Digital Commons Network^™

Auditory-Phonetic Projection And Lexical Structure In The Recognition Of Sine-Wave Words, Robert E. Remez, Kathryn R. Dubowski, Robin S. Broder, Morgana L. Davids, Yael S. Grossman, Marina Moskalenko, Jennifer Pardo, Sara Maria Hasbun

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Speech remains intelligible despite the elimination of canonical acoustic correlates of phonemes from the spectrum. A portion of this perceptual flexibility can be attributed to modulation sensitivity in the auditory-to-phonetic projection, although signal-independent properties of lexical neighborhoods also affect intelligibility in utterances composed of words. Three tests were conducted to estimate the effects of exposure to natural and sine-wave samples of speech in this kind of perceptual versatility. First, sine-wave versions of the easy and hard word sets were created, modeled on the speech samples of a single talker. The performance difference in recognition of easy and hard words was …

The Intention-To-Cause Bias: Evidence From Children's Causal Language, Paul Muentener, Laura Lakusta

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The current study explored causal language in 3.5- to 4-year-old children by manipulating the type of agent (human acting intentionally or unintentionally, or inanimate object) and the type of effect (motion or state change) in causal events. Experiment 1 found that the type of agent, but not the type of effect, influenced children's production of causal language. Children produced more causal language for intentionally caused events than for either unintentionally- or object-caused events, independent of the type of effect. Experiment 2, which tested children's judgments of descriptions for the events, found a similar pattern. Children preferred causal descriptions more for …

Topical Keyphrase Extraction From Twitter, Xin Zhao, Jing Jiang, Jing He, Yang Song, Palakorn Achananuparp, Ee Peng Lim, Xiaoming Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Summarizing and analyzing Twitter content is an important and challenging task. In this paper, we propose to extract topical keyphrases as one way to summarize Twitter. We propose a context-sensitive topical PageRank method for keyword ranking and a probabilistic scoring function that considers both relevance and interestingness of keyphrases for keyphrase ranking. We evaluate our proposed methods on a large Twitter data set. Experiments show that these methods are very effective for topical keyphrase extraction.

Fuzzy Robot Controller Tuning With Biogeography-Based Optimization, George Thomas, Paul Lozovyy, Daniel J. Simon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Biogeography-based optimization (BBO) is an evolutionary algorithm (EA) based upon the models of biogeography, which describe the relationship between habitat suitability and the migration of species across habitats. In this work, we apply BBO to the problem of tuning the fuzzy tracking controller of mobile robots. This is an extension of previous work, in which we used BBO to tune a proportional-derivative (PD) controller for these robots. We show that BBO can successfully tune the shape of membership functions for a fuzzy controller with both simulation and real world experimental results.

Hans-Georg Gadamer: His Philosophical Hermeneutics And Its Importance For Evangelical Biblical Hermeneutics, Russell Meek

Liberty Theological Review

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s influence on hermeneutics can hardly be understated.  This article offers an evangelical perspective on the importance of his work and how it can be used to interpret the biblical text more faithfully.  It discusses his influences and some of the major aspects of his work and offers suggestions for applying his work to biblical hermeneutics. The article concludes that his work is vitally important and should be utilized by the biblical interpreter, though not without caution.

Possibilities For Peace: Germany's Transformation Of A Culture Of War, S. Elizabeth Snyder

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In reaction to its militarist past, Germany has created a strong culture of peace, including solid educational and institutional supports for maintaining popular attitudes critical of war and military operations. Germany has been recognized for these efforts by a number of international organizations, including the United Nations. At the same time, Germany has sought to maintain a policy of active membership in NATO and active cooperation and participation in NATO operations. As the United States applies increased pressure on its NATO allies in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, many of the inherent social and political tensions in German policy …

Constitutive Exclusion And The Work Of Political Unintelligibility, Sina J. Kramer

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

This project, “Constitutive Exclusion and the Work of Political Unintelligibility,” is a study of the ontology and epistemology of post-Hegelian conceptions of difference and their political meanings. It is motivated by the desire to understand what determines how political bodies constitute themselves through defining who is and who is not intelligible as a political agent, and how persons formerly unintelligible as political agents can become intelligible. I emphasize that constitutive exclusion is ambiguously both a structure and a process for operation: it is neither a structure which determines a particular operation, nor is it an operation which founds a certain …

The Effectiveness Of Milestone Versus Duration Projects In A University Environment, Nicholas James Mehas

Master's Theses

The Critical Path and Critical Chain project management methodologies have different and unique characteristics; both methods are used by project managers to manage projects. This research develops and implements two methodologies, milestones (critical path) versus duration (modified critical chain), in a university environment. The implementation of the two methods allows for the comparison of the effectiveness of both styles. The intent is to determine if there is a significant difference in the project management methodologies in a university setting. The design of both projects allows for easy implementation and the ability to easily record determined measureable statistics.

