Digital Commons Network^™

Advancing Airport Project Delivery: A Comparison Of Design-Build And Traditional Methods In Terms Of Schedule And Cost Performance, Ramy Khalef, Islam H. El-Adaway

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Current airport infrastructure is in a state of decline, with reports scoring it at an underperforming classification of D+. To address this issue, significant improvement and advancement of the infrastructure is needed. With backing on an authoritative level, the nation can expect an increase in the number of improvement projects. Airport stakeholders have long been accustomed to delivering their projects using traditional methods, such as design-bid-build (DBB). Design-build (DB) is an alternative delivery method that has added benefits for project metrics, such as schedule and cost performance. There is a lack of research evaluating DB within the context of airport …

Parental Participation In An Esl Take-Home Book Bag Program For A Second Grade Class In Al Ain, Dina Ahmad Al Khawaldeh

Theses

The purpose of this current study is to explore Emirati parents' attitudes toward their involvement in their children's ESL take-home book reading experience. The study aims to explore the reading habits of Emirati families and their perceptions of reading books in English with their children.

This study employed a sequential mixed methods design to gather data from parents and students. A pre-experimental demographic survey was sent to the parents and students to ask about their reading habits at home before experiencing it and after the book reading experience. In addition, a take-home literacy bag activity was disseminated to students and …

Analysis Of Cycle 2 Science Textbooks For Representation Of Elements Contributing To Quality Science Textbooks As Learning Resources, Sohani Mehzabin Prova

Theses

Science textbooks are a valuable resource for both students and teachers. They hold a significant role in students' learning of science. Most science teachers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) rely on science textbooks as the foundation for their teaching. However, until now, limited research has been conducted to assess the appropriateness of science textbooks prescribed by the Ministry of Education in the UAE. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the representation of elements contributing to the suitability of cycle 2 (grades 5 to 8) science textbooks as learning resources as prescribed by the Ministry of Education of the UAE. …

Constructing Holistic Spatio-Temporal Scene Graph For Video Semantic Role Labeling, Yu Zhao, Hao Fei, Yixin Cao, Bobo Li, Meishan Zhang, Jianguo Wei, Min Zhang, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As one of the core video semantic understanding tasks, Video Semantic Role Labeling (VidSRL) aims to detect the salient events from given videos, by recognizing the predict-argument event structures and the interrelationships between events. While recent endeavors have put forth methods for VidSRL, they can be mostly subject to two key drawbacks, including the lack of fine-grained spatial scene perception and the insufficiently modeling of video temporality. Towards this end, this work explores a novel holistic spatio-temporal scene graph (namely HostSG) representation based on the existing dynamic scene graph structures, which well model both the fine-grained spatial semantics and temporal …

Followupqg: Towards Information-Seeking Follow-Up Question Generation, Yan Meng, Liangming Pan, Yixin Cao, Min-Yen Kan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Humans ask follow-up questions driven by curiosity, which reflects a creative human cognitive process. We introduce the task of realworld information-seeking follow-up question generation (FQG), which aims to generate follow-up questions seeking a more in-depth understanding of an initial question and answer. We construct FOLLOWUPQG, a dataset1 of over 3K real-world (initial question, answer, follow-up question) tuples collected from a Reddit forum providing layman-friendly explanations for open-ended questions. In contrast to existing datasets, questions in FOLLOWUPQG use more diverse pragmatic strategies to seek information, and they also show higher-order cognitive skills (such as applying and relating). We evaluate current question …

Matk: The Meme Analytical Tool Kit, Ming Shan Hee, Aditi Kumaresan, Nguyen Khoi Hoang, Nirmalendu Prakash, Rui Cao, Roy Ka-Wei Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The rise of social media platforms has brought about a new digital culture called memes. Memes, which combine visuals and text, can strongly influence public opinions on social and cultural issues. As a result, people have become interested in categorizing memes, leading to the development of various datasets and multimodal models that show promising results in this field. However, there is currently a lack of a single library that allows for the reproduction, evaluation, and comparison of these models using fair benchmarks and settings. To fill this gap, we introduce the Meme Analytical Tool Kit (MATK), an open-source toolkit specifically …

