Critical Introduction: Responsibility and Representation & Introduction to \u3ci\u3eAll My Mother’s Lovers\u3c/i\u3e

This critical component of the creative thesis All My Mother’s Lovers explores the question of fiction writers’ responsibility to themselves, their work, and their readers in the age of social media and easy access of readers to writers and vice versa. Using two examples of recent online controversies, this piece explores the varying ways in which readers respond to writers and writers to readers and rhetorically analyzes the responses of those in positions of power (writers, publishers) as well as the cultural contexts from within which they respond. It then draws conclusions as to the trajectory of these two controversies, finding one to be productive and the other leading to a dead end. This piece then moves to explore its author’s positionality and context as well as how she arrived at her current position, attempting responsible representation, consideration of language and historical stereotypes, and a commitment to listen to and learn from potential reader criticism. The introduction to the creative thesis All My Mother’s Lovers briefly lists important plot points and the themes its author considered during the writing process. Advisor: Timothy Schaffer

PERSEPSI GURU TENTANG PENDIDIKAN BAGI PENYENDANG DISABILITAS

Abstrak: Penelitian survei ini bertujuan untuk mengelaborasi isu disability dalam perspektif guru dengan subfokus survei terdiri dari pemahaman guru tentang disability, keberpihakan guru terhadap hak ABK untuk sekolah, upaya yang dilakukan untuk meningkatkan partisipasi sekolah ABK, kemampuan guru mengajar ABK dan urgensi pendidikan inklusi. Survei melibatkan 250 orang guru sebagai responden yang terpilih secara purposive di Kabupaten Lombok Tengah dan Lombok Timur. Hasil survei menunjukkan bahwa (1) guru memiliki pemahaman yang cukup baik tentang disabilitas; (2) guru belum berperan penting mendorong pendidikan untuk ABK; (3) guru belum melakukan upaya maksimal dalam melakukan pendampingan kepada ABK; (4) kemampuan guru mengajar ABK masih kurang dan (5) pelaksanaan pendidikan inklusi masih dihadapkan pada berbagai tantangan yang harus diupayakan penyelesaiannya agar dapat memberi manfaat maksimal.Abstract:  This survey research aims to elaborate on the issue of disability from a teacher's perspective with a survey sub-focus consisting of teachers' understanding of disability, the alignment of teachers with the rights of children with special school needs, the efforts made to increase the participation of children with special needs schools, the ability of teachers to teach children with special needs and the urgency of inclusive education. The survey involved 250 teachers as respondents who were selected purposively in the districts of Central Lombok and East Lombok. The survey results show that (1) teachers have a fairly good understanding of disability; (2) teachers have not played an important role in encouraging education for ABK; (3) teachers have not made maximum efforts in assisting ABK; (4) the ability of teachers to teach children with special needs is still lacking and (5) the implementation of inclusive education is still faced with various challenges that must be resolved to provide maximum benefits

Overexpression of cofactor of BRCA1 in HepG2 cells: A step towards understanding the role of COBRA1 in hepatocellular carcinoma

Cofactor of BRCA1 (COBRA1) is a BRCA-1 interacting protein that represents one of the four subunits of the negative elongation factor (NELF) complex. NELF is known by its ability to stall RNA Polymerase II during the early phase of transcription elongation, resulting in repressed transcription of several genes including ones associated with tumorigenesis of different cancer types. While it was found to be down-regulated in breast cancer, COBRA1 was found to be up-regulated in the upper gastrointestinal carcinoma. Up to date, the role of COBRA1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is unclear. We have previously demonstrated that silencing of COBRA1 in the HCC cell line HepG2, significantly inhibited the proliferation and migration potentials of the cells. Here, we investigated the effect of ectopic expression of COBRA1 on HepG2 cells proliferation and migration. Lipofectamine 3000 was used to transfect HepG2 cells with a pCMV5-HCOBRA1 plasmid. The transfection efficiency was determined by the percentage of EGFP positive cells (pEGFP-N1+) via fluorescent microscope, semi-quantitative RT-PCR as well as western blot analysis. The cells proliferation and migration following COBRA1 overexpression were assessed using the trypan blue dye exclusion method and the wound-healing assays respectively. The semi-quantitative RT-PCR was used to analyse the mRNA expressions of the other NELF subunits, TFF1 and TFF3 genes, which are known to be regulated by the NELF complex, as well as other tumorigenesis related genes. Our results revealed that COBRA1 transfected cells exhibited a comparable proliferation and migration rates to non-transfected cells. These results were accompanied by an insignificant effect of COBRA1 overexpression on the levels of the proliferation marker; Ki-67 and the anti-apoptotic gene; survivin. Also, the mRNA levels of the other NELF subunits, TFF1 and TFF3 were found to be comparable among all the tested groups. Collectively, our results suggest that the proposed involvement of COBRA1 in HCC is supported by and dependent on the assembly of the active NELF complex, which requires the expression of all four NELF subunits. Moreover, COBRA1 mediated role in HCC tumorigenesis might be due to mechanisms and regulatory pathways other than the ones examined here. However, further studies are required to confirm these notions

