Improving instructional effectiveness with computer‐mediated communication

This study explores the use of asynchronous Computer‐Mediated Communication (CMC) in the delivery of instructional content, and points up the interaction among learners, as well as between learners and instructors. The instructional content in the project described was available to learners online as Microsoft Word documents, with email being used for communicating within the student group. Many students, as well as some of the instructors, felt uncomfortable with the flexibility and openness that a CMC environment allowed. However, once familiar with this process of instruction and interaction, learners were able to work consistently at their own pace, and understand that instructors are interested in every individual learner's opinion and in the collective views of the group. It was evident that a CMC‐based instructional delivery system, when carefully planned, has the potential to facilitate that outcome, and to improve instructional effectiveness

Wiener Index and Remoteness in Triangulations and Quadrangulations

Let $G$ be a a connected graph. The Wiener index of a connected graph is the sum of the distances between all unordered pairs of vertices. We provide asymptotic formulae for the maximum Wiener index of simple triangulations and quadrangulations with given connectivity, as the order increases, and make conjectures for the extremal triangulations and quadrangulations based on computational evidence. If $\overline{\sigma}(v)$ denotes the arithmetic mean of the distances from $v$ to all other vertices of $G$, then the remoteness of $G$ is defined as the largest value of $\overline{\sigma}(v)$ over all vertices $v$ of $G$. We give sharp upper bounds on the remoteness of simple triangulations and quadrangulations of given order and connectivity

Mistaken in the Man: The Life, Death, and Estate Trial of John McClellan

John McClellan was among the original founders of the Sioux Falls town site in Dakota Territory in the year 1857. During his lifetime, McClellan never spoke much about his family or his origins. After amassing considerable wealth selling land in the 1870s and 1880s, McClellan died in an elevator accident in 1899. His death left open the question of who would inherit his money and property. Three groups of claimants came before the local courts with the belief that John McClellan was, in some way, their relative. After eighteen years of litigation, none of the claimant parties could prove that the man who died in Sioux Falls was their relative by the name John McClellan. As a result, the courts escheated McClellan’s estate to the state of South Dakota. Given the evidence presented by the claimants, the question remains as to whether or not this was the correct decision. By utilizing the archived materials from the McClellan estate trial, the two Sioux Falls newspapers of the day, and various other documents from throughout the United States, it was possible to thoroughly reexamine the cases presented by all three of the trial’s claimant parties. The research material showed that each claimant had a relative named John McClellan, and all of their documented family stories seemed to fit the pattern of the Sioux Falls man’s life. However, there were no solid means by which any of the three parties could prove that their relative was the same man who died in Sioux Falls in 1899. By recreating the story of John McClellan’s life from numerous archival materials, and by reexamining the evidence brought forward during the estate trial, it is clear that the state of South Dakota was correct in its ruling that John McClellan died intestate. Ultimately, each claimant was mistaken in the identity of the John McClellan in Sioux Falls. This is the first time the story of John McClellan’s life, as well as the estate trial following his death, has been told in detail

Issues in Modeling Military Space

Fighter Pilots students undertake an intense 120-day training program. New classes of students enter the training program at regular interval. Students endured rigorous academic, simulator, and aircraft training throughout the program. Squadron schedulers ensure the multiple classes and students are scheduled for the activities. Simulator and aircraft training are scheduled individual for each student. Academic training are taught to the class. Aircraft utilization must also be considered. Aircraft Sortie training are also constrained by daylight hours. Additionally, students are limited to a maximum of three training events in a given day. Squadron schedulers must balance these requirements to ensure students meet their training requirements and successfully graduate. The dynamic training environment requires advanced robust schedules with flexibility to accommodate changes. A Visual Interactive Modeling approach is used to generate schedules. Current schedules are being generated manually with an Excel spreadsheet. Taking advantage of Excel\u27s Visual Basic Programming language, the Excel tool is modified in several ways. Scheduling Dispatch rules are implemented to automatically generate feasible schedules. Graphical User Interfaces are used to create a user-friendly environment. Schedulers guide the schedule building process to produce a robust schedule. An attrition environment is created to simulate attrition probabilities of aircraft sortie training due to operations, maintenance, weather, and other cancellations. Analysis of dispatch rules are analyzed