Ai Application In Architecture In Uae: Developing And Testing Advanced Optimization Model For A Parametric Shading Structure As A Retrofit Strategy Of A Midrise Residential Building Façade In Downtown Abu Dhabi, Anwar Ghaleb Ahmad

Theses

Artificial intelligence is a phenomenon that influences every aspect of our lives. AI applications have already started to change the methods in different disciplines. Architecture is one of the disciplines that is highly affected by the developments of AI technologies. With the United Arab Emirates heading to employ new technology to lead the country and region development, it is important to explore and develop the application of AI in the strategic disciplines of the country in which the built environment is essential. This study aimed to develop and evaluate an advanced model script (to be used as a tool) using …

Cgt-Gan: Clip-Guided Text Gan For Image Captioning, Jiarui Yu, Haoran Li, Yanbin Hao, Bin Zhu, Tong Xu, Xiangnan He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The large-scale visual-language pre-trained model, Contrastive Language-Image Pre-training (CLIP), has significantly improved image captioning for scenarios without human-annotated image-caption pairs. Recent advanced CLIP-based image captioning without human annotations follows a text-only training paradigm, i.e., reconstructing text from shared embedding space. Nevertheless, these approaches are limited by the training/inference gap or huge storage requirements for text embeddings. Given that it is trivial to obtain images in the real world, we propose CLIP-guided text GAN (CgT-GAN), which incorporates images into the training process to enable the model to "see" real visual modality. Particularly, we use adversarial training to teach CgT-GAN to mimic …

Multimodal Fashion Knowledge Extraction As Captioning, Yifei Yuan, Wenxuan Zhang, Yang Deng, Wai Lam

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Social media plays a significant role in boosting the fashion industry, where a massive amount of fashion-related posts are generated every day. In order to obtain the rich fashion information from the posts, we study the task of social media fashion knowledge extraction. Fashion knowledge, which typically consists of the occasion, person attributes, and fashion item information, can be effectively represented as a set of tuples. Most previous studies on fashion knowledge extraction are based on the fashion product images without considering the rich text information in social media posts. Existing work on fashion knowledge extraction in social media is …

Command And Control: Operationalizing The Unitary Executive, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

The concept of the unitary executive is written into the Constitution by virtue of Article II’s vesting of the “executive Power” in the President and not in executive officers created by Congress. Defenders and opponents alike of the “unitary executive” often equate the idea of presidential control of executive action with the power to remove executive personnel. But an unlimitable presidential removal power cannot be derived from the vesting of executive power in the President for the simple reason that it would not actually result in full presidential control of executive action, as the actions of now-fired subordinates would still …

Using Graph Neural Networks For Social Recommendations, Dharahas Tallapally, John Wang, Katerina Potika, Magdalini Eirinaki

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Recommender systems have revolutionized the way users discover and engage with content. Moving beyond the collaborative filtering approach, most modern recommender systems leverage additional sources of information, such as context and social network data. Such data can be modeled using graphs, and the recent advances in Graph Neural Networks have led to the prominence of a new family of graph-based recommender system algorithms. In this work, we propose the RelationalNet algorithm, which not only models user–item, and user–user relationships but also item–item relationships with graphs and uses them as input to the recommendation process. The rationale for utilizing item–item interactions …

Automating Intended Target Identification For Paraphasias In Discourse Using A Large Language Model, Alexandra C. Salem, Robert Gale, Mikala S. Fleegle, Gerasimos Fergadiotis, Steven Bedrick

Speech and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Purpose:

To date, there are no automated tools for the identification and fine-grained classification of paraphasias within discourse, the production of which is the hallmark characteristic of most people with aphasia (PWA). In this work, we fine-tune a large language model (LLM) to automatically predict paraphasia targets in Cinderella story retellings.

