Digital Commons Network^™

Developing A Unified Approach To Sustainable Consumption Behaviour: Opportunities For A New Environmental Paradigm, Vivienne Byers, Alan Gilmer

Articles

Politicians and national policy makers seek to encourage individuals to engage in a wide range of pro-environmental practices to address both discrete environmental problems and major global challenges such as climate change. Theoretically, the field of behavioural management in environmental consumption which seeks to change holarchic open human systems, is much contested. This paper proposes to develop a synthesized conceptual framework embracing a unified approach that addresses the systematic, structural, and institutional perspectives on how consumption, through public policy initiatives, can be developed and changed to reflect a deeper ecological foundation. This approach considers the debate regarding policy and behavioural …

A Review Of Type 1 Diabetes (T1d): To Assist Patients’ And Carers’ Understanding Of This Condition, Eileen O'Donnell, Liam O'Donnell

Articles

The diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) will come as an unwelcome surprise to most people. Within a short period of time, the person will have to come to understand and manage this chronic illness. The terminology associated with the T1D condition will also be totally new to the person: diabetes mellitus, pancreas, hyperglycaemia (hyper), hypoglycaemia (hypo), bolus (fast acting insulin), basal (slow acting insulin), ketones and blood glucose levels. The purpose of this article is to assist newly diagnosed patients’ understanding of T1D, people who are already living with T1D, carers of people with T1D, partners and family members …

The Link Between Spatial Skills And Engineering Problem-Solving, Gavin Duffy, Sheryl Sorby, Presentacion Rivera Reyes, Tom Delahunty, Lance Perez, Jayashri Ravishankar

Conference papers

Well-developed 3-D spatial skills are correlated with engineering success. However, most studies examining the link between spatial skills and engineering success have been conducted at the macro level, i.e., the link between spatial skills and course grades or between spatial skills and graduation rates. In this research, a more refined approach has been taken. Relationships between spatial skills and success in solving certain types of problems that engineering students commonly encounter are examined. It was found that high levels of spatial skills predict success in solving certain types of engineering problems but not in all types of problems. Data gathered …

A Comprehensive Experimental Study Of Whispering Gallery Modes In A Cylindrical Micro-Resonator Excited By A Tilted Fiber Taper, Vishnu Kavungal, Gerald Farrell, Qiang Wu, Arun Mallik, Yuliya Semenova

Articles

Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) excitation in a cylindrical microresonator formed by a section of silica optical fiber has been studied. Evanescent light coupling into the microresonator is realized using a tapered optical fiber, fabricated by a microheater brushing technique. Several types of silica fibers with different diameters are studied as microresonators, and the influence of the resonator's diameter on the excitation of WGMs is investigated. The excitation of WGMs in a cylindrical fiber resonator were studied with changes to the tilt angle between the microcylinder and the fiber taper in the range of angles from a perpendicular position (0 degrees) …

Optical Fiber Fresnel Reflection Sensor For Direct Detection Of The Solid-Liquid Phase Change In N-Octadecane, Wei Han, Marek Rebow, Dejun Liu, Gerald Farrell, Yuliya Semenova, Qiang Wu

Articles

An all optical fiber Fresnel reflection sensor for detecting the solid–liquid phase change in n-octadecane is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensor probe consists of a single-mode fiber with a cleaved end which is immersed in the material sample under test. As the n-octadecane changes from solid to liquid or from liquid to solid, its refractive index (RI) changes resulting in changes of the light power ratio reflected by the probe. Since the RI of n-octadecane during its phase transition changes discontinuously, inflection in the reflected light power ratio dependence indicates the phase change of the sample in the vicinity …

Fluid-Dynamic Models Of Geophysical Waves, Alan Compelli

Doctoral

Geophysical waves are waves that are found naturally in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans. Internal waves, that is waves that act as an interface between uids of dierent density, are examples of geophysical waves. A uid system with a at bottom, at surface and internal wave is initially considered. The system has a depth-dependent current which mimics a typical ocean set-up and, as it is based on the surface of the rotating Earth, incorporates Coriolis forces. Using well established uid dynamic techniques, the total energy is calculated and used to determine the dynamics of the system using a procedure called …

