media Among Deaf And Hard Of Hearing, Charlotte Deering

Theses

This study investigated the civic engagement, political participation, and choice of news media of the deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) community at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in Rochester, New York. Socialization factors that contribute to civic engagement and political participation were examined and contrasted with a hearing sample of students at Rochester Institute of Technology. The Activity Orientation Scale combined with the Political Media Gratification Scale were used to measure the likelihood of political engagement among the DHH and understand their media viewing habits. Socialization factors affect where DHH individuals get their news, what media …

The Legal Experiences Of The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Community, Dillon Curren

Theses

The criminal justice system serves in many different ways for people. Sometimes, groups of people are underserved by the criminal justice system and cannot achieve the goals being set up by the criminal justice system to be a watchful guardian who is swift, certain, and fair. The following project will look at the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Community (D/HH) and their experiences with the criminal justice system in a series of working papers including a literature review of studies, papers, and documentation of experiences within the system. There are several obstacles between the two communities that causes tension and unfairness for …

Analyzing The Effects Of Individual And Team Attributes On New Product Design Outcomes - Experimental Protocol Development And Feasibility Assessment, Varun Sharma

Theses

Rapidly changing markets demand quick turnaround from creative concepts into final products. This requires firms to have extensive collaboration in their New Product Development (NPD) teams. However effective management of teams can be difficult. In order to understand the challenges of multidisciplinary product development, this study focuses on student design teams conducting engineering design projects at RIT. This study utilizes a modified team effectiveness model based on existing literature for identifying hypothesized associations using a limited number of teams enrolled in senior design. It proposes an experimental protocol for conducting this study at a larger scale and identifies the appropriate …

Writing Workshops’ Impact On Third-Grade Students’ Writing Achievements And English Teachers’ Perceptions About Using Writing Workshops To Teach Writing In An Elementary Public School, Safeya Othman Abdulla Bin Mahri Alkatheeri

Theses

The present study examines the impact of writing workshops on third-grade students’ writing achievements and English teachers’ perceptions about the use of writing workshops to teach writing in an elementary public school in Al Ain, UAE. This study also addresses the challenges that English teachers encounter when implementing writing workshops in writing classes. A mixed-method design was employed to answer the three main research questions of the study. Initially, the quantitative data were collected through the pre-post writing test which was administered to third-grade students (N=83). Subsequently, the qualitative data in the form of the semi-structured interviews were collected from …

Understanding Prediction Of Low-Quality Comments In Online Science Discourse, Elizabeth R. Lucas

Theses

Online public forum discussion in the Reddit science community is moderated to ensure a high standard of scientific content in discourse. This thesis project creates predictive models to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable forum comments, and it seeks to interpret those models based on input from moderators. Information was collected from moderators (their demographics, moderation habits, moderation decisions and reasons for removing comments) to curate a deeper understanding of the online moderation community and predictive models for automated moderation support.

Deep Learning Methods For 3d Aerial And Satellite Data, Mohammed A. Yousefhussien

Theses

Recent advances in digital electronics have led to an overabundance of observations from electro-optical (EO) imaging sensors spanning high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution. This unprecedented volume, variety, and velocity is overwhelming our capacity to manage and translate that data into actionable information. Although decades of image processing research have taken the human out of the loop for many important tasks, the human analyst is still an irreplaceable link in the image exploitation chain, especially for more complex tasks requiring contextual understanding, memory, discernment, and learning. If knowledge discovery is to keep pace with the growing availability of data, new …

Enhanced Mppt Controllers For Smart Grid Applications, Mohamed Khallaf

Theses

Over the past years, the energy demand has been steadily growing and so methods of how to cope with this staggering increase are being researched and utilized. One method of injecting more energy to the grid is renewable energy, which has become in recent years an integral part of any country’s power generation plan. Thus, it is a necessity to enhance renewable energy resources and maximize their grid utilization, so that these resources can step up and reduce the over dependency of global energy production on depleting energy resources.

This thesis focuses on solar power and effective means to enhance …