Method:

Data consisted of 332 Cinderella story retellings containing 2,489 paraphasias from PWA, for which research assistants identified their intended targets. We supplemented these training data with 256 sessions from control participants, to which we added 2,415 synthetic paraphasias. We conducted four experiments using different training data configurations to …

Transitioning From Early Childhood Intervention To Early Childhood Special Education: A Phenomenological Study, Brenda E. Arzu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to document and analyze the experiences of Texas parents as their children transition from an early childhood intervention (ECI) program to an early childhood special education (ECSE) setting from parents’ perspectives in hopes of learning what practices made the transition process more meaningful. The specific problem addressed in this study was that parents do not always have insights into the process that their children undergo during the transition from ECI to ECSE. The theoretical framework for this study was based on Schlossberg’s transition theory, which incorporates applications to guide adults with life …

Developing Teachers To Teach English Language Learners (Ells) Via Ell Notebook Strategies, Ebony D. Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract This study explored the effect of developing teachers to teach English language learners (ELLs) through strategic professional development utilizing interactive notebooks to enhance the academic achievement of ELLs. Students trying to learn English as a foreign language need extra language support. For this reason, their teachers should be trained to teach them using various tools, such as interactive notebooks. The action research studied two focus areas dealing with ELLs, which included (a) preparing teachers to teach ELLs who face learning English and content area learning and (b) the use of interactive notebooks and their impact on ELLs’ academic growth. …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: Considerations In The Geriatric Emergency Department Patient, Anita N Chary, Lauren Cameron-Comasco, Kalpana N Shankar, Margaret E Samuels-Kalow

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

This article introduces core topics in health equity scholarship and provides examples of how diversity, equity, and inclusion impact the aging population and emergency care of older adults. It offers strategies for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion to both strengthen the patient-clinician therapeutic relationship and to address operations and systems that impact care of the geriatric emergency department patient.

Originalism After Dobbs, Bruen, And Kennedy: The Role Of History And Tradition, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In three recent cases, the constitutional concepts of history and tradition have played important roles in the reasoning of the Supreme Court. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization relied on history and tradition to overrule Roe v. Wade. New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen articulated a history and tradition test for the validity of laws regulating the right to bear arms recognized by the Second Amendment. Kennedy v. Bremerton School District looked to history and tradition in formulating the test for the consistency of state action with the Establishment Clause.

These cases raise important questions about …

Sun Protection Behaviors And Skin Cancer Risk Among Children Of Color, Williana Magloire

Theses and Dissertations

Sun protection is beneficial for children of color as it decreases the risk for sunburns, hyperpigmentation, and most importantly, skin cancer. Invasive melanoma is commonly seen in children of color due to inadequate sun protection. Parental and caregiver modeling of sun protection behaviors may decrease the likelihood of skin cancer among children of color. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP, 2011) has suggested that pediatricians adopt the role of informing parents about the benefits of using sun protection products for their young children. They recommended that providers discuss sun protection behaviors with both the parent/child beginning at the age of …

The Interactive Effect Of Covid-19 Pandemic, Political Cost, And Executive Compensation On Earnings Management, Shannon Danysh-Hashemi

American Business Review

This study investigates whether the COVID-19 pandemic, government Covid aids and incentive policies, and executive compensation affected the quality of the reported earnings in the leisure and hospitality industry. The pattern of changes in the Discretionary Accrual, DACC, was used as a proxy for the quality of reported earnings. It was examined whether this pattern changed during COVID-19 and was affected by government aid policies and executive compensation. An empirical analysis of 324 American leisure and travel industry data was conducted using multiple regression analysis for the pre-Pandemic period of 2018-2019 and the Pandemic period of 2020-2021. The results indicate …

Exploring College Experiences Of Muslim Students At Four-Year Institutions In Colorado: A Narrative Inquiry, Kamal Gamada Ararso

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the last two decades, Colorado's number of Muslim Americans (citizens and permanent residents) has substantially increased (Bowen, 2009a; Bowen, 2009b; Mohamed, 2021; Roberts, 2022). This increase is reflected in the growing number of Islamic community centers, emerging Islamic schools, mosques, grocery stores, Muslim cuisines, and the diversity of students in the post-secondary education system (Roberts, 2022). Although centralized data about Muslim college students are hard to find, their presence within the higher education system is well-known. Still, in Colorado, Muslims' religious, racial, cultural, and gendered experiences within the higher education system remained unexplored in the research. Therefore, this exploratory …