An Optimization Approach To Employee Scheduling Using Fuzzy Logic, William G. Spence

Master's Theses

An Optimization Approach to Employee Scheduling Using Fuzzy Logic

William G. Spence

Selection of sales employees is critical because the sales employees represent the company’s image, competitive advantage, technology, and values. In many service systems the majority of consumer contact is with the sales department. Since there are different types of customers, scheduling quality salespersons who can adequately help consumers may affect revenue.

This thesis proposes a new methodology for the scheduling of employees in a service system. The methodology uses Fuzzy Logic to calculate possible sales and Linear Programming to create an optimal schedule. This approach enables the rating …

Things Are In People, People Are In Things: A Phenomenological Approach To H.D.'S Hermione And The Modernist Prosthetic Body, Alison Stone Roberg

Theses and Dissertations

H.D.'s autobiographical novel HERmione is phenomenological in texture. It portrays both sides of a dynamic process: the individual "creates" the world by adjusting a "psychic lens," projecting a mental space in which objects can appear; yet at the same time, the world imposes itself on the sensing subject. The framework within which this dynamic process occurs is the body; as the novel portrays, the body is the site of juxtapositions and transformations as it comes into contact with the world. In this article, I discuss the ways in which H.D. explores the boundaries and intersections between the human body and …

The Case For Cultural Genocide: The Formulation Of A Working Definition, Tye Tavaras

Theses and Dissertations

The Genocide Convention is hailed as a great protection mechanism and the one document that will prevent future destruction of groups. This convention however, has a variety of shortcomings that fail to protect groups outside of attempted physical destruction. An article criminalizing cultural genocide is a devastating omission and this paper seeks to create a working legal definition to be used a framework for creating an article or convention to provide such criminalization. Beginning with an analysis of the drafting of the Genocide Convention with particular attention paid to the importance of culture in the foundation of the convention as …

Investigating The Effects Of Using Concordance Data On Vocabulary Acquisition In An Egyptian English For Academic Purposes Setting, Jenna Steiner

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of using concordance data in the classroom on vocabulary acquisition in the English Language Institute (ELI) at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Specifically, the effects on overall lexical knowledge and ability to distinguish between synonyms were explored in addition to students' attitudes towards the use of concordance data. This study employed an exploratory and quantitative approach and used a convenience sample of six intact Egyptian EFL university classes. Three classes with a total of 26 participants were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the remaining three classes …

Protection Of Beliefs Or Believers: Incitement To Religious Hatred Replacing Blasphemy And Defamation Of Religion, Mahmoud Farag

Theses and Dissertations

Incitement to religious hatred and restrictions on freedom of expression protect religious believers from unlawful expression. There is neither need to defamation of religion resolutions nor to blasphemy legislation. The Islamic and several developing states have internationalized blasphemy law under the name of defamation of religion. Defamation of religion and blasphemy's protection of religion contradicts with the individual based nature of human rights. It does not also comply with the classic understanding of defamation law that has only protected individual's reputation. Defamation of religion requires the state to arbitrate amongst intangible competing religious truth. The lack of clear guidelines on …

Parliamentary Versus Presidential Political System: Options For Egypt Post January 2011, Ashraf Hamdy

Theses and Dissertations

The debate on the merits of the parliamentary system of government versus the presidential system has been going on for many years now. Recently the topic attracted increased empirical attention with studies that looked at the impact of the system of government on different political, economic, and social aspects. This work adds to the literature a study that, using a global data set, empirically analyzes the effects of the choice of government system on income inequality, the level of political freedom, and the level of civil liberties in a society in general with an application to Egypt in particular. The …

Ethnocracy And Multiculturalism: A Preliminary Study Of The Cultural Aspects Of The Besemah People At Pagaralam, Palembang, Irmayanti Meliono

