The construction and evaluation of seven lessons correlating music in grades three and six.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Time-Sensitive Bayesian Information Aggregation for Crowdsourcing Systems

Crowdsourcing systems commonly face the problem of aggregating multiple judgments provided by potentially unreliable workers. In addition, several aspects of the design of efficient crowdsourcing processes, such as defining worker's bonuses, fair prices and time limits of the tasks, involve knowledge of the likely duration of the task at hand. Bringing this together, in this work we introduce a new time--sensitive Bayesian aggregation method that simultaneously estimates a task's duration and obtains reliable aggregations of crowdsourced judgments. Our method, called BCCTime, builds on the key insight that the time taken by a worker to perform a task is an important indicator of the likely quality of the produced judgment. To capture this, BCCTime uses latent variables to represent the uncertainty about the workers' completion time, the tasks' duration and the workers' accuracy. To relate the quality of a judgment to the time a worker spends on a task, our model assumes that each task is completed within a latent time window within which all workers with a propensity to genuinely attempt the labelling task (i.e., no spammers) are expected to submit their judgments. In contrast, workers with a lower propensity to valid labeling, such as spammers, bots or lazy labelers, are assumed to perform tasks considerably faster or slower than the time required by normal workers. Specifically, we use efficient message-passing Bayesian inference to learn approximate posterior probabilities of (i) the confusion matrix of each worker, (ii) the propensity to valid labeling of each worker, (iii) the unbiased duration of each task and (iv) the true label of each task. Using two real-world public datasets for entity linking tasks, we show that BCCTime produces up to 11% more accurate classifications and up to 100% more informative estimates of a task's duration compared to state-of-the-art methods

Physician-Patient Relationship: The Permissibility of Ex Parte Communications between Plaintiff\u27s Treating Physicians and Defense Counsel, The

Ex parte interviews of nonparty witnesses are commonly used by attorneys in determining whether witnesses have sufficiently valuable information to warrant taking their deposition or using their testimony at trial as well as in actually preparing witnesses to testify. In the Brandt cases, the Missouri Supreme Court permitted ex parte communications between a plaintiffs physicians and defense counsel. This Note will examine the reasoning behind the court\u27s decision and compare the Brandt decision to various approaches taken by other jurisdictions to resolve the apparent conflict between the physician-patient relationship and informal discovery methods such as ex parte communications

Telepresence and telerobotics

The capability for a single operator to simultaneously control complex remote multi degree of freedom robotic arms and associated dextrous end effectors is being developed. An optimal solution within the realm of current technology, can be achieved by recognizing that: (1) machines/computer systems are more effective than humans when the task is routine and specified, and (2) humans process complex data sets and deal with the unpredictable better than machines. These observations lead naturally to a philosophy in which the human's role becomes a higher level function associated with planning, teaching, initiating, monitoring, and intervening when the machine gets into trouble, while the machine performs the codifiable tasks with deliberate efficiency. This concept forms the basis for the integration of man and telerobotics, i.e., robotics with the operator in the control loop. The concept of integration of the human in the loop and maximizing the feed-forward and feed-back data flow is referred to as telepresence

Geology of the Eastern part of the Lesmahagow Inlier

The Silurian rocks of the Lesmahagow inlier crop out over an area of approximately 80 square miles in the Ayrshire-Lanarkshire borderland (Fig. 1). The region is one of gently rolling moorland reaching maximum elevation on Nutberry Hill (1712 feet O.D.). It is drained by a series of small streams disposed about two watersheds. The courses of some of these streams have been in part determined by the fault pattern, notable examples being the Greenock Water and the Pockmuir Burn.Approximately 60 square miles, comprising the eastern two thirds of the inlier, were mapped by the author between 1958 and 1961 on the Ordnance Survey 6" sheets NS 62, 63, 64, 72, 73 and 74. Geological Survey of Scotland sheets 22, 23, 14 and 15 cover the area.Structurally the area is a complexly faulted pericline separating the Carboniferous basins of Douglas, Lanark, Ayr and Muirkirk (see Macgregor and MacGregor, 1948, p.12 and 13). Following the discovery of well-preserved eurypteroids by Slimon (see Murchison, 1856), the area has been studied by many geologists. Between 1855 and 1899 a great deal of collecting was done and many papers were published describing the unusual fauna of the area. In 1899 Peach and Horne gave a complete account of the stratigraphy and structure of the area and summarised the earlier literature (see Peach and Horne, 1899, Chap. 24 and Appendix, p.717). These authors divided the succession into 11 parts and considered that it represented an unbroken sequence ranging in age from (?)Wenlock to Lower Old Red Sandstone. The general anticlinal form of the inlier was described and its succession compared with that of the adjacent Hagshaw Hills inlier. Since 1899 almost all the work done on the area has been palaeontological. This work has been principally concerned with the age of the rocks, their correlatives in Scotland and Norway, and the importance of their record to the problem of the Siluro- Devonian boundary. (See Denison, 1956; Heintz, 1939, 1957; King, 1934; Lamont, 1947, 1952, 1955; Macgregor and MacGregor, 1948; Pringle and Ross, 1930; Robertson, 1957; Stetson, 1927, 1928; St9Srmer, 1934; and Westoll, 1945, 1948, 1958.)The objects of this work were as follows: 1. To remap the inlier and to re- examine the structural and stratigraphic interpretations made by Peach and Horne (1899). 2. To study the detailed stratigraphy of the Lesmahagow inlier and to attempt to reconstruct the sedimentary history of the region with particular reference to the relationship between sedimentation and tectonics.The laboratory work was done in the Grant Institute of Geology, University of Edinburgh and the Geologisches Institut der Universitat, W{irzburg, Bavaria

Modelling Illinois Community College Online Enrollments versus the Economy from 2008-2018

Online enrollment at Illinois community colleges and Illinois public universities has increased from 2008-2018. The purpose of this study was to examine and model the statistical significance between Illinois community college online enrollment and key economic indicators from 2008-2018. The economic indicators chosen for the model were the Illinois Coincident Index and a binary dummy variable that represented typical Illinois state funding or lack thereof during the Illinois Budget Impasse. The method of modeling chosen was the ordinary least squares method. The research questions addressed the statistical significance of the Illinois Coincident Index and the dummy funding variable in 2008-2018 and 2008-2019 online enrollment models. The results of this study offer Illinois community college administrators a statistically significant, predictive model for online enrollment. Future modeling considerations to improve the statistical significance could include Illinois public university enrollment and the availability of federal and Illinois financial assistance

In Search of a Standard: Serious Damage in the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing

The U.S. textile and apparel industries employed approximately two and a half million people in 1950.1 Since then, the industries have lost close to one million jobs, of which 857,000 have been lost since 1970.2 Competition from imported goods has contributed significantly to the decline.\u27 Now the U.S. textile and apparel industries face the specter of accelerated job loss due to the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC)4 - a product of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations5 - which calls for the phasing out of import quota limitations in the textile and apparel industries

In Search of a Standard: Serious Damage in the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing

The U.S. textile and apparel industries employed approximately two and a half million people in 1950.1 Since then, the industries have lost close to one million jobs, of which 857,000 have been lost since 1970.2 Competition from imported goods has contributed significantly to the decline.\u27 Now the U.S. textile and apparel industries face the specter of accelerated job loss due to the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC)4 - a product of the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations5 - which calls for the phasing out of import quota limitations in the textile and apparel industries