Long memory in the Hybrid Time Series

In this paper, consideration is given to the assessment of the availability of long-term memory in a time series with variable coefficients that depend on the Markov chain or the continuous Markov process. In the work we succeeded in establishing sufficient conditions for the present of a long-term memory based on a multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis and a Geweke – Porter-Hudak method. A real example is analysed of the Erste Group in the period 07.01.2000 – 23.10.2017, as a result of which it was possible to prove that this company.&nbsp

Multi-User Detection for the Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA): Optical Parallel Interference Cancellation (OPIC)

Optical Code Division Multiple Access (OCDMA) has recently been proposed as an alternative to frequency and time based multiple access methods for the next generation high-speed optical fiber networks. This is because such system offers a large bandwidth. Based on the vast amount of bandwidth available in optical line, OCDMA system has received much attention in fiber optic Local Area Network (LAN) where the traffic is typically bursty. However, Multiple Access Interference (MAl), which is originated from other simultaneous users, severely limits the capacity of the system. In addition, the need for dynamic threshold in the Conventional Correlation Receiver (CCR) is a very demanding requirement particularly in the high speed LANs. To overcome the stated problems, Optical Parallel Interference Cancellation is used throughout this thesis. Optical Hard Limiter (OHL) has been placed at the front of the OPIC receiver to reduce the effect of MAl and fixed threshold is used to overcome the problem of dynamic threshold. The study carried out using theoretical and simulation. The results reveal that, OPJC system is attractive technology for next generation optical networks. The drawback of OPIC is the increases in the demand for hardware in each receiver. As a result, it requires more complex hardware, higher processing time and cost. To overcome these difficulties, an efficient method is proposed called, One Stage Optical Parallel Interference Cancellation (OS-OPIC) which is based mainly on the OPIC. Performance analysis of the proposed design is done using Optical Orthogonal Code (OOC) as a signature sequence and a new expression for error probability is demonstrated. It is shown that, the proposed method is effective to reduce the hardware complexity, processing time and cost while maintaining the same BER at the cost of increasing threshold value

An investigation of the impact factors to increase citizens' engagement in e-participation on e-government in Saudi Arabia

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The growing use of web technologies has significantly influenced how governments work and provide services to citizens. Electronic government (e-government) has been one of the major developments in recent years in both developing and developed countries. The main objective of e-government is not limited to access information but also to create new ways to improve processes, integrate government services and increase interaction with citizens. One of these ways is electronic participation (e-participation), which offers citizens a two-way communication between them and the government. E-participation, a subset of e-government, has become a common phenomenon in the governments, which are serious about using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for strengthening the government-citizen relationship, such as the use of social networking services, online polls, discussion forum and blogs etc. Unlike traditional methods of communication between citizens and governments, e-participation activities on e-government websites enhance communication and enable citizens to become actively involved in the policy-making process. While there are many researches conducted in the field of e-government, most of these researches investigate the adoption/usage of e-government. However, previous studies failed to investigate citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities. The purpose of this research is to investigate the key factors that influence on citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites in Saudi Arabia. Based on literature review a conceptual model for e-participation on e-government websites proposed. Data was collected from Saudi citizens to find out their perceptions towards e-participation. Following this aim, this research answers the following main question: What are the key factors that influence on citizens’ intention to engage in E-participation on E-government websites in Saudi Arabia? In order to answer the research question, a mixed-method research approach is employed in this study, which incorporated both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. First, a quantitative approach was applied to empirically test the relationship among the constructs of the proposed model. An online survey instrument is used as the method of data collection from Saudi Arabia citizens. A sample of 770 responses was used for data analysis. The data was analyzed using a structural equation modelling(SEM) statistical techniques using AMOS 22.0 to estimate the relationships between the different factors in the research model. Secondly, a qualitative study (a focus group discussion) was used to validate the survey results and provide more insights into the relationships identified. The participants in the focus groups were also the Saudi citizens. One focus group discussion, which consisted of eight participants, was conducted in this study. The participants’ responses throughout the discussion were recorded and transcribed for analysis. The quantitative results show that the proposed model is strongly supported by the data. The results of the focus group revealed the various factors influencing in citizens’ intentions to engage in e-participation, thus supporting the hypotheses and consistent with the quantitative results. The analysis of both the survey and focus group discussion results confirmed that trust, attitude, web design and subjective norms strongly influence citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites. This study contributes to the knowledge by providing an important insight and a better understanding of citizens’ intention to engage in e-participation activities on e-government websites in Saudi Arabia. The findings of this study will assist Saudi local government leaders and managers to better understand the major issues facing e-participation and enable analysis of the extent to which citizens’ online inputs reflect community-wide interests

