Digital Commons Network^™

Learning A Foreign Language With A Collaborative Web-Based Task, Processes And Performances. Apprendre Une Langue Étrangère À Partir D'Une Tâche Collaborative Sur Internet : Processus Et Performances, Frédérique Penilla

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Within language teaching and learning, tasks have been advocated for use as they are thought to set up ideal conditions for language acquisition to occur. With the emergence of the Internet in the last decade, and the deployment of technology in schools, Web-based tasks, referred to as Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) are being used by an increasing number of teachers. Teachers who employ Web-based tasks in their classrooms, commonly set these up so that learners complete them in a collaborative mode. This requires learners engaging in a process of task negotiation and, at times, task redefinition, which in turn requires …

Comparative Validity Of Mmpi-A Scales Scores In African American And Caucasian Male Juvenile Delinquents, Stacy Natasha Wilson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study examined comparative validity of the MMPI-A scale scores of African American and Caucasian male juvenile delinquents utilizing a step down hierarchical regression procedure proposed by Laughtenschlager & Mendoza (1986). The MMPI-A (Butcher et al., 1992) was administered to 281 African American and Caucasian juvenile delinquents while their caretakers filled out the CBCL (Achenbach, 1991; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2001) and DBRS (Barkley & Murphy, 1998), which were used as extra-test measures. Significant overall prediction bias was detected in 15 out of 56 regressions. Statistically significant prediction bias was found for a subset of criterion variables for Clinical Scales 2, …

Predictors Of Developmental Screenings For Young Children, Janice Chandler Ranne

Health Services Research Dissertations

This study examines the usefulness of the New Model of Children's Health and its Influences for the identification of predictors for health service effectiveness. Health service effectiveness is measured by probability estimations of whether young children receive formal or informal developmental screenings. Screenings lead to prevention of communication delays in later childhood. Formal screenings with standardized questions are preferred over informal screenings, which are knowledgeable observations. The theoretical framework is a child-centered socio-ecological theory that is untested for use in health service effectiveness studies until the present one. Four developmental concepts of the theoretical framework, social environment, physical environment, biological …

Constitutionalising An Overlapping Consensus: The Ecj And The Emergence Of A Coordinate Constitutional Order, Charles F. Sabel, Oliver H. Gerstenberg

Faculty Scholarship

The European Court of Justice's (ECJ's) jurisprudence of fundamental rights in cases such as Schmidberger and Omega extends the court's jurisdiction in ways that compete with that of Member States in matters of visceral concern. And just as the Member States require a guarantee that the ECJ respect fundamental rights rooted in national tradition, so the ECJ insists that international organisations respect rights constitutive of the EU. The demand of such guarantees reproduces between the ECJ and the international order the kinds of conflicting jurisdictional claims that have shadowed the relation between the ECJ and the courts of the Member …

The Contradictions Of Juvenile Crime & Punishment, Jeffrey Fagan

Faculty Scholarship

This essay explores the contradictions and puzzles of modern juvenile justice, and illustrates the enduring power of the child-saving philosophy of the juvenile court in an era of punitiveness toward offenders both young and old. The exponential growth in incarceration in the U.S. since the 1970s has been more restrained for juveniles than adults, even in the face of a youth violence epidemic that lasted for nearly a decade. Rhetoric has grown harsher in the wake of moral panics about youth crime, juvenile codes now express the language of retribution and incapacitation, yet the growth in incarceration of juveniles was …

The Role Of The Chief Executive In Domestic Administration, Peter L. Strauss

Faculty Scholarship

Written for an international working paper conference on administrative law, this paper sets the Supreme Court's decision in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in the context of general American concerns about the place of the President in domestic administration, a recurring theme in my writings.

