Digital Commons Network^™

The Believability Of Hearsay Testimony Involving Child Witnesses: Effects Of Age And Format, Beverly J. Smith

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Open court testimony poses difficulty for child witnesses required to face the defendant. Certain laws allow hearsay testimony to replace the alleged child victim's testimony. This study examines the relationship of the child's age to the relative believability of three hearsay testimony fonnats in a 2 (child witnesses: one 4-year-old and one 8-year-old) x 3 (hearsay conditions: interview of child, interviewer testimony in "gist" or summary form, or interviewer testimony in detailed, "verbatim" fonn) design. Transcripts were based on actual child sexual abuse interviews ( one 4 and one 8-year-old female) obtained for prior research with permission from Child Protective …

A Hierarchy Of Maps Between Compacta, Paul Bankston

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Let CH be the class of compacta (i.e., compact Hausdorff spaces), with BS the subclass of Boolean spaces. For each ordinal α and pair $\langle K,L\rangle$ of subclasses of CH, we define Lev_≥α K,L), the class of maps of level at least α from spaces in K to spaces in L, in such a way that, for finite α, Lev_≥α (BS,BS) consists of the Stone duals of Boolean lattice embeddings that preserve all prenex first-order formulas of quantifier rank α. Maps of level ≥ 0 are just the continuous surjections, and the maps of level ≥ 1 are …

Applications And Algorithms For Least Trimmed Sum Of Absolute Deviations Regression, Douglas M. Hawkins, David Olive

Articles and Preprints

High breakdown estimation (HBE) addresses the problem of getting reliable parameter estimates in the face of outliers that may be numerous and badly placed. In multiple regression, the standard HBE's have been those defined by the least median of squares (LMS) and the least trimmed squares (LTS) criteria. Both criteria lead to a partitioning of the data set's n cases into two “halves” – the covered “half” of cases are accommodated by the fit, while the uncovered “half”, which is intended to include any outliers, are ignored. In LMS, the criterion is the Chebyshev norm of the residuals of the …

Letter To A Young Law Student, Corinne Cooper

Tulsa Law Review

No abstract provided.

Estimating The Probability Of Severe Convective Storms: A Local Perspective For The Central And Northern Plains, Preston W. Leftwich Jr.

National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration: Technical Reports and Related Materials

Summary and Conclusions

A procedure to estimate probabilities of the occurrence of severe convective storms within local areas has been described. Probabilities were based on a simulated climatology and the relative frequency of severe convective events when a selected site was contained within an operational Outlook or Watch. Combined data from five local areas were used to develop a general model for local probabilities within the central and northern Plains region. Attachment of probabilities to specific products placed values within a framework familiar to both forecasters and "end-users." Application of results in an operational scenario demonstrated representative local probabilities and …

Water Current, Volume 31, No. 6, December 1999

Water Current Newsletter

Conference to Develop a Management Agenda for Nebraska's Water Future
From the Director: We Have a Long Way, But We Need to Go Further; Water Center Recognized as "Groundwater Guardian" Partner
NU Research Faculty Voice Desires for Strong Water Center Leadership
Citizen Stewards of the Pines and Plains
Fourth Water Tabloid Now Available from NU
Water News Briefs
Sixth Annual Undergrad Research Conference
Publications
National Geographic Society Awarding Science Grants
Call for Papers: Spatial Symposium in Reno, Nevada
Call for Papers: 11th Platte River Basin Symposium
Cooperation and Tension: The History, Reality and Future of Nebraska's Interstate Agreements

Introduction: Defining And Understanding Sustainability In Small Island States, Charles J. Stevens

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

The Sustainable, The Expendable, And The Obsolete, Michael D. Lieber

Pacific Studies

This is a preliminary exploration of the concept of sustainability and its potential usefulness to anthropologists. “Sustainable” is distinguished from “stable” and “viable” in terms of its implications of directionality of time, pointing both backward and forward. Given the time implications, the contexts of “sustainable Xs” (technology, activity, development, etc.) are crucial to explaining what happened to X in the past and prognosticating its future. The argument is illustrated by analyzing data on obsolete fishing practices on Kapingamarangi Atoll (Federated States of Micronesia), focusing on the contexts of change in political /religious organization in the twentieth century. Changing access to …

