624 research outputs found
Evolution and the Constitution: Reassessing the influence of social Darwinism on the turn-of-the-century United States Supreme Court (1873-1937)
Of the controversies surrounding the turn-of-the-twentieth-century United States Supreme Court, one which seems to dominate is the debate over whether the Court drew from social Darwinism in its development and use of the so-called liberty of contract doctrine. This controversy over the Courtās intellectual influences is further complicated by the significant contention among scholars surrounding the meaning of social Darwinism, its proponents, and its influence on late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century American thought. I trace the development of the liberty of contract doctrine through the Courtās minimum wage and maximum hours jurisprudence in order to reexamine the Court for influences of social Darwinism. I argue that, in light of recent scholarship on this view, social Darwinism seems to have played a very marginal role, if any, in the Courtās jurisprudence. In fact, these cases, which have often been cited as evidence that the Court was influenced by social Darwinism, contain very little rhetorical evidence to support this assertion. However, despite this lack of evidence in the Courtās opinions, the influence of social Darwinism should not be entirely dismissed because the opinions may not provide enough insight into the justicesā worldviews to allow one to assess the Court for extra-legal influences
Estimating the Multilevel Rasch Model: With the lme4 Package
Traditional Rasch estimation of the item and student parameters via marginal maximum likelihood, joint maximum likelihood or conditional maximum likelihood, assume individuals in clustered settings are uncorrelated and items within a test that share a grouping structure are also uncorrelated. These assumptions are often violated, particularly in educational testing situations, in which students are grouped into classrooms and many test items share a common grouping structure, such as a content strand or a reading passage. Consequently, one possible approach is to explicitly recognize the clustered nature of the data and directly incorporate random effects to account for the various dependencies. This article demonstrates how the multilevel Rasch model can be estimated using the functions in R for mixed-effects models with crossed or partially crossed random effects. We demonstrate how to model the following hierarchical data structures: a) individuals clustered in similar settings (e.g., classrooms, schools), b) items nested within a particular group (such as a content strand or a reading passage), and c) how to estimate a teacher x content strand interaction.
Dynamic Change Evaluation for Ontology Evolution in the Semantic Web
Changes in an ontology may have a disruptive impact on any system using it. This impact may depend on structural changes such as introduction or removal of concept definitions, or it may be related to a change in the expected performance of the reasoning tasks. As the number of systems using ontologies is expected to increase, and given the open nature of the Semantic Web, introduction of new ontologies and modifications to existing ones are to be expected. Dynamically handling such changes, without requiring human intervention, becomes crucial. This paper presents a framework that isolates groups of related axioms in an OWL ontology, so that a change in one or more axioms can be automatically localised to a part of the ontology
Space and Atmospheric Research in Utah: 1949 to Present
Space and atmospheric research have been carried out in Utah since Dr. Leon B. Linford and his team of researchers from the University of Utah participated in the launching ofV-2 rockets in 1949. This paper describes the work that has been done since that time and situates it in the broader context of space and military technology. Several specific projects are described, including aurora research, the EXCEED missions, CIRRIS missions, SABER, SPIRIT III, and the RAMOS project. Sources of funding and trends in research are also considered. These patterns demonstrate that military and defense needs have shaped space and atmospheric research in Utah
Estimating the Multilevel Rasch Model: With the lme4 Package
Traditional Rasch estimation of the item and student parameters via marginal maximum likelihood, joint maximum likelihood or conditional maximum likelihood, assume individuals in clustered settings are uncorrelated and items within a test that share a grouping structure are also uncorrelated. These assumptions are often violated, particularly in educational testing situations, in which students are grouped into classrooms and many test items share a common grouping structure, such as a content strand or a reading passage. Consequently, one possible approach is to explicitly recognize the clustered nature of the data and directly incorporate random effects to account for the various dependencies. This article demonstrates how the multilevel Rasch model can be estimated using the functions in R for mixed-effects models with crossed or partially crossed random effects. We demonstrate how to model the following hierarchical data structures: a) individuals clustered in similar settings (e.g., classrooms, schools), b) items nested within a particular group (such as a content strand or a reading passage), and c) how to estimate a teacher Ć content strand interaction
Ontology modularization: principles and practice
Technological advances have provided us with the capability to build large intelligent systems capable of using knowledge, which relies on being able to represent the knowledge in a way that machines can process and interpret. This is achieved by using ontologies; that is logical theories that capture the knowledge of a domain. It is widely accepted that ontology development is a non-trivial task and can be expedited through the reuse of existing ontologies. However, it is likely that the developer would only require a part of the original ontology; obtaining this part is the purpose of ontology modularization. In this thesis a graph traversal based technique for performing ontology module extraction is presented. We present an extensive evaluation of the various ontology modularization techniques in the literature; including a proposal for an entropy inspired measure. A task-based evaluation is included, which demonstrates that traversal based ontology module extraction techniques have comparable performance to the logical based techniques. Agents, autonomous software components, use ontologies in complex systems; with each agent having its own, possibly different, ontology. In such systems agents need to communicate and successful communication relies on the agents ability to reach an agreement on the terms they will use to communicate. Ontology modularization allows the agents to agree on only those terms relevant to the purpose of the communication. Thus, this thesis presents a novel application of ontology modularization as a space reduction mechanism for the dynamic selection of ontology alignments in multi-agent systems. The evaluation of this novel application shows that ontology modularization can reduce the search space without adversely affecting the quality of the agreed ontology alignment
Astrophysics datamining in the classroom: Exploring real data with new software tools and robotic telescopes
Within the efforts to bring frontline interactive astrophysics and astronomy
to the classroom, the Hands on Universe (HOU) developed a set of exercises and
platform using real data obtained by some of the most advanced ground and space
observatories. The backbone of this endeavour is a new free software Web tool -
Such a Lovely Software for Astronomy based on Image J (Salsa J). It is
student-friendly and developed specifically for the HOU project and targets
middle and high schools. It allows students to display, analyze, and explore
professionally obtained astronomical images, while learning concepts on
gravitational dynamics, kinematics, nuclear fusion, electromagnetism. The
continuous evolving set of exercises and tutorials is being completed with real
(professionally obtained) data to download and detailed tutorials. The
flexibility of the Salsa J platform tool enables students and teachers to
extend the exercises with their own observations. The software developed for
the HOU program has been designed to be a multi-platform, multi-lingual
experience for image manipulation and analysis in the classroom. Its design
enables easy implementation of new facilities (extensions and plugins), minimal
in-situ maintenance and flexibility for exercise plugin. Here, we describe some
of the most advanced exercises about astrophysics in the classroom, addressing
particular examples on gravitational dynamics, concepts currently introduced in
most sciences curricula in middle and high schools.Comment: 10 pages, 12 images, submitted to the special theme issue Using
Astronomy and Space Science Research in Physics Courses of the American
Journal of Physic
Theology, News and Notes - Vol. 29, No. 02
Theology News & Notes was a theological journal published by Fuller Theological Seminary from 1954 through 2014.https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/tnn/1198/thumbnail.jp
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