Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Website Usability In Context: An Activity Theory Based Usability Testing Method, Lejla Vrazalic

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Traditional laboratory based usability testing methodologies are plagued with shortcomings which affect the results of the testing process and their validity. The results of a preliminary study of this type of usability testing with 34 users indicate two categories of key shortcomings. A new summative website usability testing methodology based on the notion of distributed usability and Activity Theory is presented as a means of overcoming these problems. This paper describes the theoretical foundations and development of the methodology which is currently being evaluated and refined.

A Framework For Case-Based Reasoning Integration On Knowledge Management Systems, Seung Hwan Kang, Sim K. Lau

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

To support the sharing and reusing of well-defined knowledge among knowledge management systems, it is useful to use standardised formalisation. It is also common effort to difficulty of knowledge acquisition known as knowledge acquisition bottleneck. In this paper investigates the feasibility of using techniques in case-based reasoning of artificial intelligence for the knowledge acquisition phase in knowledge management systems. The need of an ontological approach of the semantic web for well-defined set of domain knowledge is proposed in order to avoid knowledge acquisition bottleneck. Our viewpoint of this approach is that the ontology-driven mechanism allows us to provide standardised structured …

Understanding Emancipation: Lincoln's Proclamation And The Overthrow Of Slavery, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

The most common trope that governs understanding of Abraham Lincoln and emancipation is that of progress. The variations on that trope are legion, and they include notions of Lincoln's journey toward emancipation, his growth in understanding the justice of emancipation, and his path to the Emancipation Proclamation. "Lincoln was," as Horace Greeley put it, "a growing man"; growing from a stance of moral indifference and ignorance at the time of his election in 1860 toward deep conviction about African American freedom by the time of the Emancipation Proclamation less than two years later. That was a generous sentiment, since it …

Entre La Cotidianeidad, El Pacer Y La Fuga: Fragmentos Narrativos De Una Transición, Alvaro Kaempfer

Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies Faculty Publications

Tanto la reflexión cultural bajo la dictadura como aquella surgida durante el proceso de transición han nutrido una literatura que indaga los límites del lenguaje en relación con las diversas experiencias vividas bajo los regímenes dictatoriales del cono sur. La producción literaria de Andrea Maturana (Chile, 1969) no es ajena a dichos fenómenos. Desde sus primeros cuentos, esta escritora dio cuenta de escenarios vitalmente atomizados donde los demás eran, precisamente, los bordes tangibles y cotidianos de experiencias sociales tan traumáticas como insolubles. Esa atomización vital no sólo se deja leer como una respuesta a un medio agresivo sino, además, como …

A Review Of State Procurement And Contracting, John R. Bartle, Ronnie Lacourse Korosec

Public Administration Faculty Publications

Are states effectively managing contracting and procurement activities? Are they striking the right balance between central administrative control and empowerment through delegation? How effective is training and monitoring? How do these practices compare to the principles of best practice? What role will information technology play in the future for procurement and contracting? As part of the Government Performance Project, budget, procurement, and contracting managers in 48 states were surveyed, providing descriptions of their procurement and contracting practices. There are numerous developments that speak to the practical details of contemporary public management. Five key findings are (1) information technology needs are …

Title And Contents- Winter 2003

Great Plains Quarterly

GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY

Volume 23/ Number 1 / Winter 2003

CONTENTS

"AT THE HEAD OF THE ABORIGINAL REMNANT": CHEROKEE CONSTRUCTION OF A "CIVILIZED" INDIAN IDENTITY DURING THE LAKOTA CRISIS OF 1876 Paul Kelton

WAVING "A BOUGH OF CHALLENGE": FORESTRY ON THE KANSAS GRASSLANDS, 1868-1915 Brian Allen Drake

"THE GREATEST EVIL": INTERPRETATIONS OF INDIAN PROHIBITION LAWS, 1832-1953 Jill E. Martin

BOOK REVIEWS

Scott E. Casper and Lucinda M. Long, eds. Moving Stories: Migration and the American West, 1850-2000 By WALTER NUGENT

Jo Ella Powell Exley Frontier Blood: The Saga of the Parker Family By THOMAS W. KAVANAGH

Royden Loewen Hidden Worlds: …

Review Of The Methodist Church On The Prairies, 1896- 1914 By George Emery, Sandra Beardsall

Great Plains Quarterly

Mission efforts in Canada's Midwest played a major part in the development of both the mainline Protestant churches and the young Canadian nation itself. It was on the prairies that Protestants cut their teeth on the interdenominational cooperation that would eventually create Canada's largest Protestant church, The United Church of Canada. And it was in the multifarious ethnic stew of the Canadian Plains that the churches attempted most zealously to forge "Christian Canadian citizens" out of both First Nations populations and immigrants of all stripes. Despite this significant history, there has been no recent monograph focusing on Methodism in this …

Review Of Riot And Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War And Its Legacy By James S. Hirsch, Hannibal B. Johnson

Great Plains Quarterly

In Riot and Remembrance, James S. Hirsch, an ace reporter formerly affiliated with the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, adds his dispassionate voice to the swelling volumes on one of America's most obscure, ignominious racial conflicts: the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot. As Hirsch points out, even many native Tulsans knew nothing of the Riot until recent years, the silence surrounding the catastrophe having been deafening. Not only did the Riot escape local civic discourse, it garnered only scant mention-if any mention at all-in state-mandated textbooks.

