Digital Commons Network^™

Colonial Legacies And Development Performance In Africa, Stephanie Burchard

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

It is often assumed that significant differences existed between Great Britain and France with regards to their respective styles of colonial administration. Some researchers have asserted that this difference in colonial administration has affected post-colonial economic and political development in Africa. This paper offers some theoretical, anecdotal, and econometric evidence questioning the validity of these assumptions. This paper also examines some commonly encountered problems associated with econometric analyses of African development: namely, the availability and reliability of data, and the difficulty in operationalizing and measuring political development in Africa.

How A Museum Exhibit Functions As A Literacy Event For Viewers, B. A. Chauvin

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate museum learning by describing the experiences of selected museum visitors who viewed a specified exhibit. The research question is: How does a museum exhibit function as a literacy event for viewers? The responses to interview questions described what viewing was like for two subjects. The paradigm for this research is New Literacy Studies (NLS). NLS considers the cultural issues surrounding literacy experiences. NLS assumes that language arts reflect cultural differences and literacy involves the process of constructing meaning (Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Gee, 2000; Street, 1995). This model of literacy considers …

Types Of Aggression, Responsiveness To Provocation, And Psychopathic Traits, Luna C. Munoz

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Research on the various subtypes of aggression has documented differences in the experience of anger and the expression of angry aggression. Mixed proactive and reactive aggressive individuals exhibit reactive aggression but, unlike reactive aggressive individuals, fail to exhibit angry expressions or physiological arousal. Similar to the proactive group, individuals with psychopathic traits have been found to exhibit emotional underreactivity, and physiological underarousal, while still exhibiting reactive aggression. The present study examined 85 boys (ages 13 to 18) from a detention center. Three groups of aggressive boys were identified via cluster analysis based on the self-report of types of aggressive behavior: …

Spread Spectrum Is Good—But It Doesn’T Obsolete Nbc V. Us!, Charles L. Jackson, Raymond L. Pickholtz, Dale N. Hatfield

ExpressO

This short note addresses a popular misconception—that new technologies such as spread spectrum have eliminated the problem of radio interference. That is false. Spread spectrum is a great technology, but it does not eliminate the problem of interference. Similarly, although some have asserted otherwise, signals below the noise floor can create interference.

We first show that a number of authors have embraced these misconceptions in works addressing public policy. Briefly, a basic argument of these papers is: (1) spread spectrum eliminates the problem of interference; (2) the Supreme Court’s decision in NBC v. US upholding the Communications Act of 1934 …

Educating For Democracy: Reviving Rhetoric In The General Education Curriculum, David M. Stock

Theses and Dissertations

This study is, in part, a response to arguments that claim higher education fails to prepare students with fundamental communication skills necessary for everyday life and indicative of "educated" persons. Though the validity of such arguments is contestable, they nonetheless reflect fundamental inadequacies in current educational theories and practices that have evolved over centuries of curricular, cultural, and socioeconomic change. Current theories and practices in higher education, specifically general education, reflect a misunderstanding of both the purpose of education in a democracy and the role of the liberal arts, specifically rhetoric, in accomplishing that purpose. The consequences of rhetorically-impoverished general …

Independent- Aug. 2, 2005, Patrick O'Brien

The Independent (1988-present)

No abstract provided.

Critical Literacy Vs. Reading Programs: Schooling As A Form Of Control, Roberto E. Bahruth

Literacy, Language, and Culture Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the United States, despite years of educational research demonstrating the ineffectiveness and harm caused by reading programs based upon a behaviorist paradigm, political mandates of state and federal programs insist upon their continued use. One might conclude that this insistence is born out of ignorance, however, it seems clear that the populations most harmed by these programs are the poor and minorities. Privileged class students are also harmed because of the "literalcy" (shallow "literacy") these programs produce. I discuss the politics of literacy and language programs in the United States and how they serve to oppress as they reproduce …

Idcr: Infectious Diseases In Corrections Report, Vol. 8 No. 8, Infectious Diseases In Corrections

Infectious Diseases in Corrections Report (IDCR)

No abstract provided.