The Tale Of Two Narratives: Nato As A Collective Defense And A Collective Security Institution, Anna M. Rulska

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The goal of this project is to determine NATO's present and future roles as a collective security organization and as a security alliance. In the past, NATO has dealt with both objectives under different and changing conditions. This paper argues that throughout the entirety of its history, NATO worked as both collective security and collective defense organization. The theoretical assumptions made within the paper are supported by the analysis of the past behavior of the Alliance in respect to the relationship between the narrative of collective security and that of collective defense, and changes within that relationship. Four specific periods …

The Influence Of Rape Empathy And Demographic Variables On Counselor Rape Myth Acceptance, Julia M. Forman

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

In 2007, 248,300 individuals were raped (National Crime Victimization Survey [NCVS], 2007). It is likely that counseling professionals will provide services to rape survivors, and they should be aware of their biases towards survivors so that they can provide the most competent care possible. Some biases and attitudes may stem from the acceptance of rape myths. Rape myth acceptance (RMA) can lead to blaming the survivor for an attack (Campbell & Raja, 1999) and other consequences, including the exacerbation of psychological and physical symptoms (Campbell, Ahrens, Sefl, Wasco, & Barnes, 2001). Furthermore, a lack of rape empathy may inflict injury …

The Association Between Parental Perceptions Of Children's Residential Mental Health Treatment And The Parent-Child Relationship, Susanne Elizabeth Preston

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Residential mental health treatment for children as an intervention for children is increasing, potentially affecting the relationship within families. The purpose of this study was to examine the parental perspectives of the associations between the parent-child relationship and children's residential mental health treatment. This study explored parental perspectives of specific aspects of the parent-child relationship: parental support, satisfaction with parenting, parental involvement, communication, and limit setting-and the association between these aspects and the child's residential mental health treatment. Paired samples t-tests were conducted; resulting in statistically significant changes on all scales measured, with varying effect sizes. Results indicated parents …

Origin Myths, Contracts, And The Hunt For Pari Passu, Mark C. Weidemaier, Robert E. Scott, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

Sovereign loans involve complex but largely standardized contracts, and these include some terms that no one understands. Lawyers often account for the existence of these terms through origin myths. Focusing on one contract term, the pari passu clause, this article explores two puzzling aspects of these myths. First, it demonstrates that the myths are inaccurate as to both the clause’s origin and the role of lawyers in contract drafting. Second, the myths often are unflattering, inaccurately portraying lawyers as engaged in little more than rote copying. The article probes this disjunction between the myths and lawyers’ actual practices and explores …

Measurement Of D+ And ΛC+ Production In Deep Inelastic Scattering At Hera, H. Abramowicz, I. Abt, L. Adamczyk, M. Adamus, R. Aggarwal, S. Antonelli, P. Antonioli, A. Antonov, M. Arneodo, V. Aushev, Y. Aushev, O. Bachynska, A. Bamberger, A. N. Barakbaev, G. Barbagli, G. Bari, F. Barreiro, D. Bartsch, M. Basile, O. Behnke, J. Behr, U. Behrens, L. Bellagamba, A. Bertolin, S. Bhadra, M. Bindi, C. Blohm, T. Bołd, E. G. Boos, M. Borodin, K. Borras, Margarita C. K. Mattingly

Faculty Publications

Charm production in deep inelastic scattering has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 120 pb-1. The hadronic decay channels D+ → KS0π+, Λc+ → pKS0 and Λc+ → Λπ+, and their charge conjugates, were reconstructed. The presence of a neutral strange hadron in the final state reduces the combinatorial background and extends the measured sensitivity into the low transverse momentum region. The kinematic range is 0 < pT (D+,Λc+ ) < 10GeV, |η(D+,Λc+ )| < 1.6, 1.5 < Q2 < 1000GeV2 and 0.02 < y < 0.7. Inclusive and differential cross sections for the production of D+ mesons are compared to next-to-leading-order QCD predictions. The fraction of c quarks hadronising into Λc+ baryons is extracted.