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

This paper aims to show that the traditional governance system, Lampik Empat Merdike and Sindang merdike (free men) established by the Besemah society in the past is the source of enthusiasm and democratic spirit in Besemah ethnocratic society. Besemah people's lives have changed through many different periods, from the megalithic, to the imperial, the colonial and to post-colonial (independence) periods. The kind of change that has taken place is concerned with the society’s view of diversity in various aspects, such as culture, knowledge, the world outside the ethnic community of Besemah, and education. Thus, multiculturalism is a unique characteristic of …

Link Type Based Pre-Cluster Pair Model For Coreference Resolution, Yang Song, Houfeng Wang, Jing Jiang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents our participation in the CoNLL-2011 shared task, Modeling Unrestricted Coreference in OntoNotes. Coreference resolution, as a difficult and challenging problem in NLP, has attracted a lot of attention in the research community for a long time. Its objective is to determine whether two mentions in a piece of text refer to the same entity. In our system, we implement mention detection and coreference resolution seperately. For mention detection, a simple classification based method combined with several effective features is developed. For coreference resolution, we propose a link type based pre-cluster pair model. In this model, pre-clustering of …

Query Weighting For Ranking Model Adaptation, Peng Cai, Wei Gao, Aoying Zhou, Kam-Fai Wong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We propose to directly measure the importance of queries in the source domain to the target domain where no rank labels of documents are available, which is referred to as query weighting. Query weighting is a key step in ranking model adaptation. As the learning object of ranking algorithms is divided by query instances, we argue that it’s more reasonable to conduct importance weighting at query level than document level. We present two query weighting schemes. The first compresses the query into a query feature vector, which aggregates all document instances in the same query, and then conducts query weighting …

Creativity In The Brazilian Culture, Denise S. Fleith

Online Readings in Psychology and Culture

Research has pointed out creativity as a sociocultural and contextually embedded phenomenon. As a consequence, the effect of cultural factors on the manifestation of creativity has been discussed worldwide. The purpose of this chapter is, therefore, to analyze the development of creativity in the Brazilian culture. A brief description of the Brazilian culture is provided. Models of creativity developed by Brazilian researchers, as well as a review of creativity studies conducted in the educational environment, are presented. Guidelines for future cross-cultural studies on creativity are also suggested.

An Exploration Of How Disability Support Services Are Evaluated In Select Community Colleges, Donna Anita Walker

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative multi-site study was to explore how disability support service programs are evaluated in select Illinois community colleges through the use of the CIPP (context, input, process, and product) program evaluation framework. Stufflebeam’s (1969) CIPP model of program evaluation was adapted for this study. The study was undertaken to determine the following: (a) the fundamental elements of these programs; (b) why and in what ways the programs are implemented; (c) the evaluation process and impact on services; and (d) the influence of the knowledge base and skills of the director.

Based on the study findings, while …

Giving My Heart A Voice: Reflection On Self And Others Through The Looking Glass Of Pedagogy: An Autoetnography, Vera L. Neyman

Dissertations

To improve students academic outcomes this auto-ethnographic dissertation examines my teaching practice in the Ukraine and in the United States, and the similarities and differences between the two educational systems. This study, designed in the form of auto-ethnographic vignettes, explores the effect of my personal and professional metamorphosis on the academic advancement of my students, and investigates the conditions that molded me into a teacher I am today. Through the reflections on the process of self-development as an individual and a teacher, I discovered that building the relationship of trust between school and family is an underlying condition for improving …

Writing The Female Body In Alvarez's In The Time Of The Butterflies, Darren K. Broome

The Coastal Review

Julia Alvarez in In the Time of the Butterflies utilizes the female body and sexuality to combat male dominated rhetoric. The use of the female body retrieves women’s forgotten role as subjects instead of objects as seen in male-oriented novel. Expressing sexuality in a way that is determined by women, she discovers new means of verbal or written expression. The female body emerges as a form of expression in Butterflies which at times is connected to one of the characters’ revolutionary participation.