Three Decades Of Universal Design - Defining Moments, Margaret Kinsella

Articles

This paper contributes to the growing research on incorporating Universal Design in the Higher Education landscape by presenting a Practitioner's Perspective on Universal Design as delivered in the Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown (ITB) in the first year of a creative digital media degree as part of the first year experience. This first year experience is a transition time for many students and has many complexities; while being an exciting and fulfilling time, the transition can also be challenging and isolating. Through Universal Design, the aim is to enable students to 'Get connected' and 'Stay connected'. Universal Design for Learning is …

A Wikipedia Powered State-Based Approach To Automatic Search Query Enhancement, Kyle Goslin, Markus Hofmann

Articles

This paper describes the development and testing of a novel Automatic Search Query Enhancement (ASQE) algorithm, the Wikipedia N Sub-state Algorithm (WNSSA), which utilises Wikipedia as the sole data source for prior knowledge. This algorithm is built upon the concept of iterative states and sub-states, harnessing the power of Wikipedia's data set and link information to identify and utilise reoccurring terms to aid term selection and weighting during enhancement. This algorithm is designed to prevent query drift by making callbacks to the user's original search intent by persisting the original query between internal states with additional selected enhancement terms. The …

Quantitative Fine-Grained Human Evaluation Of Machine Translation Systems: A Case Study On English To Croatian, Filip Klubicka, Antonio Toral, Victor Manuel Sanchez-Cartagena

Articles

This paper presents a quantitative fine-grained manual evaluation approach to comparing the performance of different machine translation (MT) systems. We build upon the well-established Multidimensional Quality Metrics (MQM) error taxonomy and implement a novel method that assesses whether the differences in performance for MQM error types between different MT systems are statistically significant. We conduct a case study for English-to- Croatian, a language direction that involves translating into a morphologically rich language, for which we compare three MT systems belonging to different paradigms: pure phrase-based, factored phrase-based and neural. First, we design an MQM-compliant error taxonomy tailored to the relevant …

Relating Group Size And Posting Activity Of An Online Community Of Financial Investors: Regularities And Seasonal Patterns, P. Racca, R. Casarin, Pierpaolo Dondio, F. Squazzoni

Articles

Group size can potentially affect collective activity and individual propensity to contribute to collective goods. Mancur Olson, in his Logic of Collective Action, argued that individual contribution to a collective good tends to be lower in groups of large size. Today, online communication platforms represent an interesting ground to study such collaborative dynamics under possibly different conditions (e.g., lower costs related to gather and share information). This paper examines the relationship between group size and activity in an online financial forum, where users invest time in sharing news, analysis and comments with other investors. We looked at about 24 million …

Pseudorehearsal In Actor-Critic Agents With Neural Network Function Approximation, Vladimir Marochko, Leonard Johard, Manuel Mazzara, Luca Longo

Articles

Catastrophic forgetting has a significant negative impact in reinforcement learning. The purpose of this study is to investigate how pseudorehearsal can change performance of an actor-critic agent with neural-network function approximation. We tested agent in a pole balancing task and compared different pseudorehearsal approaches. We have found that pseudorehearsal can assist learning and decrease forgetting.

Towards Dynamic Interaction-Based Reputation Models, Almas Melnikov, Manuel Mazzara, Victor Rivera, Jooyoung Lee, Luca Longo

Articles

In this paper, we investigate how dynamic properties of reputation can influence the quality of users’ ranking. Reputation systems should be based on rules that can guarantee high level of trust and help identify unreliable units. To understand the effectiveness of dynamic properties in the evaluation of reputation, we propose our own model (DIB-RM) that utilizes three factors: forgetting, cumulative, and activity period. In order to evaluate the model, we use data from StackOverflow which also has its own reputation model. We estimate similarity of ratings between DIB-RM and the StackOverflow reputation model to test our hypothesis. We use two …

Final Report Of The Berkeley Center For Law & Technology Section 101 Workshop: Addressing Patent Eligibility Challenges, Jeffrey A. Lefstin, Peter S. Menell, David O. Taylor

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Is Patent Enforcement Efficient, Robin Feldman, Mark A. Lemley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Artificial Intelligence: The Importance Of Trust & Distrust, Robin Feldman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Doctoral Thesis Citation Patterns: A Case Study Of The Sam Jonah Library, Ghana., Imoro Osman, Anankyela Anaba Alemna, Mariyama Abdulai Kumah

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

No abstract provided.

