An Architectural Approach to Ensuring Consistency in Hierarchical Execution

Hierarchical task decomposition is a method used in many agent systems to organize agent knowledge. This work shows how the combination of a hierarchy and persistent assertions of knowledge can lead to difficulty in maintaining logical consistency in asserted knowledge. We explore the problematic consequences of persistent assumptions in the reasoning process and introduce novel potential solutions. Having implemented one of the possible solutions, Dynamic Hierarchical Justification, its effectiveness is demonstrated with an empirical analysis

The Crescent Student Newspaper, January 28, 1983

Student newspaper of Pacific College (later George Fox University). 8 pages, black and white.https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/the_crescent/1992/thumbnail.jp

Crossing America’s Borders: Chinese Immigrants in the Southwesterns of the 1920s and 1930s

Today, when we think of the film Western, we think of a genre dominated by Anglo-American heroes conquering the various struggles and obstacles that the nineteenth-century frontier presented to settlers and gunslingers alike—from the daunting terrain and inclement environment of deserts, mountains, and plains to the violent opposition posed by cattle ranchers and Native Americans. What we tend to forget, most likely because the most famous Westerns of the last seventy-five years also forgot, is that Chinese immigrants played an important role in that frontier history. As Edward Buscombe confirms, “[g]iven the importance of their contribution, particularly to the construction of the Central Pacific railroad, the Chinese are under-represented in the Western.” In the 1920s and ’30s, many films focused on the smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants—whether men for work or women for prostitution. Although a topic for a handful of social dramas such as The Miracle Makers (W. S. Van Dyke, 1923), Speed Wild (Harry Garson, 1925), Let Women Alone (Paul Powell, 1925), Masked Emotions (David Butler/Kenneth Hawks, 1929), and Lazy River (George B. Seitz, 1934), as well as newspaper-crime films such as I Cover the Waterfront (James Cruze, 1933), and Yellow Cargo (Crane Wilbur, 1936), the smuggling of Chinese people was also common in Westerns. According to the AFI Catalog, Chinese characters and actors appear in minor roles in at least seventy-eight silent and classical-era Westerns as cooks, laundrymen, and restaurant owners. These seventy-eight Westerns ranged from A-Westerns set in the nineteenth-century frontier to B-Westerns set in the modern West. Of the latter group, several Westerns—more specifically, “Southwesterns”—offered plots that connected Chinese immigrants to crime through the smuggling of opium, laborers, and prostitutes into the United States from China via Mexico. Southwesterns were lower-budget and were typically shot with cheap sets, grainy film stock, and few retakes (what we would call today B-Westerns), set in the contemporaneous Southwest (i.e., California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) near the border with Mexico: it was this borderland setting that invited stories of smuggling and border penetration.3 According to the AFI Catalog, of the 182 Westerns released between 1910 and 1960 that are set in the Mexican–American border region, 39 offer plots centered on smuggling various kinds of things, from opium and liquor to silver, dynamite, and counterfeit money, as well as guns. Southwesterns exploited the borderland setting to offer exciting smuggling plots that connected crime to Chinese immigrants. Although the opium-smuggling films connect crime to China, they rarely feature Chinese characters. In contrast, the immigrant-smuggling films present Chinese people as a physical and visible alien threat to America’s national borders, and it is these films that are the focus of this article. As this article will demonstrate, there were many Westerns centered on smuggling plots related to Chinese immigration, and the borders that these films were concerned with were as much cultural and racial as territorial. In other words, the presence of illegal Chinese immigrants assisted the genre of the Western to confirm the borders of American national identity

Evolution of Community Policing in New York City

This study examines the various community policing initiatives, or lack of community policing initiatives, within the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from 1984 to present. Community policing is a policing model that is currently in the forefront of the criminal justice field due to strained relationships between many communities and the police. The community policing initiatives examined in this study are organized as follows: the Community Patrol Officer Program (C-POP) under Police Commissioner Ward (1984-1989); the Safe Streets, Safe City Program under Police Commissioner Brown (1989-1992), which established community policing as the dominant operational philosophy in the NYPD; Broken Windows data-driven policing under Police Commissioner Bratton (1994-1996), which ended community policing as the dominant operational philosophy; the Lack of Emphasis on Community Policing under Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly (2002-2014); the Re-emergence of Community Policing under Police Commissioner Bratton’s second term (2014-2016); and currently the Neighborhood Coordination Officer Program (NCO) under Police Commissioner O\u27Neill (2016-present). These initiatives were analyzed as an evolutionary process in order to determine how community policing models have changed in the NYPD as well as attempt to identify the factors driving the change in policing styles. This study includes research of prior community policing initiatives as well as first hand observations of current community policing initiatives within the NYPD. It was ultimately determined that numerous factors influenced the various community policing initiatives. Surprisingly, even though addressing the needs of the community is often cited as the sole or even primary goal of community policing programs, it was determined that this was not necessarily the case across NYPD policing initiatives examined in this study. This research only examines the evolution of community policing initiatives in the NYPD, and perhaps can act as a springboard for future studies on the effectiveness of NYPD community policing practices in terms of community satisfaction

Spartan Daily, January 29, 1981

Volume 76, Issue 4https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6708/thumbnail.jp

An Exploratory Study of Patient Falls

Debate continues between the contribution of education level and clinical expertise in the nursing practice environment. Research suggests a link between Baccalaureate of Science in Nursing (BSN) nurses and positive patient outcomes such as lower mortality, decreased falls, and fewer medication errors. Purpose: To examine if there a negative correlation between patient falls and the level of nurse education at an urban hospital located in Midwest Illinois during the years 2010-2014? Methods: A retrospective crosssectional cohort analysis was conducted using data from the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) from the years 2010-2014. Sample: Inpatients aged ≥ 18 years who experienced a unintentional sudden descent, with or without injury that resulted in the patient striking the floor or object and occurred on inpatient nursing units. Results: The regression model was constructed with annual patient falls as the dependent variable and formal education and a log transformed variable for percentage of certified nurses as the independent variables. The model overall is a good fit, F (2,22) = 9.014, p = .001, adj. R2 = .40. Conclusion: Annual patient falls will decrease by increasing the number of nurses with baccalaureate degrees and/or certifications from a professional nursing board-governing body