Development, Sustainability, And The Deforestation Of Samoa, Paul Shankman

Pacific Studies

The forests of Samoa (formerly Western Samoa) are rapidly disappearing. This article reviews the history of Samoan deforestation, particularly during the last four decades, in the context of ideas about development and sustainability. It also examines the role of village agriculturalists in the process of deforestation. Recent economic, technological, and organizational changes have increased village agricultural expansion and, consequently, deforestation.

Java Challenge Software Project, Karuna Annavajjala

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Programming contests are a means of exploiting the problem solving capabilities of developers and they provide a forum for display of extraordinary programming skills. The Java Challenge (JC) Software Project is the saga of creating an automated, secure and responsive programming contest system for deployment on the Internet and to collect information about programming practices, habits, and trends in coding in such restricted environment. The methodology followed to design, implement, and evaluate such a system uses new technologies such as the WWW, mail filtering and sandboxing techniques. The current Java Challenge implementation runs the Java Challenge on a Solaris 2.6 …

Efficient And Flexible Algorithm For Plant Layout Generation, Li Weng

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

A facilities layout, also called plant layout, consists of the production areas, production related or support areas and personnel areas within the building. Plant layout design is one of the strategic fields that determine the long run efficiency of operation.;This dissertation proposes an efficient and flexible plant layout algorithm to minimize the material handling cost and deal with change in future. A material flow forecasting tool, a scheduling module related to layout design and an evaluation method of flexible layouts are also proposed by this dissertation. A computer-based system will be developed to integrate all of the functions.;The first chapter …

Regressive Model Approach To The Generation Of Test Trajectories, Brian James Taylor

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

One possible method of reliability assurance is the application of large testing sets upon a system via statistical reliability assessment. Under this method, a software system's operations are tested according to their actual usage. A problem with this approach is the large number of tests required to properly assess reliability. Complicating the process are situations where an input into the system is a trajectory of data, where a trajectory is defined as a series of data points with each point relying upon the previous points. Examples of trajectories of data include an airplane's flight path or data describing a nuclear …

Verification And Validation In Software Product Line Engineering, Edward Alton Addy

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Verification and Validation (V&V) is currently performed during application development for many systems, especially safety-critical and mission-critical systems. However, the V&V process has been limited to single system development. This dissertation describes the extension of V&V from an individual application system to a product line of systems that are developed within an architecture-based software engineering environment.;In traditional V&V, the system provides the context under which the software will be evaluated, and V&V activities occur during all phases of the system development lifecycle. The transition to a product line approach to development removes the individual system as the context for evaluation, …

Physiological And Genetic Mechanism(S) Of Cold Acclimation In Rhododendron, Chon Chong Lim

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

An in vitro laboratory protocol for assessing cold hardiness (CH) in rhododendrons based on electrolyte-leakage was developed. The raw leakage data were transformed into percent-adjusted injury, which showed high correlation with injury data based on visual observations. The percent-adjusted injury data---fitted to the Gompertz function coupled with the Jackknife method---allowed for reliable and statistically sound estimations of Rhododendron leaf freezing-tolerance (LFT). Utilizing this method, Tmax values for Rhododendron cultivars, species, and populations were determined and ranked relatively. Our observation of a continuous distribution of LFT in F2 and backcross (BC) populations derived from a R. catawbiense x R. fortunei cross …

Optimal Power Flow Using A Genetic Algorithm And Linear Algebra, Reid S. Maust

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Artificial intelligence is used to help a hypothetical electric utility meet is electric load economically. The optimal power flow problem (OPF) problem is an optimization problem, in which the utility strives to minimize its costs while satisfying all of its constraints. A genetic algorithm (GA)---a specific type of artificial intelligence-is employed to perform this optimization. To speed convergence, some theory from linear algebra is incorporated into the algorithm.;A GA provides several advantages over more traditional OPF algorithms. For instance, a GA does not constrain the shape of the generators' cost curves and is flexible enough to incorporate control devices such …