Research Publication Pattern Of Library Philosophy And Practice (E-Journal): A Bibliometric Analysis During 2008-2017, Manoj Kumar Verma, Sunil Kumar Yadav, S N. Singh

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The present study intends to analyse the publication pattern of papers in Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) during 2008 to 2017. During these period, total 1478 scholarly papers has been published by LIS researchers around the world. The publication pattern was analysed by different bibliometric aspect like year wise contribution of papers, year wise growth of publication, average publication per author, geographical distribution of papers, authorship pattern, author productivity, degree of collaboration, Lotka’s Law of Scientific Productivity of papers, reference distribution pattern and length of reference distribution etc. which provide depth information about publication of pattern of Library Philosophy and …

Bibliometric Study Of Indian Open Access Social Science Literature, Deep Kumar Kirtania

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The purpose of this study is to trace out the growth and development of social science literature in open access environment published from India. Total 1195 open access papers published and indexed in Scopus database in ten years have considered for the present study. Research publication from 2008 to 2017 have been analyzed based on literature growth, authorship pattern, activity index, prolific authors and institutions, publication type, channel and citation count have examined to provide a clear picture of Indian social science research. The study shows the dominance of shared authorship and sixty percentages of total articles have been cited. …

A 10-Year Bibliometric Study Of Pakistan Journal Of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Ishtiaq Ahmed, Midrar Ullah

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Purpose

This study aims to carry out a bibliometric evaluation of articles published in Pakistan Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (PJPS) from 2006 to 2015. Bibliometric study determines publication pattern and identifies research trends in a field.

Design/Methodology/Approach

All articles published in PJPS during ten years were analysed using MS Excel.

Results

A total of 951 authors contributed 1172 articles to PJPS from 2006 to 2015. Eighty-six percent authors contributed only one article each. M. Saeed Arayne and Najma Sultana were the leading principal authors with 18 and 10 articles respectively. Ninety-seven percent articles were written by more than one author. …

Information Management As A Nexus To Promote The Use Of Indigenous Medicine And Enhance Public Healthcare Delivery: A Bibliometric Analysis, Patrick Ajibade (Phd), Stephen M. Mutula Prof.

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

This paper uses a bibliometric analysis to explore the citations trend in ethnomedicine and information management. A text mining algorithm of a total number of 8, 333 publications (n = 8,333) was conducted based on the title, abstract and keywords to find co-occurrence of key terms in indigenous medicine and information management. The first objective was to analyze the authorship, outputs and citation trends and establish if researchers have been able to establish a nexus between indigenous herbal use and the role of information management in promoting such use. Secondly, the study sought to establish if there is already …

Shareholder Voting And The Symbolic Politics Of Corporation As Contract, Matthew T. Bodie, Grant M. Hayden

All Faculty Scholarship

American corporations are structured in such a way that shareholders, and shareholders alone, have the right to vote in all significant corporate decisions. Over the years, this exclusive shareholder franchise has been supported by an ongoing procession of justifications. But as those arguments have fallen by the wayside, shareholder primacists have circled back and latched upon a final argument for the special voting status of shareholders, arguing that this fundamental feature of corporate governance is the product of the set of freely-bargained-for agreements among all corporate constituents. Because this set of agreements reflects the preferences of all parties to the …

Testing Performance As It Relates To Academic Self-Concept And Test Anxiety In Students With And Without Adhd, Kyrstin Sutton-Davis

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Students who are diagnosed with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) comprise 25% of students with disabilities who receive educational accommodations in post-secondary settings, and represent roughly 2 - 4% of college students (Weyandt et al., 2013). However, there are mixed results regarding the efficacy of testing accommodations, specifically extended time, and whether these accommodations may offer an advantage to students with ADHD (Gregg & Nelson, 2012). In addition to extended test time, students with ADHD commonly use minimal disturbance rooms. However, there is little research regarding the efficacy of the accommodation. The relationship among academic self-concept, test anxiety, test performance, and testing …

A Quantitative Analysis Of Intermediate Forms Within Astarte From The Atlantic Coastal Plain, Philip Roberson