The Control Of Counterfeit Medicine In Malaysia By Pharmaceutical Enforcement Division., Noraimi Ngarip

Student Works (2010-2019)

This research provided an overview of the control of counterfeit medicine in Malaysia Counterfeit medicine is a major concern due to its impact on the public health, healthcare system, economics and the country at large. This study outlined and described existing methods to curb counterfeit medicine in Malaysia as employed by the Pharmaceutical Enforcement Division, Ministry of Health, with an evaluation of current responses towards counterfeit medicine and suggestions of suitable improvements in the methods of preventing availability of counterfeit medicines. Library-based research and semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect all relevant information during the research. This study revealed a …

Does Co-Opetition Change The Game? A Bayesian Analysis Of Participation Strategy In An Industry Standard-Setting Organization, Robert J. Kauffman, Benjamin B. M. Shao, Juliana Y. Tsai

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Across different industries, we observe the emergence of industry standard-setting organizations (SSO) that focus on the creation of industry-specific process standards. Firms adopt a strategy of co-opetition, the combination of cooperation and competition, during standards development. We propose that a firm's co-opetition strategy is revealed to some extent by when it elects to participate in an industry SSO. Bayesian information updating offers an effective empirical modeling perspective for studying firms' participation strategies when managers' beliefs and uncertainties are factored into their decision-making. We analyze a panel data set of 73 U.S. public firms over a 20-year period. These firms are …

Crctol: A Semantic Based Domain Ontology Learning System, Xing Jiang, Ah-Hwee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Domain ontologies play an important role in supporting knowledge‐based applications in the Semantic Web. To facilitate the building of ontologies, text mining techniques have been used to perform ontology learning from texts. However, traditional systems employ shallow natural language processing techniques and focus only on concept and taxonomic relation extraction. In this paper we present a system, known as Concept‐Relation‐Concept Tuple‐based Ontology Learning (CRCTOL), for mining ontologies automatically from domain‐specific documents. Specifically, CRCTOL adopts a full text parsing technique and employs a combination of statistical and lexico‐syntactic methods, including a statistical algorithm that extracts key concepts from a document collection, …

Surah Yasin: Kajian Perbandingan Antara Qira’At Nafi Dan Qira’At Asim Riwayat Hafs., Murshidi Abd Hamid

Student Works (2010-2019)

Knowledge on Qira’at appeared when the al-Qur’an was revealed but many among us do not have this particular knowledge. In reality, this knowledge is closely associated with penalties and this reflects the significance of Qira’at. The main intention to introduce this subject of Qira’at is to expose to the public the importance of Qira’at as a source of knowledge with authenticity in Islam in tandem with the al-Qur’an. The main focus in this study is a comparison between two Qira’at for surah Yasin. This study is intended to introduce Qira’at Nafi‘ and Hafs and to gather more details on the …

Characterization Of Erythrocyte Receptor Polymorphisms In A Malaria Endemic Population In Kilifi, Kenya, Irene Akinyi Omedo

All Master’s Theses

Malaria is a strong selective force in the human genome, selecting genes for resistance to disease in human populations living in malaria endemic areas. Selection by malaria has generated genetic variations, providing evolutionary driving force mediating polymorphisms such as Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase deficiency and sickle-cell anaemia. Genes encoding erythrocyte receptors of Plasmodium falciparum especially the sialoglycoproteins, glycophorins A, B and C, which are the main parasite receptors, have been shown to be under selection, with Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and exon deletions being detected. This study analyzed SNPs in glycophorins A, B, and C genes in a population living in the …

Dna Barcoding And Morphometrics Of Stingless Bees (Apidae: Meliponinae) In Three Selected Forests In Kenya, Nelly Njeri Ndungu

All Master’s Theses

Stingless honeybee keeping is an income generating enterprise with an indirect potential of achieving the goal of forest and biodiversity conservation in Kenya. However, little information is available on species diversity and spatial distribution of stingless bees in Kenya. This study describes variations of stingless bee samples collected from Arabuko Sokoke, Mwingi and Kakamega forests, ranging from low, middle to high altitude, respectively using morphometrics and DNA barcoding. Fourteen morphometric characters were measured to determine the extent of morphological variation of stingless bees in Kenya.In addition, mitochondrial DNA sequences data were generated using Cytochrome c Oxidase I (COI) in accordance …

Potential For Utilization Of Entomopathogenic Fungus, Beauveria Bassiana, For Control Of Banana Weevil, Cosmopolites Sordidus (Germar), Carolyne Anaye Omukoko