An Empowerment Evaluation Of Colorado Mountain College’S Mountain Scholars Program Via Latino Alumni Aspirational Goals And Outcomes, Laura Anne Bruch

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative inquiry evaluated Colorado Mountain College’s (CMC) in-house Mountain Scholars Program (MSP) via semi-structured interviews with five of its Latino alumni. This study’s assets-based social justice/transformative philosophical framework included David Fetterman’s methodological empowerment evaluation and Tara Yosso’s conceptual community cultural wealth (CCW) theory. This dissertation in practice examined the gap in literature with regards to an in-house student support services program evaluation that partners with the community and focuses on Latinos’ aspirations and aspirational outcomes. I wanted to be a worthy witness to the student demographic group at CMC, as well as at most American postsecondary institutions, considered the …

Challenging The Positionality Of Western Mainstream English Through The Implementation Of Communication Action Statements, Victoria Mcdermott, Amy R. May

Journal of Communication Pedagogy

Communication is the most powerful tool we have to challenge the plague of invisibility impacting our Indigenous communities. As we continue to challenge the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives touted by our institutions, we need to move beyond mission statements to motion, i.e., action required for meaningful transformation to take place (Qassataq, Iñupiaq, 2022). To call attention to and name the silencing of language and knowledge systems outside of western mainstream english (WME), the present paper proposes the concept of Communication Action Statements (CAS). Based on place and space, CASs recognize, label, and affirm the negative effects of WME, …

Clustering Sustainable Suppliers In The Plastics Industry: A Fuzzy Equivalence Relation Approach, Reza Kiani Mavi, Navid Zarbakhshnia, Neda Kiani Mavi, Sajad Kazemi

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Nowadays, pure economic supply chain management is not commonly contemplated among companies (especially buyers), as recently novel dimensions of supply chains, e.g., environmental, sustainability, and risk, play significant roles. In addition, since companies prefer buying their needs from a group of suppliers, the problem of supplier selection is not solely choosing or qualifying a supplier from among others. Buyers, hence, commonly assemble a portfolio of suppliers by looking at the multi-dimensional pre-determined selection criteria. Since sustainable supplier selection criteria are often assessed by linguistic terms, an appropriate clustering approach is required. This paper presents an innovative way to implement fuzzy …

Revascularization Impact: Quality Of Life Enhancement In Chronic Limb-Threatening Ischemia, Cristian Traian Paius, Vlad Denis Constantin, Alexandru Carap, Andrei Tarus, Grigore Tinica

Journal of Mind and Medical Sciences

Introduction. Globally, over 230 million people have peripheral artery disease, often undiagnosed, leading to chronic limb-threatening ischemia. Revascularization is vital for preventing amputation and improving quality of life. While specific questionnaires for severe ischemia are lacking, the SF-36 questionnaire is widely used to assess quality of life, with variations like SF-12 and SF-8 for larger cohorts. Objectives. Our aim was to assess how different lower limb revascularization methods affect the postoperative quality of life in patients with chronic limb-threatening ischemia. Methods. This study was conducted at the St. Pantelimon Emergency Hospital of Bucharest, Romania. It included 166 adult patients with …

Addressing Racism In Medicine With Community-Based Doula Services For Black Mothers, A Narrative Review Of The Literature And Historical Perspective, Brianna Roberts Canales, Emily Sloane

Marshall Journal of Medicine

No abstract provided.