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The Atlantic Coastal Plain has long been recognized as a natural laboratory useful for testing hypotheses about various environmental and ecological effects on marine fauna. For studies such as these to continue being conducted in a rigorous and easily repeatable manner, a reliable taxonomy must be established for genera within this physiographic province. The bivalve genus, Astarte, is a cosmopolitan genus that is commonly found within the Atlantic Coastal Plain. This genus has many formally recognized species, even though it lacks many features that would encourage diversification, marking it as a taxonomic group in need of potential revision. The …

Distributive Lattice Models Of The Type B Elementary Weyl Group Symmetric Functions, Katheryn Beck

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

One of the great themes of algebraic combinatorics is the exploration of connections between ordered structures and group actions/representations. This thesis furthers this theme by presenting diamond-colored distributive lattice models of certain poly nomials that are invariant under the action of the type Bn Weyl group. Initially we realize these lattices as diamond-colored lattices of order ideals from certain vertex colored posets. We explore various coordinatizations of these lattices via partition-like elements, tableaux, and binary-type representations called tally diagrams. We also examine algebraic properties of these lattices. In particular, we prove that our type Bn lattices are effective models for …

On The Domination Chain Of M By N Chess Graphs, Kathleen Johnson

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

A survey of the six domination chain parameters for both square and rectangular chess boards are discussed.

The Unspoken Psychological Issues With Lesson Horses And How We Need To Address Them, Casey Clark

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

Every day all over the world horses provide much needed therapy and treatment to people in need. They provide physical, emotional, and mental training and healing. Humans depend on them for so much and we have a moral and ethical obligation to be good stewards of our equine companions. This close proximity can take a toll on horses physically and psychologically even in the realm of experienced equine professionals. So many times though it is the small lesson facility that sees hundreds of people each year and makes a profound difference in people’s lives. This can be at a 4-H …

W1,P Regularity Of Eigenfunctions For The Mixed Problem With Nonhomogeneous Neumann Data, Kohei Miyazaki

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

We consider an eigenvalue problem with a mixed boundary condition, where a second-order differential operator is given in divergence form and satisfies a uniform ellipticity condition. We show that if a function u in the Sobolev space W^1,p_D is a weak solution to the eigenvalue problem, then u also belongs to W^1,p_D for some p>2. To do so, we show a reverse Hölder inequality for the gradient of u. The decomposition of the boundary is assumed to be such that we get both Poincaré and Sobolev-type inequalities up to the boundary.

Distributive Lattice Models Of The Type C One-Rowed Weyl Group Symmetric Functions, William Atkins

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

We present two families of diamond-colored distributive lattices – one known and one new – that we can show are models of the type C one-rowed Weyl symmetric functions. These lattices are constructed using certain sequences of positive integers that are visualized as filling the boxes of one-rowed partition diagrams. We show how natural orderings of these one-rowed tableaux produce our distributive lattices as sublattices of a more general object, and how a natural coloring of the edges of the associated order diagrams yields a certain diamond-coloring property. We show that each edge-colored lattice possesses a certain structure that is …

Engineering Retention: Improving Inclusion And Diversity In Engineering, Sidney Martin

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The researcher sought further understanding for strategies and pedagogies employed to serve the diverse learning and engagement needs of underrepresented minorities (URMs) enrolled in academic engineering programs. The researcher defined for this study underrepresented minorities as women, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. There is a need for increased representation of URMs in both postsecondary education and the engineering profession. Underrepresented minorities are needed in the engineering profession to contribute to the complete solution and to provide improved ideas for consideration during the design process. The researcher discovered six factors utilized by engineering faculty and academic affairs in postsecondary education to …

Case Study Of Skills Developed During Employment At Kentucky Ffa Summer Camp As A Young Adult, Kelly W. Rexroat

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to provide a qualitative case study analysis of the soft skill development of summer camp staff members at the Kentucky FFA Leadership Training Center and to look at whether or not the leadership development focus of the camp program had an increased impact on the development of the staff members’ leadership skills. For years, FFA summer camp programs have been developing the leadership qualities of FFA members and preparing them to take on leadership roles for the upcoming year. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with former Kentucky FFA summer camp staff members from 2008 to …