All Master’s Theses

Banana production in Kenya has been on the decline due to among other factors, pests and disease of which banana weevil is major. Although, entomopathogenic fungi such as Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae have been used successfully to control various agricultural and pasture pests, lack of effective application system limits their wider application.This study therefore seeks to evaluate the potential of utilizing the fungus to control the banana weevil using infected weevils to disseminate the entomopathogen, Beauveria bassiana for control of the banana weevil (Cosmopolites sordidus). Tests were carried out in the laboratory with ten isolates of B. bassiana ; …

Relative Attractiveness Of Anopheles Gambiae Mosquitoes To Synthetic Oduor Blends And Human Emanations, Evelyn Adhiambo Olanga

All Master’s Theses

Mosquito host seeking behaviour is mediated by chemical, physical and visual cues. Identification of chemical and physical cues utilized by mosquitoes in host location can lead to the development of novel vector management strategies. This research set out to identify synthetic odour blends that simulate human body emanations that can be used to develop mass trapping devices for vector management. The relative attractiveness of human body emanations and synthetic odour blends as attractants of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes was investigated under semi-field conditions at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) Mbita Point, western Kenya. The effect of heat …

Entomopathogenicity Of Hyphomycete Fungi To Fruit Fly Bactrocera Invadens (Diptera: Tephritidae) And Their Potential For Biological Control On Mango, Elizabeth Awuor Ouna

All Master’s Theses

Sustainable mango production will rely increasingly on alternatives to conventional chemical insecticides that are environmentally friendly for the management of fruit flies. The use of microbial control agents such as fungi in pest suppression is considered suitable since micro-organisms usually exert low environmental impact and are target specific. Application methods of bio-pesticides in the environment, which use minimal amount of inoculum is currently under improvement from inundative to auto-inoculative methods. Such devices are usually designed to attract insects into focus of the entomopathogen and use the insect as a vector for transmission of pathogen to other members of its population. …

Do Online Reviews Reflect A Product's True Perceived Quality? An Investigation Of Online Movie Reviews Across Cultures, Noi Sian Koh, Nan Hu, Eric K. Clemons

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

When does the reported average of online ratings match perceived average assessment? We apply behavioral theory to capture intentions in rating online movie reviews in two dissimilar countries - China and the United States. We argue that consumers' rating behaviors are affected by cultural influences. Based on data collected from imdb.com and douban.com, we found significant differences across raters from these two different cultures. Additionally, we examined how cultural elements influence rating behavior for a hybrid culture - Singapore. Under-reporting bias occurs when consumers with extreme opinions are more likely to report their opinions than consumers with moderate reviews, resulting …

Dual Phase Learning For Large Scale Video Gait Recognition, Jialie Shen, Hwee Hwa Pang, Dacheng Tao, Xuelong Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Accurate gait recognition from video is a complex process involving heterogenous features, and is still being developed actively. This article introduces a novel framework, called GC2F, for effective and efficient gait recognition and classification. Adopting a ”refinement-and-classification” principle, the framework comprises two components: 1) a classifier to generate advanced probabilistic features from low level gait parameters; and 2) a hidden classifier layer (based on multilayer perceptron neural network) to model the statistical properties of different subject classes. To validate our framework, we have conducted comprehensive experiments with a large test collection, and observed significant improvements in identification accuracy relative to …

Remote Attestation On Function Execution, Liang Gu, Yueqiang Cheng, Xuhua Ding, Robert H. Deng, Yao Guo, Weizhong Shao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Remote attestation provides the basis for one platform to establish trusts on another. In this paper, we consider the problem of attesting the correctness of program executions. We propose to measure the target program and all the objects it depends on, with an assumption that the Secure Kernel and the Trusted Platform Module provide a secure execution environment through process separation. The attestation of the target program begins with a program analysis on the source code or the binary code in order to find out the relevant executables and data objects. Whenever such a data object is accessed or a …

