Road distance and travel time for spatial urban modelling

Interactions within and between urban environments include the price of houses, the flow of traffic and the intensity of noise pollution, which can all be restricted by various physical, regulatory and customary barriers. Examples of such restrictions include buildings, one-way systems and pedestrian crossings. These constrictive features create challenges for predictive modelling in urban space, which are not fully captured when proximity-based models rely on the typically used Euclidean (straight line) distance metric. Over the course of this thesis, I ask three key questions in an attempt to identify how to improve spatial models in restricted urban areas. These are: (1) which distance function best models real world spatial interactions in an urban setting? (2) when, if ever, are non-Euclidean distance functions valid for urban spatial models? and (3) what is the best way to estimate the generalisation performance of urban models utilising spatial data? This thesis answers each of these questions through three contributions supporting the interdisciplinary domain of Urban Sciences. These contributions are: (1) the provision of an improved approximation of road distance and travel time networks to model urban spatial interactions; (2) the approximation of valid distance metrics from non-Euclidean inputs for improved spatial predictions and (3) the presentation of a road distance and travel time cross-validation metric to improve the estimation of urban model generalisation. Each of these contributions provide improvements against the current state-of-the-art. Throughout, all experiments utilise real world datasets in England and Wales, such datasets contain information on restricted roads, travel times, house sales and traffic counts. With these datasets, I display a number of case studies which show up to a 32% improved model accuracy against Euclidean distances and in some cases, a 90% improvement for the estimation of model generalisation performance. Combined, the contributions improve the way that proximity-based urban models perform and also provides a more accurate estimate of generalisation performance for predictive models in urban space. The main implication of these contributions to Urban Science is the ability to better model the challenges within a city based on how they interact with themselves and each other using an improved function of urban mobility, compared with the current state-of-the-art. Such challenges may include selecting the optimal locations for emergency services, identifying the causes of traffic incidents or estimating the density of air pollution. Additionally, the key implication of this research on geostatistics is that it provides the motivation and means of undertaking non-Euclidean based research for non-urban applications, for example predicting with alternative, non-road based, mobility patterns such as migrating animals, rivers and coast lines. Finally, the implication of my research to the real estate industry is significant, in which one can now improve the accuracy of the industry's state-of-the-art nationwide house price predictor, whilst also being able to more appropriately present their accuracy estimates for robustness

The Cost of Primacy: The Potential Impacts on American Domestic Health

While scholars, soldiers and politicians have argued about the international consequences of American grand strategy, relatively little attention has been paid to the potential domestic consequences of American hegemony versus isolationism. This paper is an effort to start the process of understanding the relationship between American primacy (the current strategy) and its domestic impact. It looks at general areas of measurement, economic and social indicators, to determine if primacy has a positive or negative impact on the American people. Though additional research is necessary, this paper suggests primacy has not had the negative consequences suggested by proponents of isolationism

Improving Your Cattle Risk Management Skills Using BeefBasis.com

Effective risk management requires knowledge of the relationship between local cash market prices and futures market prices, known as the basis. BeefBasis.com is a new web site designed to help feeder cattle buyers and sellers more accurately, and more easily, project basis for a specific set of cattle than they have been able to do in the past. More accurate basis forecasts means feeder cattle buyers and sellers will be able to more accurately assess pricing opportunities afforded them by the futures market, and this in turn means they will be able to manage market risk more effectively

Servicium Debitum and Scutage in Twelfth Century England With Comparisons to the Regno of Southern Italy

The purpose of this study is to re-assess the system of military obligation in England at the earliest time sufficient documents survive to provide an in-depth explanation. It is both an examination of the twelfth-century feudal structure and lordship arrangements as described by these documents, and how they came to be in their twelfth-century forms. This is supplemented by a similar, but briefer, evaluation of the Regno of southern Italy and of the occasional relevant documents from Normandy. An examination of the place of military obligation in the kingdom of England covers three major areas: the assessment of this obligation, the cost of service both to the king and the individual knight, and how the men actually served. These three areas offer insight into how the Normans established the servicium debitum, how knights exempted themselves from their obligation or were compensated for extra service, and various aspects of what their service entailed, such as castle guard. A study of the returns made by tenants-in-chief in 1166 suggests that these have been misinterpreted in the past; their inspiration lay in the desire of the barons to protect themselves from excessive royal demands, rather than in the crown’s desire to update the servicium debitum. The survey conducted in the Regno earlier is unlikely to have served as a prototype for the 1166 inquiry; it was different in purpose and in form. Scutages are examined, to show the complex patterns of payment, and to suggest that under Henry II a significant number of tenants-in-chief performed their service, rather than commuted it. The Pipe Rolls are used to analyse military expenditure at a local level in two counties, Kent and Shropshire; in particular pay rates are reconstructed. A series of appendices provide details of this expenditure, along with evidence of scutages

Mentoring Teachers, Students, and Faculty

The research detailed in this project surrounds the idea of relationships. Relationships are the basis of education in every aspect of the profession. In this scenario, a Professional Development School (PDS) partnered with a university to develop a mentor coach as well as teacher candidates. The PDS in question, Orange Park High School (OPHS), partnered with the University of North Florida (UNF) in order to train a new mentor coach while also training a teacher candidate and observing the impact it has on the Algebra I students of OPHS. The organization of this partnership was orchestrated by a Resident Clinical Faculty (RCF), the role of whom was to serve as a facilitator between the PDS and the university. Since Clay County and UNF already built a strong relationship between each other, the goal of this partnership was to use this strong relationship to mentor the teacher candidate and ensure they complete their duties as an intern, as well as train a new mentor coach and strengthen the skills needed to support Algebra I teachers in their endeavors of improving Algebra I students’ test scores. By having the mentor coach work with the teacher candidate to enhance their teaching skills, the mentor coach improved their own facilitation skills. The role of the teacher candidate, in addition to their intern duties, was to push into Algebra I classrooms during group work and provide additional knowledge as well as support for the students in the classroom

Eye movements in code reading:relaxing the linear order

Abstract—Code reading is an important skill in programming. Inspired by the linearity that people exhibit while natural lan-guage text reading, we designed local and global gaze-based mea-sures to characterize linearity (left-to-right and top-to-bottom) in reading source code. Unlike natural language text, source code is executable and requires a specific reading approach. To validate these measures, we compared the eye movements of novice and expert programmers who were asked to read and comprehend short snippets of natural language text and Java programs. Our results show that novices read source code less linearly than natural language text. Moreover, experts read code less linearly than novices. These findings indicate that there are specific differences between reading natural language and source code, and suggest that non-linear reading skills increase with expertise. We discuss the implications for practitioners and educators. I