Why now? Why Tulsa? The answers to both questions turn …

Community Services Implementation Project Year 3 Progress Report And Proposed Project Plan For Year 4

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

In November 2000, the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center (PPC) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center on Children, Families and the Law (CCFL) entered into a partnership with the Lincoln/Lancaster County Joint Budget Committee (JBC) and United Way of Lincoln/Lancaster County (UW). During Year 2, the Lincoln Community Foundation and Woods Charitable Fund, Inc. joined the partnership. The purpose of this University-Community partnership, the Community Services Implementation Project (C-SIP), has been to facilitate implementation of the Lincoln/Lancaster County Human Services Three-Year Comprehensive Plan (Plan). PPC and CCFL have been serving a coordinating and technical assistance role for the overall …

The Interface Of Employment, Health, Family Support, And Human Services For People With Disabilities In Nebraska, Linda E. Jensen, Jeffery Willett

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Twenty in-depth interviews were held with persons who had a diverse range of disabilities and had been or were currently engaged in competitive employment. The qualitative data was analyzed to gain information about current supports and barriers and to identify recommendations to make it more feasible for persons with disabilities to engage in competitive employment. The sample included 10 men and 10 women with ages ranging from 24 to 60 years including both rural and urban residents of Nebraska. Disabilities represented included various paralysis and/or physical illnesses, sensory disabilities such as loss of vision and/or hearing, psychiatric disabilities such as …

Real Choice Data Team Recommendations On Creating A Statewide Information Resource For Human Services

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

Information and referral services are an important point of entry for persons seeking appropriate human services options. Across Nebraska, several key initiatives have begun laying the groundwork for statewide collaboration in data collection, sharing, and promotion activities. Consensus is emerging that developing a comprehensive, collaborative, statewide, health and human services database is both desirable and feasible.

Under the aegis of a Nebraska Health and Human Services System Real Choice grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the state convened a working group to help envision the elements that should comprise a statewide resource database. The working group, the …

Retrospective Investigation Of One-Time Presenters Versus Repeat Presenters To Urban And Suburban Psychiatric Emergency Services : Cross-Sectional And Clinical Characteristics, April J. Hansen

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This study retrospectively reviewed 765 patients who presented within a one-year period at either a suburban, urban, or both suburban and urban psychiatric emergency services (PES). Demographic and clinical characteristics were examined. Particular focus included characteristics of children/adolescents and older adults, as well as the relationship between substance misuse and PES presenters. Adults presenting to PES more than three times were more likely to have a chronic mental illness, personality disorder, history of psychiatric treatment, and a history of noncompliance with treatment than those who presented three times or less. Significant differences were found between urban and suburban PESs, in …

Jackknifing Bond Option Prices, Peter C.B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

In continuous time specifications, the prices of interest rate derivative securities depend crucially on the mean reversion parameter of the associated interest rate diffusion equation. This parameter is well known to be subject to estimation bias when standard methods like maximum likelihood (ML) are used. The estimation bias can be substantial even in very large samples and it translates into a bias in pricing bond options and other derivative securities that is important in practical work. The present paper proposes a very general method of bias reduction for pricing bond options that is based on Quenouille’s (1956) jackknife. We show …

Generalized Potentials And Robust Sets Of Equilibria, Stephen Morris, Takashi Ui

Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers

This paper introduces generalized potential functions of complete information games and studies the robustness of sets of equilibria to incomplete information. A set of equilibria of a complete information game is robust if every incomplete information game where payoffs are almost always given by the complete information game has an equilibrium which generates behavior close to some equilibrium in the set. This paper provides sufficient conditions for the robustness of sets of equilibria in terms of argmax sets of generalized potential functions and shows that the sufficient conditions generalize the existing sufficient conditions for the robustness of equilibria.

2003 Program, University At Albany, State University Of New York

Upstate New York Science Librarians Conference

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Climate Change Impacts On The United States: The Potential Consequences Of Climate Variability And Change. A Report Of The National Assessment Synthesis Team, Us Global Change Research Program, Susan Capalbo

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Addressing the potential consequences of climate variability and change can be best summarized in terms of tradeoffs: tradeoffs between short-term and long-term impacts; tradeoffs among sectors and regions; and tradeoffs among national-level versus more regional-level impacts. Evidence of these tradeoffs is presented in this comprehensive report by the National Assessment Synthesis Team (NAST) for the US Global Research Program. Its findings are based on analysis of historical data, model projections, and scientific research. A key assumption in the report is the absence of major interventions to reduce continued growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Book Review Of Watershed: Reflections On Water By Grant Macewan, Lee Foote

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

Watershed, the last of forty-eight books by Grant MacEwan, was completed in the year of his death and published posthumously. This work integrates his ninety-seven years as a keenly informed student of western Canadian water issues. Three attributes make it noteworthy. First, The Source: MacEwan was an excellent observer and student of water-related development, personal struggles, politics, and environmentalism in western Canada. Second, Voice: poetic yet spare prose embodies a voice of western scholarship free from romantic pandering. Third, Temporal Scope: Grant MacEwan renders a first-person account and commentary across a century of change.