Agglomeration mechanism during the preparation of nickel(0) and iron(0) zeolites

Magnetization measurements have been used to study the reduction process of Ni - zeolites and the thermal decomposition of iron pentacarbonyl adsorbed on NaY zeolites . The Ni(0) particle size distribution in H2»reduced NiNaA, Ni NaX, Ni NaY and NiNaM is bidisperse. The amount and the volume of particles exceeding the cage dimensions increases in the sequence Μ,Υ,Χ,Α zeolites. Particle fusion is found to be the rate determining step. With decomposition of Fe(C0)5/NaY adducts, up to 97 wt.% of the iron particles produced are smaller than 1.3 nm. Fluidized sample bed, inert gas atmosphere and fast heating up to 440 Κ are essential to reach mononodal dispersion

Usufruct in the Land of Tribute: Property, Coercion, and Sovereignty on Early Colonial Eastern Long Island

In reexamining the early colonial history of Eastern Long Island, this thesis combines archaeological, archival, published records, and oral historical sources to explore the relationship between property, coercion, and sovereignty among the Algonquian-Ninnimissinuok and English settlers of New England. It begins with an overview of historical and contemporary models of political economy among Native groups in the pre-contact and pre-settlement era Northeast, emphasizing the importance of neo-evolutionary anthropology as an instructive corollary to more traditional functionalist and evolutionary theories of Native political economy. Special emphasis is placed on passages from classical ethnographic sources that gesture towards coercive and meaningful inequality within Algonquian societies. Subsequently, the relationship between usufruct forms of property ownership, territorial sovereignty, and kinship is analyzed in detail. Focus is placed on the historiographic tension created by the ownership of resource use-rights by multiple kinship lineages and the simultaneous possession of territorial sovereignty by Algonquian polities. Attention is then turned towards the early colonial New England context and the incorporation of Eastern Long Island Algonquians into the nascent English tributary chiefdom following the Pequot War. Focus is placed on the particular connection between sovereign authority and the preeminence of a single lineage of sachems among Eastern Long Island Algonquians, who ruled over a cohesive polity known as the Paumanack ( Land of Tribute ). Turning towards the English settlement of Long Island, it is argued that the planting of English colonists proceeded as Long Island sachems surrendered partial use-rights over those resources least essential for the reproduction of their authority. Confronted directly is the notion that English settlers and Algonquian sachems misunderstood one another\u27s concepts of property ownership from within a usufruct/fee-simple binary. An emphasis is placed on conceptualizing English \u27property\u27 acquisitions, and those resources retained by the Long Island Algonquians after 1636, as necessarily limited due to the English Empire\u27s overarching demand for sovereignty. The work concludes with an analysis of coercion within the Paumanack and local customs of lineage and inheritance, which are argued to be cognatic with a preference for patrlineage

Location-Quality-aware Policy Optimisation for Relay Selection in Mobile Networks

Relaying can improve the coverage and performance of wireless access networks. In presence of a localisation system at the mobile nodes, the use of such location estimates for relay node selection can be advantageous as such information can be collected by access points in linear effort with respect to number of mobile nodes (while the number of links grows quadratically). However, the localisation error and the chosen update rate of location information in conjunction with the mobility model affect the performance of such location-based relay schemes; these parameters also need to be taken into account in the design of optimal policies. This paper develops a Markov model that can capture the joint impact of localisation errors and inaccuracies of location information due to forwarding delays and mobility; the Markov model is used to develop algorithms to determine optimal location-based relay policies that take the aforementioned factors into account. The model is subsequently used to analyse the impact of deployment parameter choices on the performance of location-based relaying in WLAN scenarios with free-space propagation conditions and in an measurement-based indoor office scenario.Comment: Accepted for publication in ACM/Springer Wireless Network