Optimal Thresholds for Classification Trees using Nonparametric Predictive Inference

In data mining, classification is used to assign a new observation to one of a set of predefined classes based on the attributes of the observation. Classification trees are one of the most commonly used methods in the area of classification because their rules are easy to understand and interpret. Classification trees are constructed recursively by a top-down scheme using repeated splits of the training data set, which is a subset of the data. When the data set involves a continuous-valued attribute, there is a need to select an appropriate threshold value to determine the classes and split the data. In recent years, Nonparametric Predictive Inference (NPI) has been introduced for selecting optimal thresholds for two- and three-class classification problems, where the inferences are explicitly in terms of a given number of future observations and target proportions. These target proportions enable one to choose weights that reflect the relative importance of one class over another. The NPI-based threshold selection method has previously been implemented in the context of Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis, but not for building classification trees. Due to the predictive nature of the NPI-based threshold selection method, it is well suited for the classification tree method, as the end goal of building classification trees is to use them for prediction as well. In this thesis, we present new classification algorithms for building classification trees using the NPI approach for selecting the optimal thresholds. We first present a new classification algorithm, which we call the NPI2-Tree algorithm, for building binary classification trees; we then extend it to build classification trees with three ordered classes, which we call the NPI3-Tree algorithm. In order to build classification trees using our algorithms, we introduce a new procedure for selecting the optimal values of target proportions by optimising classification performance on test data. We use different measures to evaluate and compare the performance of the NPI2-Tree and the NPI3-Tree classification algorithms with other classification algorithms from the literature. The experimental results show that our classification algorithms perform well compared to other algorithms. Finally, we present applications of the NPI2-Tree and NPI3-Tree classification algorithms on noisy data sets. Noise refers to situations that occur when the data sets used for classification tasks have incorrect values in the attribute variables or the class variable. The performances of the NPI2-Tree and NPI3-Tree classification algorithms in the case of noisy data are evaluated using different levels of noise added to the class variable. The results show that our classification algorithms perform well in case of noisy data and tend to be quite robust for most noise levels, compared to other classification algorithms

Making sense of project value from a value-co-creation perspective: an exploratory conceptual framework

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to make sense of how project value is created in projects. We study the extant project management value creation literature using a value co-creation lens based on service-dominant (S-D) logic. We explore how project value is proposed, exchanged and then realized following a project life-cycle. This leads to the identification of an exploratory “value co-creation life-cycle” framework. This framework shows value as a whole transcends the limitation of measurable products value normally used to define the project value. In particular, it shows how operant resources (or actors) - typically referred to as stakeholders - within the project management system exchange services and integrate resources in order to co-create value. The exploratory framework, in turn, would enable future investigation of real projects with the view to unpacking the complex dynamic behavior of project value creation

State formation and identity in the middle East and North Africa

© Kenneth Christie and Mohammad Masad 2013. For states in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia, the Arab Spring has had different implications and consequences, stemming from the politics of identity and the historical and political processes that have shaped development. This book focuses on how these factors interact with globalization and affect state formation