Domestic Violence And Its Impact On Married Women's Health In Eastern Saudi Arabia., Emam M. Afifi, Nouriah S. Al-Muhaideb, Nina F. Hadish, Faten I. Ismail, Fatema M. Al-Qeamy

Saudi Medical Journal

OBJECTIVES: To identify the prevalence of domestic violence (DV) in Al-Ahsa, and its impact on married women9s health. METHODS: This study is a community-based cross-sectional survey conducted from January to June 2010 in Al-Ahsa oasis in the Eastern province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It included 2000 ever-married women, 15-60 years old, and selected by a 2-stage proportionate cluster random sample. Data was gathered through structured interviews. Univariate and multivariate analysis was carried out using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 15. RESULTS: The prevalence of lifetime DV was 39.3%, 35.9% for mental, 17.9% for physical, and 6.9% …

Investigation Of The Availability Of Tongue Movements In Mallampati Classification., Alkin Colak, Ali Yilmaz, Necdet Sut, Dilek Memis, Enis Ulucam, Bulent S. Cigali, Cuneyt Bozer

Saudi Medical Journal

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the relation of Mallampati classification with a new alternative method suggested for use in the estimation of tongue movements. METHODS: This study was conducted in the Department of Anesthesiology, Faculty of Medicine, Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey from April to October 2009. Two hundred and thirty patients were enrolled in this study. The modified Mallampati score (MMS) was devised by an anesthetist. To define tongue movements, horizontal and vertical lines were utilized. Horizontal lines passing through the mid points of the upper lip and mandible, and vertical lines passing through the right and left infraorbital points were constituted …

Writing To Learn: Can Reflection Journals Be Used To Promote Self-Reflection And Learning?, Duan Ning, Magdeleine Lew, Henk G. Schmidt

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether there is evidence of reflection in student-written journals and to investigate whether students show improvements in their reflective skills through journal keeping. To that end, the reflection journals of 3460 first-year students enrolled in a polytechnic were studied by means of an automated coding procedure. Data used in the analyses were students' journals for an entire week, collected once at the beginning and again at the end of an academic year. Outcomes of the content analyses suggest that there is evidence of reflection in students' journals and that students reflected …

Elicited Imitation For Prediction Of Opi Test Scores, Deryle W. Lonsdale, Kevin Michael Brooks Cook, Jeremiah Lane Mcghee

Faculty Publications

Automated testing of spoken language is the subject of much current research. Elicited Imitation (EI), or sentence repetition, is well suited for automated scoring, but does not directly test a broad range of speech communication skills. An Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) tests a broad range of skills, but is not as well suited for automated scoring. Some have suggested that EI can be used as a predictor of more general speech communication abilities. We examine EI for this purpose. A fully automated EI test is used to predict OPI scores. Experiments show strong correlation between predicted and actual OPI scores. …

Interview With David Milholland, Part 2 (Audio), Heather Oriana Petrocelli

Center for the Moving Image Oral Histories

Heather Petrocelli interviewed David Milholland at the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon on his involvement with the Center for the Moving Image.

David Milholland is a filmmaker, author, and co-founder of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

Class Notes, Georgia Southern University

CLASS Notes

No abstract provided.

Class Notes, Georgia Southern University

Arts & Humanities: News & Publications (2009-2023)

Excerpt: "Greetings! CLASS extends a fond farewell and its sincere gratitude to Dr. Michael Braz for 24 years of service and dedication to Georgia Southern University. A legend both at the University and in Statesboro, he received the President's Medal from Georgia Southern and was named a Legend in the Arts by the Averitt Center for the Arts in Statesboro. We wish him the best of luck in retirement as he embarks on his new adventure in the Peace Corps."

Does Critical Mass Matter? Views From The Boardroom, Lissa Lamkin Broome, John M. Conley, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Seattle University Law Review

In this Article, we report and analyze the results of forty-six wide-ranging interviews with corporate directors and other relevant in-siders on the general topic of whether and how the racial, ethnic, and gender composition of corporate boards matters. In particular, we explore their views on the concept of “critical mass”—that is, the theory that women and racial or ethnic minorities are unlikely to have an impact in the boardroom until they grow from a few to-kens into a considerable minority of the board.

In contrast to other recent qualitative research on corporate boards, we find more limited support among our …

Existing Prototyping Perspectives: Considerations For Service Design, Johan Blomkvist, Stefan Holmlid

Nordes Conference Series

With new design disciplines that challenge the borders of design practice and inquiry comes new possibilities for prototyping techniques and approaches. The basis for such an evolution is a firm understanding of the existing knowledge generated in design and the challenges posed by new design disciplines, such as service design. This study identifies a framework of perspectives for prototyping to reveal what the existing toolbox of prototyping contains based on a literature overview. Going through published literature from the early 1980s and onward, the framework is constructed using the following perspectives; purpose, fidelity, audience, position in the process, technique, and …