15,012 research outputs found

    A Parent's Autoethnography: Examining My Experiences and Identity as Parent, Educator, and Researcher While Teaching Literacy to My Adolescent Sons Who Have Autism and Use Augmentative and Alternative Communication

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    This autoethnography was completed from my unique perspective as a mother to two adolescent sons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who have complex communication needs and use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) to communicate. Although literacy is a human right (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2022a), it often has been overlooked in my sons’ self-contained classrooms in high school. As my sons’ parent and educator, I gathered my reflections, observations, descriptions, journals, lesson plans, and artifacts to examine the experiences I encountered in developing their literacy. Initially, I conducted a pilot project based on Erickson and Koppenhaver’s (2007) Children With Disabilities: Reading and Writing the Four Blocks® Way, the results of which guided my planning in teaching literacy with an adaptation of the more recent Comprehensive Literacy for All: Teaching Students With Significant Disabilities to Read and Write (Erickson & Koppenhaver, 2020). I coded by hand each line of the collected data to extract categories and then streamline these into the meaningful themes to respond to my two research questions: (a) What are the experiences of a parent educator who has been teaching literacy awareness and skills to her adolescent sons who both have autism and use AAC devices? (b) Does the experience shape her identity as a parent, educator, and researcher? Thematic findings pertaining to the first question revealed experiences related to planning and questioning and my own transformational learning and mindshift. Thematic findings related to the second question include: Parental concerns; Educator: advocating and imposter syndrome; Researcher: Lesson planning and questioning; and Transformational learning and mindshift. Findings are discussed in light of the literature on experiences of parents as educators of children with exceptionalities. The study also presents implications for theory, practice, and research, as well as limitations and future directions

    Interpreting wealth distribution via poverty map inference using multimodal data

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    Poverty maps are essential tools for governments and NGOs to track socioeconomic changes and adequately allocate infrastructure and services in places in need. Sensor and online crowd-sourced data combined with machine learning methods have provided a recent breakthrough in poverty map inference. However, these methods do not capture local wealth fluctuations, and are not optimized to produce accountable results that guarantee accurate predictions to all sub-populations. Here, we propose a pipeline of machine learning models to infer the mean and standard deviation of wealth across multiple geographically clustered populated places, and illustrate their performance in Sierra Leone and Uganda. These models leverage seven independent and freely available feature sources based on satellite images, and metadata collected via online crowd-sourcing and social media. Our models show that combined metadata features are the best predictors of wealth in rural areas, outperforming image-based models, which are the best for predicting the highest wealth quintiles. Our results recover the local mean and variation of wealth, and correctly capture the positive yet non-monotonous correlation between them. We further demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of model transfer across countries and the effects of data recency and other biases. Our methodology provides open tools to build towards more transparent and interpretable models to help governments and NGOs to make informed decisions based on data availability, urbanization level, and poverty thresholds.Comment: 12 pages. In Proceedings of the ACM Web Conference 2023 (WWW'23

    Diddy: a Python toolbox for infinite discrete dynamical systems

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    We introduce Diddy, a collection of Python scripts for analyzing infinite discrete dynamical systems. The main focus is on generalized multidimensional shifts of finite type (SFTs). We show how Diddy can be used to easily define SFTs and cellular automata, and analyze their basic properties. We also showcase how to verify or rediscover some results from coding theory and cellular automata theory.Comment: 12 page

    GEE Training Manual on Use of Earth Observation data and Google Earth Engine monitoring and early warning of floods and droughts in Zambia

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    This training manual supported participants in learning the pre-processing tool to provide the user with enhanced time-series processing capabilities and access to various open-source satellite data, learning basic scripts in Google Earth Engine for activities related to floods and drought in showcasing the application of water resource management. Specifically, the experts will give more focus to Google’s Earth Engine platform to showcase large- and small-scale scientific analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets. The codes and step by step procedure are given in the manual

    The Gradual Disappearance Of Financial Literacy In Today\u27s World. What Is Financial Literacy And Why Is It So Important? My Own Story Of Acquisition

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    There is a growing concern in this country that the middle class is disappearing and not in the way one would hope. Instead of families moving into a higher socio-economic class and being able to provide richer life experiences for themselves and their children, vast numbers are shifting to a lower socio-economic status level. The gap between the affluent and those barely eking out an existence is increasing at an alarming rate. This trend will directly affect who can successfully attend college and who will be available and capable to perform the blue-collar jobs that are vital to the continuation of our economy. Many of these jobs are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. While they may not require a college degree, they do require additional post-secondary training and expertise. Longer reaching concerns are that a dwindling middle class equates to a smaller tax base and contributes to a larger segment of the population that needs financial assistance. The productive management of money is part of a concept known as financial literacy. People that have money take this knowledge for granted. Somewhere along the line, whether it was at home, in school, or from personal experiences, successful people learned the value of earning money and using it thoughtfully and intentionally in order to achieve a future goal. No one disputes the fact that personal choices and discretion are parts of the picture. Imagine, however, that the environment in which you grew up did not contain earning possibilities. Perhaps you had to work without pay caring for your siblings, leaving no time to go out and earn your own money. Maybe your family was in the situation where everything that each family member earned was required to try to make ends meet. The result can be a feeling of ignorance and powerlessness around financial literacy and a lack of understanding the difference it could make in your life. This dissertation examines these issues. As a Scholarly Personal Narrative, it will also relate the story of my own journey of acquiring financial literacy and how that knowledge has affected my life. It concludes with a proposal that I created for teaching the concepts of financial literacy to underserved members of our society living at the lower socio-economic level. This education is important because understanding financial literacy can build self-confidence, empowerment, and purpose. This knowledge can also set an example that parents can pass on to their children and future generations. I believe this is one possible route toward breaking the cycle of poverty

