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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Qualitative Spatial Reasoning With Holed Regions, Maria Vasardani Dec 2009

Qualitative Spatial Reasoning With Holed Regions, Maria Vasardani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intricacies of real-world and constructed spatial entities call for versatile spatial data types to model complex spatial objects, often characterized by the presence of holes. To date, however, relations of simple, hole-free regions have been the prevailing approaches for spatial qualitative reasoning. Even though such relations may be applied to holed regions, they do not take into consideration the consequences of the existence of the holes, limiting the ability to query and compare more complex spatial configurations. To overcome such limitations, this thesis develops a formal framework for spatial reasoning with topological relations over two-dimensional holed regions, called the …


Support Vector Methods For Higher-Level Event Extraction In Point Data, Jon Devine Aug 2009

Support Vector Methods For Higher-Level Event Extraction In Point Data, Jon Devine

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Phenomena occur both in space and time. Correspondingly, ability to model spatiotemporal behavior translates into ability to model phenomena as they occur in reality. Given the complexity inherent when integrating spatial and temporal dimensions, however, the establishment of computational methods for spatiotemporal analysis has proven relatively elusive. Nonetheless, one method, the spatiotemporal helix, has emerged from the field of video processing. Designed to efficiently summarize and query the deformation and movement of spatiotemporal events, the spatiotemporal helix has been demonstrated as capable of describing and differentiating the evolution of hurricanes from sequences of images. Being derived from image data, the …


Specifying And Detecting Topological Changes To An Areal Object, Jixiang Jiang Aug 2009

Specifying And Detecting Topological Changes To An Areal Object, Jixiang Jiang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.


Development Of Theory Of Mind From Ages Four To Eight, Rachelle Smith May 2009

Development Of Theory Of Mind From Ages Four To Eight, Rachelle Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study comprised two experiments that engaged one hundred eighteen children, divided into three age groups (4-, 6-, & 8-year-olds) in competitive games with an adult designed to explore advances in children’s theory of mind (TOM) beyond false-belief mastery. The game paradigms were designed so that children with an understanding of RAI (the understanding that a social partner may be observing one’s behavior to gain insight into one’s intentions and that one can observe the partner’s behavior to gain similar insight – a proposed later development of TOM) would be more effective competitors than children who lacked such awareness. It …


Towards Spatial Queries Over Phenomena In Sensor Networks, Guang Jin May 2009

Towards Spatial Queries Over Phenomena In Sensor Networks, Guang Jin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Today, technology developments enable inexpensive production and deployment of tiny sensing and computing nodes. Networked through wireless radio, such senor nodes form a new platform, wireless sensor networks, which provide novel ability to monitor spatiotemporally continuous phenomena. By treating a wireless sensor network as a database system, users can pose SQL-based queries over phenomena without needing to program detailed sensor node operations. DBMS-internally, intelligent and energyefficient data collection and processing algorithms have to be implemented to support spatial query processing over sensor networks. This dissertation proposes spatial query support for two views of continuous phenomena: field-based and object-based. A field-based …


An Embedding Graph For 9-Intersection Topological Spatial Relations, Matthew P. Dube May 2009

An Embedding Graph For 9-Intersection Topological Spatial Relations, Matthew P. Dube

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the practice of mapmaking, it is commonplace to represent many spatial phenomena as if they were in a different dimension than they truly are. In this context, it is extremely important to understand the total set of relationships available in a two-dimensional setting. Currently, there exist many sets of relations in two dimensions that have been modeled by the 9-intersection matrix. Many of these sets of relations have defined conceptual neighborhood graphs that show the inherent topological similarities between different types of configurations. Many of these sets of relations, however, do not have established conceptual neighborhood graphs. Furthermore, …