Reconnaissance Survey Of Lewis And Clark On The Missouri National Recreational River, Nebraska And South Dakota, Anne P. Diffendal, Gary E. Moulton, Michael Shambaugh-Miller, Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Part I
Lewis and Clark on the Middle Missouri by Gary E. Moulton
Appendix: Principal Sites and Events
Select Bibliography

Part II
Locating Lewis and Clark Sites
Site #1 Floyd's Bluff
Site #2 Gass's Election
Site #3 Ionia Volcano
Site #4 1804 Mouth of the Vermillion River
Site #5 Spirit Mound
Site #6 Shannon's Absence
Site #7 Calumet Bluff
Site #8 "Ancient Fortifications"
Site #9 Mouth of the Niobrara River
Site # 10 Old Baldy

The Effect Of Divalent Cations On The Prophenoloxidase Enzyme Cascade Activity In The Freshwater Crayfish Cambarus Latimanus, Hans Skailand Eikaas

Theses and Dissertations

The effect of divalent cations such as cadmium, calcium, copper, lead and magnesium upon the prophenoloxidase system (proPO) was studied in hemocytes of the crayfish Cambarus latimanus. It was demonstrated that cadmium, calcium, copper and lead increased proPO activity significantly, whereas magnesium had no statistically significant effect on the system. Also, the molecular weight of the proPO enzyme was estimated using SDS-PAGE and found to be approximately 76 kDa.

Thermal Degradation Of Blends Of Polystyrene And Poly(Sodium 4-Styrenesulfonate) And The Copolymer, Poly(Styrene-Co-Sodium 4-Styrenesulfonate), Qiang Yao, Charles Wilkie

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

The thermal degradation of blends and copolymers of styrene with styrenesulfonic acid has been studied using thermogravimetric analysis, TGA/FTIR, and cone calorimetry. The blends have enhanced thermal stability relative to virgin polystyrene but there is no enhancement in thermal stability for the copolymers. Apparently, it is necessary to have adjacent sulfonic acid groups in order to permit the formation of a graphite-like char which can provide thermal protection to the polymer. It is necessary to have a good match in degradation temperatures of the two components if one is to have significantly enhanced thermal stability.

Tga/Ftir: An Extremely Useful Technique For Studying Polymer Degradation, Charles A. Wilkie

Chemistry Faculty Research and Publications

Thermogravimetric analysis coupled to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, TGA/FTIR, has been used to probe the degradation of several polymeric systems. These include poly(methyl methacrylate) in the presence of various additives, graft copolymers of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and styrene-butadiene with sodium methacrylate and styrene with acrylonitrile, blends of styrene-butadiene block copolymers with poly(vinylphosphonic acid) and poly(vinylsulfonic acid), and cross-linked polystyrenes. Additives may interact with poly(methyl methacrylate) by coordination to the carbonyl oxygen to a Lewis acid and the subsequent transfer of an electron from the polymer chain to the metal atom or by the formation of a radical which can trap the degrading …

On-Line Bayesian Tree-Structured Transformation Of Hidden Markov Models For Speaker Adaptation, Shaojun Wang, Yunxin Zhao

Kno.e.sis Publications

This paper presents a new recursive Bayesian learning approach for transformation parameter estimation in speaker adaptation. Our goal is to incrementally transform (or adapt) the entire set of HMM parameters for a new speaker or new acoustic enviroment from a small amount of adaptation data. By establishing a clustering tree of HMM Gaussian mixture components, the finest affine transformation parameters for individual HMM Gaussian mixture components can be dynamically searched. The on-line Bayesian learning technique proposed in our recent work is used for recursive maximum a posteriori estimation of affine transformation parameters. Speaker adaptation experiments using a 26-letter English alphabet …

An Accurate Method Of Neglecting Dynamic Saliency Of Synchronous Machines In Power Electronic Based Systems, Steven Pekarek, E. A. Walters

