A Summary of the Important Components of Female Gender Specific Programming as Determined by Adolescent Females in The Juvenile Corrections System

The purpose of this study was to determine the order of importance of components of juvenile correctional programming as ranked by adolescent females currently assigned to a probation officer in the juvenile correctional system. Twenty- two adjudicated adolescent females ranked in order of their perceived importance thirty-one components of correctional programming using a scale developed from components determined by the current literature to be important for gender specific programming for adolescent females . The results of the study were that subjects rated components addressing issues of physical safety, education, and vocation as being of primary importance. The subjects also stated that it was important, for them to maintain contact with family members while involved in programming. The study findings suggest that programs designed to meet the needs of adolescent females in the juvenile justice system be community-based, ensure the physical safety of the clients served, and focus on educational and vocational skills development

Curriculum for an Introductory Computer Science Course: Identifying Recommendations from Academia and Industry

The purpose of this study was to define the course content for a university introductory computer science course based on regional needs. Delphi methodology was used to identify the competencies, programming languages, and assessments that academic and industry experts felt most important. Four rounds of surveys were conducted to rate the items in the straw models, to determine the entries deemed most important, and to understand their relative importance according to each group. The groups were then asked to rank the items in each category and attempt to reach consensus as determined by Kendall\u27s coefficient of concordance. The academic experts reached consensus on a list of ranked competencies in the final round and showed a high degree of agreement on lists of ranked programming languages and assessments. The industry experts did not reach consensus and showed low agreement on their recommendations for competencies, programming languages, and assessments

A New Index of Environmental Quality

An optimal weighting scheme is proposed to construct a new index of environmental quality for different countries using an approach that relies on consistent tests for stochastic dominance efficiency. The test statistics and the estimators are computed using mixed integer programming methods. The variables that are considered include countries’ greenhouse emissions, water pollution and forest benefits, as from the dataset of the World Bank. First, the stochastic efficient weighting for each set of variables is calculated to build three sub-indices (for greenhouse emissions, water pollution and land without forests) and then an overall risk index of environmental quality is constructed. One main result is that land without forest contributes the most (with around 70%), greenhouse emissions contribute with around 20% and water pollution contributes less (with around 10%). Finally, countries are ranked according to their index of environmental quality and their rankings are compared with those of the Kyoto Protocol.Environmental Quality; Emissions; Water Pollution; Nonparametric Stochastic Dominance, Mixed Integer Programming

Ranking strategic objectives in a strategy map based on logarithmic fuzzy preference programming and similarity method

This paper aims to rank strategic objectives in a strategy map to improve the efficiency of strategy implementation. Objectives are ranked based on strategic destinations using the combination of Logarithmic Fuzzy Preference Programming (LFPP) and similarity method. In the first step, the weight of strategic destinations is obtained using LFPP technique; then objectives are ranked by similarity method. Similarity method uses the concept of alternative gradient and magnitude for effectively solving the general multi-criteria analysis problem. Finally, objectives are ranked in an actual strategy map. As a practical and efficient tool, the proposed approach can assist managers and decision-makers in drawing more efficient output from strategy maps.publishe

Program Synthesis using Natural Language

Interacting with computers is a ubiquitous activity for millions of people. Repetitive or specialized tasks often require creation of small, often one-off, programs. End-users struggle with learning and using the myriad of domain-specific languages (DSLs) to effectively accomplish these tasks. We present a general framework for constructing program synthesizers that take natural language (NL) inputs and produce expressions in a target DSL. The framework takes as input a DSL definition and training data consisting of NL/DSL pairs. From these it constructs a synthesizer by learning optimal weights and classifiers (using NLP features) that rank the outputs of a keyword-programming based translation. We applied our framework to three domains: repetitive text editing, an intelligent tutoring system, and flight information queries. On 1200+ English descriptions, the respective synthesizers rank the desired program as the top-1 and top-3 for 80% and 90% descriptions respectively

Internet Radio: A New Engine for Content Diversity?

While traditional radio stations are subject to extensive government regulations, Internet radio stations remain largely unregulated. As Internet radio usage has increased certain stakeholders have begun to argue that these Internet radio broadcasters are providing significant and diverse programming to American audiences and that government regulation of spectrum-using radio station ownership may be further relaxed. One of the primary justifications for regulation of ownership has been to protect diversity in broadcasting. This study hypothesizes that Internet radio broadcasting does add diversity to the radio broadcasting industry and that it should be considered as relevant by regulators. This study evaluates the role of Internet radio broadcasters according to five criteria intended to gauge the level of diversity being delivered to listeners online. By measuring the levels of format, channel, ownership, location and language diversity among Internet radio stations, it is possible to draw benchmark lessons about the new medium's ability to provide Americans with diverse broadcasting options. The study finds that Internet radio broadcasters are in fact adding measurable diversity to the radio broadcasting industry. Internet broadcasters are providing audiences with access to an increasing number of stations, owners, formats, and language choices, and it is likely that technologies aiding in the mobility of access as well as broadband evolution will reinforce these findings.Comment: 29th TPRC Conference, 200