Graduate Course Descriptions, 2005 Fall, Wright State University

Course Descriptions

Wright State University graduate course descriptions from Fall 2005.

Expectations & Experiences Of Resettlement: Sudanese Refugees’ Perspectives On Their Journeys From Egypt To Australia, Canada And The United States, Martha Fanjoy, Hilary Ingraham, Cyrena Khoury, Amir Osman

Faculty Journal Articles

A key center for refugee­based activity is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) regional office, located in Cairo. In recent years, this unit has referred approximately 4,000 recognized refugees per year for resettlement to the United States, Canada, Australia and a number of other smaller receiving countries, making it the largest such program in the world. But despite the size of the refugee population and the resettlement program in Cairo, there has been little research conducted into the expectations and experiences of the refugees themselves on this process. These perspectives could be significant determinants of success in the …

Automatic Source Attribution Of Text: A Neural Networks Approach, Foaad Khosmood, Franz J. Kurfess

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Recent advances in automatic authorship attribution have been promising. Relatively new techniques such as N-gram analysis have shown important improvements in accuracy [2]. Much of the work in this area does remain in the realm of statistics best suited for human assistance rather than autonomous attribution [6]. While there have been attempts at using neural networks in the area in the past, they have been extremely limited and problem-specific [7]. This paper addresses the latter points by demonstrating a practical and truly autonomous attribution process using neural networks. Furthermore, we use a word-frequency classification technique to demonstrate the feasibility of …

Beyond Agamemnon, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

An Agamemnon word consists of three triplets, each of which is a palindrome, as in Aga-mem-non. This article explores what happens as the number and size of triplets is varied.

Definitive Anagrams: J-L

Word Ways

Continued from the November 2004 Word Ways. Because of the large number of new pre-J catch-up words this article rightly should be called "A-L". But no, tradition prevails over logic yet again, the three previous articles being A-C, D-F, and G-I.

Front Cover And Publication Information, Volume 38 Issue 3

Word Ways

Front cover and publication information for this issue.

Two Early Palindromic Peoms By "Caliban", Ove Michaelsen

Word Ways

Hubert Phillips, English crossword puzzle and logic puzzle constructor, created at least two palindromic poems. The first one was featured in Bergerson's Palindromes and Anagrams (page 94); it originally appeared in the Dogberry column in the London News Chronicle for Oct 16 1942. The second poem is found in the same column for May 1 1941.

Traveling Around The Ouija Board, Eric Iverson

Word Ways

Supposedly guided by spirits form another world, the planchette glides from letter to letter on a Ouija board, spelling out words. One can characterize the difficulty of a word by the distance that planchette must travel to spell the words (visiting the letters in the order of their appearance in the word). The table below gives the shortest-travel and the longest-travel words of various lengths, in pixels using the Ouija board.

Larger Letter Trees, Rex Gooch

Word Ways

In Word Ways 2005-103ff., Eric Iverson presented some 4-letter trees, and some trees with 5-letter words. As invited by the editor, I take up the search from there. Throughout, I assume that all words in a tree must be different. The reader should sympathize if there are any errors, for tracing a vast number of almost identical words through many trees is even worse than proofreading word ladders, and repeatedly reminded me of the famous motif from Zork: "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

620 7x7 Squares With Geographical Palindromes, Zoran Radisavljevic

Word Ways

It is not easy to make a 7x7 palindromic square with common words as nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. In Serbia, puzzlers have made 10-15 such squares, all with some unusual terms like the title of a book, or the name of a person or geographical place. With the help of atlases and the Internet, we can make even some thematic palindrome squares. Most of these interesting places I found on the Dan Tilque site.