    A tetrachotomy of ontology-mediated queries with a covering axiom

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    Our concern is the problem of efficiently determining the data complexity of answering queries mediated by descrip- tion logic ontologies and constructing their optimal rewritings to standard database queries. Originated in ontology- based data access and datalog optimisation, this problem is known to be computationally very complex in general, with no explicit syntactic characterisations available. In this article, aiming to understand the fundamental roots of this difficulty, we strip the problem to the bare bones and focus on Boolean conjunctive queries mediated by a simple cov- ering axiom stating that one class is covered by the union of two other classes. We show that, on the one hand, these rudimentary ontology-mediated queries, called disjunctive sirups (or d-sirups), capture many features and difficulties of the general case. For example, answering d-sirups is Π2p-complete for combined complexity and can be in AC0 or L-, NL-, P-, or coNP-complete for data complexity (with the problem of recognising FO-rewritability of d-sirups be- ing 2ExpTime-hard); some d-sirups only have exponential-size resolution proofs, some only double-exponential-size positive existential FO-rewritings and single-exponential-size nonrecursive datalog rewritings. On the other hand, we prove a few partial sufficient and necessary conditions of FO- and (symmetric/linear-) datalog rewritability of d- sirups. Our main technical result is a complete and transparent syntactic AC0 / NL / P / coNP tetrachotomy of d-sirups with disjoint covering classes and a path-shaped Boolean conjunctive query. To obtain this tetrachotomy, we develop new techniques for establishing P- and coNP-hardness of answering non-Horn ontology-mediated queries as well as showing that they can be answered in NL

    Drivers of permafrost degradation along the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway (ITH)

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    Infrastructure construction on permafrost is challenging. Not only are northern regions undergoing a faster and more intense global warming than the rest of the world, inducing thawing of the permafrost at a worldwide scale. In addition, linear infrastructures such as gravel highways, built on embankments to protect the underlying permafrost, change environmental conditions in various ways, enhancing permafrost degradation. This work aims to utilize remote sensing data and explore the physical parameters that drive permafrost degradation in the regions adjacent to the Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk Highway (ITH) in Northwest Territories, Canada. Within the work, snow accumulation along the embankment toe, vegetation moisture increase, surface water increase in poorly drained areas, earlier snowmelt and vegetation increase along the road are defined as factors that (I) enhance permafrost degradation and (II) are observable using remote sensing techniques. The analysis is conducted using cloud computing services, open-source software packages, and primarily freely available datasets. Snow accumulation conditions are derived using Digital Elevation Models (DEM) as baseline data. The cardinal direction of the road and the predominating wind direction significantly impact the snow accumulation. Moreover, the results indicate that the enhanced snow accumulation generally reaches further distances from the road than previous studies suggest. The impact from the road on vegetation moisture and vegetation conditions, indicated by the Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), respectively, demonstrated significant decreases within the first 25 m from the road edge. This is in line with previous studies. However, whether the observed effect reflects the field conditions or if the spectral signal is affected by other factors like dust is critically discussed. Furthermore, my study revealed that by normalizing the median NDMI and NDVI values on an undisturbed reference area, an additional effect is observed reaching up to 200 m from the road. The analysis of the NIR band indicates that the downstream side became wetter throughout the years compared to the upstream side. The snowmelt pattern indicated by the Normalized Difference Snow Index (NDSI), derived from Landsat images, shows that the areas next to the road are snow-free earlier in spring than the areas further away. The result indicates that the road affects the snowmelt up to 600 m from the road. The findings of this work highlight the importance of future research into the impact of dust on satellite-derived indices. Furthermore, the findings contribute to a better understanding of the spatial scale of altered permafrost drivers following the construction of the ITH

    A Wellbeing@KSU Journey: MAPW Portfolio

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    A process narrative and samples and complete works from my time in MAPW and as a GRA within the health and well-being departments at KSU. The portfolio showcases my journey as a communicator and professional writer and how it has impacted my current career

    AIUCD 2022 - Proceedings

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    L’undicesima edizione del Convegno Nazionale dell’AIUCD-Associazione di Informatica Umanistica ha per titolo Culture digitali. Intersezioni: filosofia, arti, media. Nel titolo è presente, in maniera esplicita, la richiesta di una riflessione, metodologica e teorica, sull’interrelazione tra tecnologie digitali, scienze dell’informazione, discipline filosofiche, mondo delle arti e cultural studies
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