Assessment of Cognitive Style Preference: A Conceptual Model

Research in adaptive hypermedia educational systems has increased with the growth of the Internet. Currently, all adaptive hypermedia educational systems collect information about cognitive style through completion of a questionnaire based on a psychometric test. This direct measure may be intrusive and annoying to a student and makes an adaptive system aligned to cognitive style unavailable for students that have not completed the questionnaire. It is posited that non-intrusive methods for determining the cognitive style of hypermedia system users are needed to maximize the usability, functionality, and goals of adaptive hypermedia systems. This paper offers a new approach for the autonomous computer-based assessment of preferred cognitive style that can support studies in user modeling and human-computer interface domains. It further posits a conceptual model that attempts to determine the preferred cognitive style of an online educational hypermedia user through click-stream analysis of their web-based hypermedia choices and browsing patterns

A Secure Behavior Modification Sensor System for Physical Activity Improvement

Today, advances in wireless sensor networks are making it possible to capture large amounts of information about a person and their interaction within their home environment. However, what is missing is how to ensure the security of the collected data and its use to alter human behavior for positive benefit. In this research, exploration was conducted involving the infrastructure and intelligence aspects of a wireless sensor network through a Behavior Modification Sensor System. First was to understand how a secure wireless sensor network could be established through the symmetric distribution of keys (the securing of the infrastructure), and it involves the mathematical analysis of a novel key pre-distribution scheme. Second explores via field testing the intelligence level of the system. This was meant to support the generation of persuasive messages built from the integration of a person\u27s physiological and living pattern data in persuading physical activity behavior change associated with daily walking steps. This system was used by an elderly female in a three-month study. Findings regarding the infrastructure or the novel key pre-distribution scheme in comparison to three popular key distribution methods indicates that it offers greater network resiliency to security threats (i.e., 1/2^32 times lower), better memory utilization (i.e., 53.9% less), but higher energy consumption (i.e., 2% higher) than its comparison group. Findings from the intelligence level of the research posit that using a person\u27s physiological and living pattern data may allow for more information rich and stronger persuasive messages. Findings indicate that the study participant was able to change and improve her average daily walking steps by 61% over a pre-treatment period. As the study participant increased her physical activity, changes in her living pattern were also observed (e.g., time spent watching television decreased while time spent engaged in walking increased by an average of 15 minutes per day). Reinforcement of these findings were noted between a pre and post-study survey that indicated the study participant moved from a contemplation stage of change where physical activity engagement was intended but not acted upon to an action stage of change where physical activity engagement dominated the new behavior

Persuading Physical Activity Engagement with a Behavior Modification Sensor System

The use of computing technologies to persuade behavior change has been an active research domain in recent years; yet, the question of the impact of persuasive messages generated from an understanding of a person’s daily living pattern from wake through sleep remains unanswered. This paper describes a recently completed study of a behavior modification sensor system that was developed and embedded in the home of an elderly Hispanic female. The developed information system supported real-time user monitoring of physical activity and in-home living activity for the purpose of building “information rich” persuasive-based messages intended to promote behavior change in daily physical activity and not linked to a sports-based activity. Initial findings from a three month exploratory study posit that understanding and using a person’s daily living pattern can support more “information rich” and stronger persuasive messages and improve physical activity within the message recipient

Precision Simulations for Future Colliders

Future particle colliders will usher in a new era of precision physics. It will be crucial that the theory community can provide highly precise predictions forthese experiments. In particular, for future e+e− colliders the theoretical calculations will need to improve by a factor 2-100, depending on the observable. In this thesis,we will present the theoretical improvements implemented in the SHERPA event generator for e+e− physics. We will concentrate on the treatment of QED radiation within the framework of Yennie, Frautschi and Suura resummation and discuss its impact on future colliders. In particular, we shall show how initial state radiation can be resummed in a process-independent manner to all orders in the QED coupling.We find that the resummation alone is not sufficient, and the inclusion of fixed-order corrections improves the perturbative description substantially. We will apply these corrections to the study of e+e−→ff,e+e−→W+W− and e+e−→ZH processes at a future lepton-lepton collider, and discuss the impact of the QED corrections.In the second part of this thesis we will consider precision calculation of W/Z+jet at a future hadron-hadron colliders, namely the HE-LHC/FCC-hh. The theoretical modelling of these processes is crucial for controlling the background in many beyond the standard model searches. The processes are calculated up to next-to-next-to-leading order in the QCD coupling αs. A detailed and robust study of the associated scale and shape uncertainties is presented