Palindromy's Unseen "Virtual Verse", Jim Puder

Word Ways

A surprising and little-recognized property of rhyming, end-to-end palindromic verse is that, contrary to intuition, the order of the lines in such verse may often be transposed in a number of ways without loss of either rhyme or palindromicity. Such line-order permutations can (a) preserve both the verse's original rhyme and palindromicity schemes, (b) change its rhyme scheme, (c) change its palindromicity scheme or (d) change both its rhyme and palindromicity schemes.

Colloquy

Word Ways

A collection of responses to previously published articles.

What's In A Phrase?, Susan Thorpe

Word Ways

We all use phrases without a second thought or glance. Many of these word liaisons, however, are host to a world of hidden words and hidden letter patterns. Some of these are now about to be exposed. The phrases under scrutiny here are mostly, but not exclusively, 2-word affairs.

Substitute-Letter Transposals Of Aeinrst, Darryl Francis

Word Ways

Earlier issues of Word Ways have demonstrated the fecundity of the seven-letter group AEINRST when it comes to transposals. My August 1998 article offered 155 transposals of these letters, a November 1999 Colloquy added a further four transposals, and my February 2000 article offered another 23 transposals found on the Internet. There were 181 transposals in all in those three items; RE-SATIN was included as a coinage in the original 155, and confirmed as a genuine word in the 23 Internet transposals.

Wysiwyg Words For Scrabble Players, John Holgate

Word Ways

The Swiss author Max Frisch once observed 'The truth is the best camouflage - nobody believes it'. Recently at a suburban Scrabble club meeting the truth of that observation was brought home to me. I opened my game against a neophytic player with AI. 'Hang on a tick' he exclaimed. 'What does that mean?' 'It's the three-toed Brazilian sloth.' By way of demonstration I jumped up and cavorted about the room yelling 'Ah-ee, ah-ee, ah-ee', beating my chest and scratching my armpits like an ai might do. My opponent folded his arms in disbelief. 'Yeah right. As if. I happen …

Dalend Talent: Dutch Purple Turtles, Hugo Brandt Corstius

Word Ways

I call these pairs "Dalend Talent" (decreasing talent) as there are quite a few too-easy examples.

Card Deck Wordplay, A. Ross Eckler

Word Ways

There are thirteen playing card names consisting of 52 letters: TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN JACK QUEEN KING ACE. What sort of wordplay is possible with these? To begin with, there is a crossword challenge-to arrange the words in a standard crossword array, in a rectangle of minimum size. Here is a 9x10 example that can possibly be improved.

Spoonertoons 2: We're Punning For Resident, Don Hauptman, Jim Siergey

Word Ways

Our first "Spoonertoons" collaboration appeared one year ago, in the August 2004 Word Ways. The positive response was so overwhelming (well, uh, the barista at Don's favorite coffee bar liked "Heed the Foamless!") that we decided a sequel was in order. Herewith, sore of the maim-that is: more of the same.

Kickshaws, Dave Morice

Word Ways

A collection of linguistic kickshaws.

Half And Half Words, A. Ross Eckler, Eric Iverson

Word Ways

In the May 2005 Kickshaws, Dave Morice showed how VIOLET is a very unusual word: its letters are half vowels and half consonants, half from the first half of the alphabet and half from the last half, etc. In an attempt to find out how unusual this word is, compared with other English words, we propose the following ten rules for dividing the alphabet into two parts.

368,435,456 Sonnet Anagrams, Mike Keith

Word Ways

Pick a line at random from the four in the first group, a line from the four in the second group, and so on, to create a Shakespearean sonnet with rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. Repeat this process to create a second sonnet that is a line-by-line anagram of the first. There are some other mild constraints: the four lines in the second group mention the four seasons, and there are minor allusions to other poems. The lines were constructed to make each sonnet say something reasonably coherent (vaguely having to do with the current world situation).

English In Foreign Dress, Leonard R.N. Ashley

Word Ways

Now that English of one short or another (America, British, etc.) is the whole world's second language, it seems only natural that English words are incorporated into foreign speech. Just as we borrowed from the French their concepts and their words (nuance, restaurants, etc.) so speakers of languages other than English borrow from us.