Teaching Trauma Theory And Practice In Counselor Education: A Multiple Case Study, Charmayne R. Adams, Casey A. Barrio Minton, Jennifer Hightower

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

Teaching about trauma theory and practice is an integral part of counselor preparation. The purpose of this multiple case study was to understand how counselor educators (CEs) designed and facilitated significant learning experiences regarding trauma theory and practice. The researchers aimed to answer two research questions (1.) how do CEs choose which content to address in trauma courses and (2.) which teaching methods do CEs use to facilitate significant learning experiences in trauma courses? The study participants were three CEs teaching trauma courses in multiple formats (face-to-face, online, and hybrid) in CACREP programs. The results indicated that instructors faced unique …

Exploring The Relationship Between The Supervisory Alliance And The Development Of Reflexive Self-Awareness: A Mixed Methods Approach, Alexandre Brien, Réginald Savard, Cynthia Bilodeau, Patricia Dionne

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

The study used embedded design to explore the relationship between alliance and perceived change in reflexive self-awareness in graduate trainees following counseling and psychotherapy programs (n = 48). Linear regression analyses were used to measure the predictive value of alliance on the development of supervisees' reflexive awareness. Qualitative reflexive thematic analysis was also conducted on critical incident reports of supervisees who perceived low vs strong alliances to gain greater in-depth understanding of the quantitative data. Results showed that the alliance does not directly predict observed changes in reflexive awareness. While alliance was found to create favorable conditions to support the …

Counseling Practicum Students’ Experiences Working With Children With Learning Exceptionalities, Kathryn Babb, Viki Kelchner, Laurie O. Campbell

Teaching and Supervision in Counseling

School-based practicums provide opportunities for counselors-in-training to provide supervised counseling services to youth while providing authentic, immersive counseling experiences for the counselor. Children counseled may identify with or without exceptionalities. The researchers sought to understand the experiences of five counselors-in-training who counseled children with exceptionalities during a semester-long school-based practicum. In this phenomenological study, researchers thematically coded transcripts from a focus group about counseling children with exceptionalities. Three themes were identified: (a) counselors-in-training identity inclusive of anticipated counselor identity versus their practical identity, (b) acceptance inclusive of acceptance of self and acceptance of clients, and (c) worldview inclusive of culture …

The Translation Of Palestinian Folksongs In Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time Of White Horses, Bilal Hamamra, Ahmad Qabaha, Eithar Awwad

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

This study investigates the translation of Palestinian folksongs in Ibrahim Nasrallah's Time of White Horses. The study tackles the cultural references and norms embedded in each subcategory following a thematic categorization of Palestinian folksongs. The variant implications the folksongs communicate are also addressed in the light of Nancy Roberts' translation of the novel and Venuti’s discussion about foreignization and domestication. Finally, the research discusses the ways in which translation affects folksongs' artistic and national identity. The novel employed a wide range of songs of different functions and themes namely songs of wedding ceremonies, lamentation, songs of religious ceremonies and …

The Revival Of The Classical Racist Discourse In Europe: A Critical Discursive Analysis Of Racism In The Context Of Russia-Ukraine War, Rami Qawariq, Haneen Estetieh

An-Najah University Journal for Research - B (Humanities)

With the rise of critical theories and legal regulations that criminalize racism and accentuate tolerant and liberal values, racist discourses turned to be articulated indirectly (Essed, 1990; van Dijk & Wodak, 2000; Wodak, 2008), and a neo-racist discourse replaced classical racism to be ostensibly respectable and democratic with reference to cultural, rather than racial, difference (Barker 1981; Jayasuriya, 2002; van Dijk, 1997, 2000). However, a blatant and essentialist racist discourse has found its way back to the public sphere in light of the Russia-Ukraine war. Racist remarks have been documented in different types of texts directed to the masses. Therefore, …

Ai-Based Adaptive Load Balancer For Secure Access To Large Language Models, Assaf Namer, Hector Diaz, Jim Miller, Brandon Maltzman, Hauke Vagts

Defensive Publications Series

Different large language models (LLMs) specialized to domains such as writing code, engaging in conversations, generating content, etc. are available. A specialized LLM can only reliably answer questions in domains over which it has been trained. Large numbers of types of specialized LLMs can make it difficult for a user, such as an application that generates LLM queries, to choose the right type of LLM. This disclosure describes techniques to automatically route query payloads between large language models specialized for different domains. The techniques utilize a vector database to semantically match an LLM to a user query. The techniques also …