Complexity and Complicity: Quality(s) and/or Effectiveness in Teacher Education

The period spanning 2001 to 2015 could best be characterized in the words “shock and awe” in the United States of America. During this tumultuous time, the public good was placed under increasingly austere measures as a direct result of war, widespread financial speculation, and crash of the financial, investment, and real estate market(s). Subsequently, a banking industry bailout of epic proportions - shouldered disproportionately by average American taxpayers - led to political upheavals, and an increasingly divided body politic. Public education was severely impacted. With the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) school districts were placed under audit and individual schools were often labelled as failures. Congress attempted to fix the law in 2007, yet reauthorization stalled. In 2008, the economic crises compounded the educational impasse with a growing disparity of financial resources, urban neglect and decay. The inauguration of President Barack Obama ushered in the American Recovery and Restoration Act (2009). This act was intended to stimulate the economy, and it did at least save some of the teaching jobs that would otherwise have been cut as local and state revenues were collapsing under the strain. However, a new paradigm also emerged in which funding to the schools would be shifted from need-based to accountability-based and a lottery system called Race to the Top (2009) changed teachers and teacher education dramatically

Save Our Schools Rally Chicago, March 17, 2013

Using a video camera, I documented the historic Save our Schools Rally Chicago, March 27, 2013. Included was a march led by President Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), interviews respectively of Reverend Jesse Jackson, a special education teacher-Diana, and a healthcare worker, and footage of community members performing civil disobedience. Perhaps most compelling are the voices of students—high school seniors— who spoke eloquently against school closings

Endocrine control of ovulation rate in the cow

Techniques to increase prolificacy in cattle have met with limited success; the aim of these studies was to investigate the potential of actively immunising cattle against certain gonadal hormones, and to examine the physiological basis of these treatments. Eight heifers were immunised against 8mg of a testosterone conjugate in Freund's Incomplete Adjuvant, & nine animals served as controls. These heifers were given one priming and two booster injections at four-month intervals. After the last booster injection, 7/8 animals had become anoestrous, and displayed significantly raised blood progesterone & mean LH concentrations,increased LH pulse frequency, & decreased mean FSH concentrations.Seven months after this treatment, 3/7 anoestrous heifers resumed ovarian cyclicity, with a mean ovulation rate of 2.7+0.7.To determine if the different ovarian responses observed above could be obtained by changes of ovarian steroid feedback seen during the oestrous cycle, groups of 6 heifers were implanted with large,medium or small sized oestradiol capsules during the luteal phase of the cycle. Five control heifers received empty implants. During the luteal phase of the cycle following implantation, all heifers were ovariectomised. The effect of the treatment on ovarian function and gonadotrophin secretion in the presence or absence of progesterone (PRID) was then determined. Increasing physiological concentrations of oestradiol reduced the number of large antral follicles and corpora lutea, but not the total number of antral follicles >lmm diameter. A combination of progesterone and oestradiol were fully effective in maintaining luteal-phase concentrations of LH and FSH, and follicular-phase concentrations of oestradiol alone were able to maintain LH and FSH concentrations within the physiological range. Thus changes of blood steroid levels similar to those seen during the oestrous cycle may interrupt ovarian function.Cattle were therefore immunised against a non-steroidal, partly purified fraction of ovine follicular fluid (PPFF) enriched ininhibin-like activity as measured in vivo and in vitro. Active immunisation against 0.4mg and 4mg ovine PPFF produced 1/5 & 3/5 heifers with multiple ovulations, respectively; this was not associated with changes of FSH secretion. To examine in more detail the endocrine responses to this treatment, and to investigate possible comparative aspects, cows were immunised against 4mg ovine, porcine or equine PPFF. No treatment increased ovulation rate, but the porcine-PPFF immunised heifers showed a 7-fold increase in mean LH secretion that could not be explained by alterations in pulsatile secretion or in steroid feedback.Collectively, these results suggest that the cow does not respond consistently to treatments so far designed to alter gonadotrophin secretion, that inhibin is not a major feedback hormone in this species, and that the heifer may possess an influential intra-ovarian control mechanism which ultimately determines ovulation rate