476 research outputs found
Optimizing Face Recognition Using PCA
Principle Component Analysis PCA is a classical feature extraction and data
representation technique widely used in pattern recognition. It is one of the
most successful techniques in face recognition. But it has drawback of high
computational especially for big size database. This paper conducts a study to
optimize the time complexity of PCA (eigenfaces) that does not affects the
recognition performance. The authors minimize the participated eigenvectors
which consequently decreases the computational time. A comparison is done to
compare the differences between the recognition time in the original algorithm
and in the enhanced algorithm. The performance of the original and the enhanced
proposed algorithm is tested on face94 face database. Experimental results show
that the recognition time is reduced by 35% by applying our proposed enhanced
algorithm. DET Curves are used to illustrate the experimental results.Comment: 9 page
An Economic Assessment of Damage Caps in Medical Malpracitce Litigation Imposed by State Laws and the Implications for Federal Policy and Law
Many states have implemented laws which limit non-economic (e.g., pain and suffering) damages as a result of medical malpractice. These laws are seen by proponents as reducing medical malpractice insurance costs and preserving access to health care – especially for lower income individuals. Opponents believe that individuals are harmed through being prevented from seeking a full measure of redress for medical malpractice incidents, by reducing access to the court system, and that these laws simply enrich insurance companies and doctors.
Federal lawmakers are currently studying the potential effect of uniform medical malpractice damage limits at the national level. It is therefore of interest to legal scholars, policy makers and the public to determine the actual effects of such laws.
We find that limits do not reduce access to the court system, yet reduce the incentive to litigate the weakest claims, reduce the average size of malpractice awards, and reduce total loss costs (a measure of insurance provider payments/losses). These savings are subsequently passed on to consumers
Realism in Arnold Bennett and Najib Mahfuz: a comparative study in the Arabic and the English novel
Although the field of Comparative Literature has
received much attention in Western countries since the time early
in the nineteenth century when it was first recognised and organ¬
ised as an independent discipline, it is only recently that this
field of study has become widespread in the Arab world. As a
result, although some general works have been written on the
subject, a great deal of work remains to be done at the level of
individual studies of particular authors or particular literary
trends. This thesis is an attempt to meet one need in this area,
being a comparative study of the realistic techniques of Najib
Mahfuz, one of the most outstanding Arab writers of the present
century, and one of the most famous English realists, Arnold Bennett.
The thesis consists of a foreword followed by five
chapters.
Chapter One serves as the main introduction to the
thesis and consists of three sections:
i. A survey of Comparative Literature which seeks to
establish the subject-matter and aims of this discipline,
and to explain its methodology and value.
ii. A historical review of the English novel,
iii. A historical review of the Arabic novel.
The aim of these sections is not to provide new information but
to provide a framework within which the parallel developments in
the two literatures can be traced and correlated. This is one
of the basic methods of comparative Literature.
Chapter Two is divided into four sections:
i. A description of the environment of the Five Towns
necessary for the understanding of Bennett's
Staffordshire novel.
ii. A biography of Bennett.
iii. A description of Old Cairo, the locale of Mahfuz's
realistic novels.
iv. A biography of Mahfuz.
The aim of this chapter is to explain the background of each author
in order to compare the effect of environment on their work and to
account for similarities and differences in their work caused by
this.
Chapter Three is concerned with a general discussion
of the school of Realism, with particular attention to the English
and Arabic traditions.
Chapter Four: Realism in Bennett and Mahfuz - a study
of the literary trends discussed in Chapter Three as exemplified in
the works of the two authors and as seen by critics. This chapter
includes a discussion of Virginia Woolf's attack on Bennett's
realism and of the Stream of Consciousness approach to novel-writing.
Chapter Five is divided into two main sections with many
subdivisions. The first section discusses elements in common in
the two authors, and the second examines those aspects in which Bennett could be said to have influenced Mahfuz. The conclusion
drawn is that in the majority of cases the similarities are so
striking that they cannot be explained as coincidence or arising
independently from similar circumstances and that an element of
influence must be involved.
