Death and Lightness: Using a Demographic Model to Find Support Verbs

Some verbs have a particular kind of binary ambiguity: they can carry their normal, full meaning, or they can be merely acting as a prop for the nominal object. It has been suggested that there is a detectable pattern in the relationship between a verb acting as a prop (a \term{support verb}) and the noun it supports. The task this paper undertakes is to develop a model which identifies the support verb for a particular noun, and by extension, when nouns are enumerated, a model which disambiguates a verb with respect to its support status. The paper sets up a basic model as a standard for comparison; it then proposes a more complex model, and gives some results to support the model's validity, comparing it with other similar approaches.Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages, uses aclap.st

Afrikaanse landbouwgigant wordt langzaam wakker

De agrarische sector in Nigeria bloeide, totdat de olieindustrie opkwam. Van die industrie heeft slechts een klein deel van de bevolking geprofiteerd. Men komt nu tot het inzicht dat landbouw weer één van de pijlers van de economie zou moeten worden, en dat biologische land- bouw daarin een belangrijk aandeel moet hebben. Nigeria heeft nog veel te winnen

Phenomenology and networked learning: mobilage glimpsed from the inside through an online focus group

This paper arises from doctoral studies which adopted a multi-methods design which aimed to disclose being healthcare students using a mobile phone for academic work: the student and mobile phone, i.e. mobilage, was the unit of analysis. This paper picks up on a long-term but sparse conversation about the use of phenomenology to investigate networked learning. Reasons for the paucity of work in this area are explored, including the nature of questions that phenomenology seeks to engage: to unveil and convey pre-reflective human consciousness. I seek to supplement this gap, as I see it, in the literature by contrasting two arms of my thesis project: one relied on ten in-person encounters with informants and another an online focus group designed to gather information from within the informant's lifeworld. These two methods frame a discussion of the merits, weaknesses and fidelity of my approach to gathering data pursuant to hermeneutic phenomenology, i.e. considering the difference between methods where the researcher is or is not in the informant'simmediate co-presence. Gadamer's horizon fusion metaphor is arguably easier to conceive of with informant and researcher co-located, where the setting and conversation is informal, perhaps typical of everyday mobile phone use. Ten such encounters were undertaken and analysed through repeated listening to audio recordings and phenomenological writing. In contrast, the online focus group lasted for three months with seven informants who never met physically. Informed by experience sampling methods, weekly trigger messages were posted for the group to respond to, ideally in situ. Acknowledging that all data is mediated in need of interpretation, the paper reflects on the possible effects of data gathering at varying levels of temporal and interpretive proximity, or 'hermeneutic shades', between the researcher and the phenomena carried within data gathered, helping to condition what weight to afford information from different media. Van Manen's analytical method and goal of writing vocative anecdotes to convey aspects of the essence of a lived experience is considered against examples of direct accounts from the online focus group, one of which, it is argued, fulfils his criteria for phenomenological anecdotes. It is proposed that this demonstrates the potential worth of an online medium to not only supply data for phenomenological writing but arguably even represent phenomena without passing through the hermeneutic/analytical writing process

Contingent Valuation of Sports Stadiums and Arenas: Temporal Embedding and Order Effect

Using the Contingent Valuation Method, this paper estimates the value of public goods the National Football League’s Jaguars produce for Jacksonville, Florida, including the value of elevating Jacksonville to “major league” status and the value of improving racial relations. It also estimates the incremental value of public goods potentially produced by a National Basketball Association team in Jacksonville. The present value of public goods created by the Jaguars is $36.5 million or less, far below subsidies provided to attract the Jaguars. For a basketball team, the figure is less than$22.8 million. The results add to the growing body of CVM literature indicating that sports public goods probably cannot justify the large public expenditures on stadiums and arenas.

An Analysis of Retention Factors In Undergraduate Degree Programs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

This mixed-methodological study explored the factors that predict a student\u27s likelihood to complete an undergraduate program in a STEM discipline at one campus reliant upon that mission. Offered in response to a national imperative for the U.S. to compete globally, researchers contend educators must better prepare a STEM foundation and inspire STEM careers. This study employed a quantitative and qualitative approach to (a) identify key indicators of success for students entering a STEM discipline, (b) determine that living in the residence hall had an impact on success, and (c) identify quantifiable drop-out rationale for students who did not complete their STEM program. A discriminate function analysis was applied to the data extracted from the subject university. At the 95% confidence level, three indicators surfaced as significant. A student\u27s entering high school GPA has a meaningful correlation to eventual graduation; an incoming student with a 3.0 high school GPA who declares a STEM major is 10.3 times more likely to graduate than a student entering with a 2.0 GPA. In this study, due to its at-risk target population, there emerged a negative correlation with enrollment in the College Orientation Course. The third predictor identified that living in the residence halls has significant predictive value on STEM graduation. An incoming freshman who declares a STEM major and lives in the residence hall is 2.2 times more likely to be successful than a STEM student who does not live in a residence hall. A qualitative analysis was used to elicit the significant drop-out rationale of students who did not finish their STEM-declared major or dropped out of college entirely. A post-hoc, purposefully selected group of respondents derived from interviews with successful graduates identified students who had declared a STEM major but failed to graduate. They cited financial pressures, math and science challenges, and poor choices as their primary drop out themes. Successful graduates were also interviewed in the qualitative portion of this study to determine factors that influenced their success. Cited most often were interaction with key faculty, working less than 15 hours per week, and involvement in clubs and industry-sponsored organizations

Banner News

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Single-use bag extractable case study: Lessons learned

A supplier\u27s ability to furnish extractable data from single-use components and systems to end users is of extreme importance. The data allows an end user to effectively assess the risk these extractables have on process fluids and final drug products. The protocols followed to produce such data are currently a point of discussion between suppliers and end users. In this case study, single-use bags were subjected to a portion of the BioPhorum Operations Group (BPOG) extractable protocol. This poster documents the testing process and lessons learned when executing such an evaluation, along with suggestions to improve the uniformity of the process