StackInTheFlow: StackOverflow Search Engine

Programmers increasing rely on an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which offers capabilities for writing, debugging and testing code. Most developers, ranging from novices to pros, reference outside sources when developing, such as the popular Q&A site StackOverflow. In the 2016 StackOverflow Developer Survey it was observed that 78% of survey participants visited StackOverflow at least once a day, with 58% visiting multiple times a day. The purpose of the StackInTheFlow software development tool is to reduce the amount of time and interruption necessary to gather external information during development. This enables the developer to remain in-the-flow of solving software engineering problems. This tool not only provides standard information retrieval capabilities similar to popular search engines such as Google, but also a feature to auto-generate queries based on the developer’s current work context, extracted from within the IDE. The auto-query feature functions by first extracting features from the IDE, including snippets of source code such as import statements and the current cursor line, as well as, if available, compilation error messages. From these features candidate query terms are extracted. These candidate terms are then compared against a dictionary constructed from a dump of all StackOverflow articles. From this dictionary, various retrieval statistics for pre-retrieval query quality are computed for each term. The highest ranking terms are then chosen to form a query which is sent to the StackOverflow API and the relevant questions are returned and displayed to the developer.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1172/thumbnail.jp

Screening and Brief Intervention for Alcohol Misuse in Older Adults: Training Outcomes Among Physicians and Other Healthcare Practitioners in Community-Based Settings

Screening and brief intervention (SBI) is increasingly available to older adults who engage in at-risk drinking. This study examined the extent to which SBI training influenced the willingness of healthcare providers in a community-based hospital and other clinical settings to promote the implementation of SBI. Ninety-three healthcare practitioners (primarily physicians, nurses, and social workers) who attended SBI training were asked about their intentions to apply the information in their professional practice, as well as their enthusiasm about recommending the training to others in their profession. Although there were no differences among the professions in terms of commitment to apply the information or level of comfort using the techniques, physicians were less interested in promoting SBI training among their colleagues. Although it may be more difficult to promote SBI in locations that don’t primarily provide mental health services, results suggest that primary care settings are precisely where training may be most useful

Caregiver Education and Service Utilization in African American Families Dealing with Dementia

For more than a decade attention has been focused on Alzheimer’s family caregivers in African American communities. The Fourth Report of the Advisory Panel on Alzheimer’s Disease to the U. S. Congress and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calls for “…public education and outreach efforts specifically targeted to ethnic elders and their families and communities through the development and dissemination of culturally relevant materials emphasizing both the established facts about [Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders] and the efficacy of seeking treatment.” (Advisory Panel on Alzheimer’s Disease, 1993, p. 50). While federal financing and state initiatives have addressed some of the inequities, minority family caregivers remain underserved

Applying Hierarchical Tag-Topic Models to Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a question and answer site for programming questions. It has become one of the most widely used resources for programmers, with many programmers accessing the site multiple times per day. A threat to the continued success of Stack Overflow is the ability to efficiently search the site. Existing research suggests that the inability to find certain questions results inunanswered questions, long delays in answering questions, or questions which are unable to be found by future visitors to the site. Further research suggests that questions with poor tag quality are particularly vulnerable to these issues.In this thesis, two approaches are considered for improving tag quality and search efficiency: automatic tag recommendations for question authors, and organizing the existing set of tags in a hierarchy from general to specific for Stack Overflow readers. A hierarchical organization is proposed for it\u27s ability to assist exploratory searches of the site.L2H, a hierarchical tag topic model, is a particularly interesting solution to these approaches because it can address both approaches with the same model. L2H is evaluated in detail on several proposed evaluation criteria to gauge it\u27s fitness for addressing these search challenges on Stack Overflow

Awareness Matters: Improving Healthcare Workers’ Self-Efficacy, Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes Related to Mental Illness and Suicide Prevention

Problem Description Healthcare workers’ (HCWs) negative stigmas, poor attitudes, and lack of knowledge impact the care delivered to patients with a mental illness or who may be suffering with suicidal thoughts. Rationale Raising HCWs’ awareness, knowledge and skills have been linked to improving the negative stigmas, biases, and attitudes that impede the care required to achieve optimal health outcomes. Intervention Participants attended a 90-minute Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) gatekeeper training, each participant received six bi-weekly emails about mental health issues, suicide prevention, and community resources. A pre/post survey design using the Mental Illness Clinicians’ Attitude Scale (MICA-4) and the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule (MAKS) was used to measure changes in stigmas, attitudes, and knowledge. Results The initial survey was completed by 99 HCWs and post by 72 (73%), QPR was completed by 73 (74%) participants. Groups were established based on the number of emails answered and QPR attendance. The mean percentage and the mean absolute change were calculated for each group, and a two-tailed t-test compared differences between groups. The group who attended QPR and answered 5 or more emails compared to the group who did not attend QPR and answered p value of p=0.01. Pre/post-QPR surveys demonstrated 100% (n=73) self-reported their knowledge level about suicide prevention as either low, medium, or high improved after training and no low reports were given in the post survey. Each participant self-reported their knowledge in 1) how to ask someone about suicide, 2) how to persuade them to get help, and 3) how to refer someone to local resources for immediate assistance. Conclusion The project demonstrated a self-reported positive impact on HCWs’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes about mental illness and suicide prevention. QPR training and bi-weekly educational emails should be considered as an option when addressing suicide and mental illness. This work sets the foundation for future developments and larger scale implementation for healthcare organizations. The impact of raising HCWs’ awareness, knowledge, and skills related to mental illness and suicide prevention may increase the early identification and referrals of patients, friends, family members, and community members, leading to better outcomes for all