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, motivations for neglecting dynamic saliency in the detailed models of power electronic based systems are presented, A new method of neglecting dynamic saliency is then introduced in which approximate operational impedances are derived from original dynamic salient models. New machine parameters are obtained by fitting to the approximate impedance curves, yielding model parameters in which dynamic saliency is eliminated. An example synchronous machine/converter system is provided that demonstrates the accuracy and increased simulation efficiency resulting from this technique. Therein, errors resulting from neglecting dynamic saliency are reduced from greater than 25% using traditional approximations to less than …

A Simplified Model Of Wound Healing - Ii: The Critical Size Defect In Two Dimensions, J. S. Arnold, John A. Adam

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

Recently, a one-dimensional model was developed which gives a reasonable explanation for the existence of a Critical Size Defect (CSD) in certain animals [1]. In this paper, we examine the more realistic two-dimensional model of a circular wound of uniform depth to see what modifications are to be found, as compared with the one-dimensional model, in studying the CSD phenomenon. It transpires that the range of CSD sizes for a reasonable estimate of parameter values is 1 mm-1 cm. More realistic estimates await the appropriate experimental data.

Local And Landscape Factors Affecting Nest Site Selection And Nest Success Of Burrowing Owls In Western Nebraska, Rebecca T. Ekstein

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

No abstract provided.

Stellar Angular Diameters Of Late-Type Giants And Supergiants Measured With The Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer, Tyler E. Nordgren, M. E. Germain, J. A. Benson, D. Mozurkewich, Jeffrey J. Sudol, N. M. Elias Ii, Arsen R. Hajian, N. M. White, D. J. Hutter, K. J. Johnston, F. S. Gauss, J. T. Armstrong, T. A. Pauls, L. J. Rickard

Physics & Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Molecular-Dynamics Study Of Phase Transitions In Alkali Azides, M. M. Ossowski, John R. Hardy, Robert W. Smith

Physics Faculty Publications

An account is presented of our studies of the order-disorder phase transitions in KN₃, RbN₃, and CsN₃. These are based on parameter-free interionic potentials based on the Gordon-Kim modified electron-gas formalism extended to molecular ions. We performed static structural relaxations and supercell molecular dynamics and predicted with reasonable accuracy the temperatures for the onset of the transitions. In particular, we address the question of how the N₃^- ions reorient to yield the transitions. We found the existence of NaCl-type high-temperature phases in disordered KN₃ and RbN₃ and argue that this …

Internally Constrained Mixtures Of Elastic Continua, Stephen M. Klisch

Mechanical Engineering

A treatment of internally constrained mixtures of elastic continua at a common temperature is developed. Internal constraints involving the deformation gradient tensors and the common mixture temperature are represented by a constraint manifold, and an internally constrained mixture of elastic continua is associated with each unique equivalence class of unconstrained mixtures. The example of intrinsic incompressibility of each constituent first proposed by Mills is discussed.

Math Department Newsletter, 1999, University Of Dayton. Department Of Mathematics

Department of Mathematics Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Nsu Fischler Graduate School Of Education And Human Services Catalog 1999-2001, Nova Southeastern University

Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice College Archive

No abstract provided.

Public Debt And Economic Policy During The Economic Crisis, Sethaput Suthiwart-Narueput, Varan Pradittatsanee

Documents

No abstract provided.

Diagnostic Issues With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: Conditional Probabilities And A Measure Of Symptom Ratings, Margo Adams Larsen

Dissertations

Current assessment taxonomy, including the DSM -IV and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) (World Health Organization, 1990) editions, have provided semistructured criteria sets to aid professionals in making a diagnosis of ADHD or ADD. The diagnostic taxonomy criteria, however, have resulted in a very heterogeneous population of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disordered (ADHD) individuals. Several studies have attempted to assess the behavioral syndromes— Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)/Conduct Disorder (CD)/ Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)—in terms of test or symptom sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive power, and negative predictive power (Landau, Milich, & Widiger, 1991; Milich, Widiger, & Landau, 1987; Waldman & …