Introducing Communication In Dis-Pomdps With Locality Of Interaction, Makoto Tasaki, Yuichi Yabu, Yuki Iwanari, Makoto Yokoo, Janusz Marecki, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Milind Tambe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The Networked Distributed POMDPs (ND-POMDPs) can model multiagent systems in uncertain domains and has begun to scale-up the number of agents. However, prior work in ND-POMDPs has failed to address communication. Without communication, the size of a local policy at each agent within the ND-POMDPs grows exponentially in the time horizon. To overcome this problem, we extend existing algorithms so that agents periodically communicate their observation and action histories with each other. After communication, agents can start from new synchronized belief state. Thus, we can avoid the exponential growth in the size of local policies at agents. Furthermore, we introduce …

Teleoph: A Secure Real-Time Teleophthalmology System, Yongdong Wu, Zhou Wei, Haixia Yao, Zhigang Zhao, Lek Heng Ngoh, Robert H. Deng, Shengsheng Yu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Teleophthalmology (TeleOph) is an electronic counterpart of today's face-to-face, patient-to-specialist ophthalmology system. It enables one or more ophthalmologists to remotely examine a patient's condition via a confidential and authentic communication channel. Specifically, TeleOph allows a trained nonspecialist in a primary clinic to screen the patients with digital instruments (e.g., camera, ophthalmoscope). The acquired medical data are delivered to the hospital where an ophthalmologist will review the data collected and, if required, provide further consultation for the patient through a real-time secure channel established over a public Internet network. If necessary, the ophthalmologist is able to further sample the images/video of …

Hoffman V. Red Owl Stores And The Limits Of The Legal Method, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

According to the overwhelming majority view, promissory estoppel is not an appropriate ground for legally enforcing statements made during preliminary negotiations unless there is a “clear and unambiguous promise” on which the counterparty reasonably and foreseeably relies. Bill Whitford and Stewart Macaulay were among the first scholars to note the apparent absence of such a promise in the case of Hoffman v. Red Owl Stores. Several years ago, after studying the trial record, I concluded that the best explanation for the breakdown in negotiations was the fundamental misunderstanding between the parties as to the amount and nature of Hoffmann’s …

Human Rights In The Emerging World Order, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

Pursuing the so-called political account of human rights, this talk first explains some aspects of the relations between legal and moral rights, and between rights and interests, and then applies the analysis to provide an explanation of human rights. Using the rights to health and to education as examples, it rejects the traditional theory that takes human rights to be rights that people have in virtue of their humanity alone. But human rights are synchronically universal. They are rights which all people living today have, a feature that is a precondition of, and a result of, the fact that they …

Calling Bullshit On The Lanham Act: The 2 (A) Bar For Immoral, Scandalous, And Disparaging Marks, Megan M. Carpenter, Kathryn T. Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

As the Lanham Act approaches the age of sixty-five, it is a good time to take stock of its application to, and place within, the object and purpose of trademark law. The consumer-search theory of trademarks posits that the purpose of trademark law is to promote fair competition by reducing consumer search costs and preventing confusion in the minds of consumers as to the source of goods and services.' However, section 2(a) of the Lanham Act expands trademark law well beyond its basic goals by preventing registration of marks that are "immoral," "scandalous," or "disparaging."

There are two primary questions …

Much Uncertainty About Uncertain Tax Positions, Robert D. Probasco

Faculty Scholarship

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced in January 2010 a new initiative to require certain businesses to report “uncertain tax positions” on a new schedule filed with their annual tax returns. Draft schedules and instructions issued in April 2010 clarified some of the mechanical aspects of the new requirement but left many open issues and questions. The IRS proposal built on requirements by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in FASB Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes (“FIN 48”). The standard requires companies, in their financial statements, to reserve some of the benefits from any position taken …

Enforcement, Economics And Estimates, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on intellectual property enforcement, a topic that is of great importance to both developed and less developed countries. It begins by refuting the simple, and often politically motivated, claim that many countries fail to provide effective intellectual property enforcement by virtue of their lack of political will. Drawing on the latest economic literature, this article shows that high enforcement standards come with a hefty price tag and difficult trade-offs.

The article then outlines the challenges in measuring the cross-border economic impact of piracy and counterfeiting. As an illustration, the article discusses the ongoing effort by the US …