As the Anglo-Saxon Sees the World: Meditations on Old English Poetry

It is a pity that Old English poetry is not more widely known, not only because it is beautiful and powerful but because to read it is to experience a different way of thinking. It is also a pity - or opportunity - that many first-year Old English students express a "love-hate" relationship with the language. Therefore, it is worth trying to discover what there is in the poetry to interest the general educated public and create enthusiasts among undergraduates. The multitudinous answers, found herein, have one over-riding answer: the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking. Old English poetry opens a door into a dim past by disclosing, in puzzle-piece hints, that epistemological world, which becomes more fascinating the more one pokes around in it. This dissertation seeks to give the beginning student and the reader from the general educated public a chance to wander in this landscape where, generally, only scholars tread

Awareness Matters: Improving Healthcare Workers’ Self-Efficacy, Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes Related to Mental Illness and Suicide Prevention

Problem Description: Healthcare workers’ (HCWs) lack of knowledge impacts the care received by patients with mental illness and suicidal ideations. Rationale: Increasing knowledge has been linked to patients seeking care and achieving optimal health outcomes. Intervention: Participants attended training and received interactive emails over a six-week period. Results: 73 HCWs attended training and responded to eight of the twelve emails. A paired t-test demonstrated a statistically significant change in both survey instruments when participants attended training and answered 5 or more emails (p=0.01 & p=0.02). Conclusion: Raising awareness through training and emails impacted HCWs\u27 knowledge which led to better identification of patients in need

ELDER-CAREGIVING AMONG UNIVERSITY EMPLOYEES: RESPONSIBILITIES AND NEEDS

Although many institutions of higher education often house the researchers who study eldercare, few have documented the need for information and services among their estimated 460,000 employees who face the difficult task of effectively balancing work and eldercare responsibilities. Even fewer have established programs to address this need. Drs. Constance Coogle and Edward Ansello have recently completed an exhaustive survey of VCU employees (N = 11,430) to determine the extent to which they provide care to disabled parents or spouses.[1] A longer, more detailed survey was sent to those who indicated that they were eldercaregivers to measure their perceived sense of burden , job-related effects of eldercare, and need for eldercare assistance. Approximately 35% of VCU employees provide some kind of eldercare. The typical eldercaregiving employee at VCU is a 42 year-old, white, married, college-educated female working in a classified position and caring for a mother or mother-in-law. The typical eldercare recipient is a 75 year-old, white, female in fair physical health with occasional memory difficulty and dependent in at least one activity of daily living. More than one-third of the eldercaregivers experience mild to moderate levels of burden and another 20% experience even greater levels of strain. About half of the respondents felt that their eldercare responsibilities interfered with their work responsibilities to some extent. More than half of the eldercaregiving employees suffer from stress on the job and about half feel exhausted at times. The majority of caregivers leave work early in order to tend to their eldercare duties and more than half miss work altogether. About half say that their work productivity is negatively affected, and more than one-third say that the quality of their work is compromised. In general, caregiving employees would like information about the availability of community resources, dealing with caregiver stress, choosing long-term care facilities, selecting public or private insurance, and communicating effectively with health or social service professionals. Institutional programs or policies, such as caregiver seminars, resource fairs, and a family care leave policy would also be helpful. This study documents the pressing need for programs and policies which provide information and services for employees who care for elderly relatives. The need is especially great among those who have the dual responsibility of child care and eldercare, and those who are not married. With the recent creation of the Dependent Care Services office, VCU is beginning to address this problem through the provision of lunchtime seminars, a video discussion series, and the establishment of an Alzheimer\u27s support group. In this effort, VCU serves as an example to other institutions of higher education interested in improving job performance and worker satisfaction by helping their employees more effectively balance their work and eldercare responsibilities. [1] The research was supported in part by the Grants-In-Aid Program for Faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University

Using multiple agents in uncertainty minimization of ablating target sources

The objective of this research effort is to provide an efficient methodology for a multi-agent robotic system to observe moving targets that are generated from an ablation process. An ablation process is a process where a larger mass is reduced in volume as a result of erosion; this erosion results in smaller, independent masses. An example of such a process is the natural process that gives rise to icebergs, which are generated through an ablation process referred to as ice calving. Ships that operate in polar regions continue to face the threat of floating ice sheets and icebergs generated from the ice ablation process. Although systems have been implemented to track these threats with varying degrees of success, many of these techniques require that the operations are conducted outside of some boundary where the icebergs are known not to drift. Since instances where polar operations must be conducted within such a boundary line do exist (e.g., resource exploration), methods for situational awareness of icebergs for these operations are necessary. In this research, efficacy of these methods is correlated to the initial acquisition time of observing newly ablated targets, as it provides for the ability to enact early countermeasures. To address the research objective, the iceberg tracking problem is defined such that it is re-cast within a class of robotic, multiagent target-observation problems. From this new definition, the primary contributions of this research are obtained: 1) A definition of the iceberg observation problem that extends an existing robotic observation problem to the requirements for the observation of floating ice masses; 2) A method for modeling the activity regions on an ablating source to extract ideal search regions to quickly acquire newly ablated targets; 3) A method for extracting metrics for this model that can be used to assess performance of observation algorithms and perform resource allocation. A robot controller is developed that implements the algorithms that result from these contributions and comparisons are made to existing target acquisition techniques.Ph.D