The thesis is concluded by an appendixed questionnaire
on a number of topics which was submitted to and completed by
Mahfuz
How university students evaluate the role of social media in political polarization: Perspectives of a sample of Turkish undergraduate and graduate students
This study aimed to find out if there is a relationship between social media and political polarization in Türkiye from the perspective of Turkish students. To reach this aim, the needed data were collected through qualitative and quantitative approaches. A total of 303 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The sample consisted of university Turkish students across undergraduate, masters, and PhD levels in Türkiye aged between 18 and 50+. As well, an online focus group discussion with six Turkish students from different universities and education levels was conducted to gain a more in-depth understanding of the study’s problem. The results of the study showed that the perspectives of the Turkish students were that social media had a weak-to-moderate effect on political polarization in Türkiye. Furthermore, the results indicated that the studied sample of the Turkish students does not rely on social media platforms to obtain political news, and most of them do not follow political leaders on social media. Moreover, communication platforms did not encourage many Turkish students to express themselves, which is an indication that social media algorithms have contributed to a medium degree in creating filter bubbles through the content they suggest to users. Results have also shown that Turkish students are afraid that their posts and comments are being censored
A modified generalized projective Riccati equation method
A modification of the generalized projective Riccati equation method is proposed to treat some nonlinear evolution equations and obtain their exact solutions. Some known methods are obtained as special cases of the proposed method. In addition, the method is implemented to find new exact solutions for the well-known Dreinfelds-Sokolov-Wilson system of nonlinear partial differential equations
Comparing Traditional and LLM-based Search for Image Geolocation
Web search engines have long served as indispensable tools for information
retrieval; user behavior and query formulation strategies have been well
studied. The introduction of search engines powered by large language models
(LLMs) suggested more conversational search and new types of query strategies.
In this paper, we compare traditional and LLM-based search for the task of
image geolocation, i.e., determining the location where an image was captured.
Our work examines user interactions, with a particular focus on query
formulation strategies. In our study, 60 participants were assigned either
traditional or LLM-based search engines as assistants for geolocation.
Participants using traditional search more accurately predicted the location of
the image compared to those using the LLM-based search. Distinct strategies
emerged between users depending on the type of assistant. Participants using
the LLM-based search issued longer, more natural language queries, but had
shorter search sessions. When reformulating their search queries, traditional
search participants tended to add more terms to their initial queries, whereas
participants using the LLM-based search consistently rephrased their initial
queries
Cognitive Learning From Computer-based Information Systems By Incorporating Knowledge Construction Interventions
The aim of the present study was to develop and empirically evaluate different categories of instructional activities, which stimulate the generation and construction of knowledge on the part of an individual student. These generative activities are primed by prompts or scaffolds, which can easily be inserted into specific curriculum addressing any domain of knowledge. To assess the manner in which the knowledge construction interventions influence the learning outcomes from computerized information systems, we have developed an online computer-based information system that describes the functions and mechanisms associated with the bus system of the US army Abrams M1A2 tank. Seven versions of this interactive instructional computer system were developed for this research; the type of prompt was manipulated among the seven experimental conditions. The seven experimental conditions were control, sentence completion, sentence generation, system provided questions, self-generated questions and answers, system provided advanced organizers, and generated advanced organizers. The results from this study provided strong evidence that the integration of knowledge construction interventions within the curriculum material have improved understanding of the curriculum content and reasoning about such content over and above the mere presentation and study of the curriculum. The research also delineated a practical way on how to incorporate and operationally integrate the knowledge construction interventions within computer-based information systems
The Geographic Resources of Ugarit and the effect on economic and ritual activities
This study explore the various geographical elements and resources of the cananean kingdom of Ugarit (mountains, costal strips, plains, river valley, climate, etc), and its exploitation by the ugaritic man, as a diversified economic and cultural resources, which had a great impact on the prosperity and identity of the kingdom. The study identified the majors elements and sites exploited in economic activities such as agriculture, timber, and commerce : passage of inland transport and harbors, and others sites exploited in ritual activities
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