Review Of Toxic Plants Of North America By George E. Burrows And Ronald J. Tyrl, James Pfister

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences

During the spring of 1884 the livestock industry in Kansas was faced with financial ruin when a veterinarian diagnosed foot and mouth disease (FMD). The highly contagious FMD was widespread in parts of the US, and an outbreak in Kansas would have resulted in quarantine for the state's beef, swine, and sheep herds. Experts later determined that the correct diagnosis was non-infectious ergotism, caused by ingestion of prairie hay (primarily Elymus spp.). The panic and turmoil surrounding the ergotism incident launched subsequent investigations into poisonous plants by the newly-formed Bureau of Animal Industry within the Department of Agriculture.

Social Learning And Stage Development Applied To Resistance To Treatment: Probation Youth In A Residential Treatment Facility, Linda Joy Bankowski

Theses Digitization Project

The present study focused on male incarcerated youth, ages ranging from twelve to eighteen, in a twenty-four hour care treatment facility. The study attempted to determine what historical factors such as types of crimes committed, length of criminal history, and gang involvement are behavioral indicators of the type of youth who resist treatment. For the study, run away behavior indicated the youth was resistant to treatment.

Effects Of Divorce On Adolescents : Interventions, Abigail C. Buchan

Graduate Research Papers

The family environment is a major contributor to the development and well-being of children and adolescents. The traditional definition for family is ever changing, and diversity in families is becoming more acknowledged and accepted. It is well known that currently more than half of all marriages end in divorce. It is necessary to understand the significant challenges and issues that young people of divorced families are faced with in order to facilitate positive change and resiliency in the counseling process. The author provides a historical overview of the divorce epidemic, the effects of divorce on youth, as well as implications …

Information Pooling And Collusion: Implications For The Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act, Kenneth Njoroge

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

This paper develops a conceptual model that analyzes the impact of increasing market transparency under the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 on the incentives for collusion in the U.S. meatpacking industry. More than likely, meatpackers will have asymmetric priors regarding the distribution of livestock prices. Moreover, they lack the incentives to voluntarily reveal their real priors. Thus, the enforcer of the Act faces a problem of asymmetric information regarding the informativeness of publicly disclosed market reports relative to that of packers’ priors. Analytical results predict that divergent priors of Bayesian packers can be updated by more informative market reports, …

The Effect Of Trade On Wage Inequality : The Hong Kong Case, Lok Sang Ho, Xiangdong Wei, Wai Chung, Gary Wong

Centre for Public Policy Studies : CPPS Working Paper Series

The dramatic increase in the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers observed in many developed countries has received much attention from economists in recent years. A similar rise of wage gap has now been observed for some newly developed economies, such as Hong Kong. However, few empirical studies have been carried out to explain the growing wage gap in these newly developed economies. This study uses the time series data to investigate the impact of increased outward processing trade with the Chinese Mainland on the wage inequality of Hong Kong. We found that there is a significant positive association …

「仁濟老友記行動」計劃成效調查報告, Asia-Pacific Institute Of Ageing Studies, Lingnan University 嶺南大學亞太老年學研究中心, 仁濟醫院社會服務部

APIAS Monograph 專題論文

計劃理念

仁濟醫院董事局在一九九七年八月開始推展「仁濟老友記行動」計劃，以結 集社會人士的力量籌募善款，將所得以定額形式免費贊助該院轄下各長者中 心的綜援受助人或經濟貧乏的長者會員免費參加中心舉辦的活動，以鼓勵他 們積極參與有益身心的社群活動，保持心境開朗，避免長者因經濟困難而失 去參與社交活動的機會及與社群疏離。截至二零零二年十二月為止，該計劃 已踏進第六個年頭。

計劃簡介

每年參與「仁濟老友記行動」的長者均可獲定額贊助，以免費參與各長者中心舉辦的活動。計劃中每位長者的全年定額贊助金額因應每年的善款所得而在不同年度作出修訂。於97/98 年度至 99/00 年度贊助額為每人每年$500， 在99/00 年度開始修訂為每人每年$300，至02/03 年度開始設立「老友記助學金」，當中是以$100 資助知識、資訊和學習性質的個別活動、課程或班組； 而另外定額贊助的$200 供長者用作自由選擇參與中心舉辦的任何活動用途。 事實上，發給長者的贊助金額並非以現金形式由長者去支取，而是以記帳扣數形式進行。即每位長者名下有一筆定額數目的贊助費，當他們報名參加活動時，活動費用便於該長者名下的贊助費賬目中自動扣除。而贊助額賬目也 不能「多除少補」，即活動收費大於賬目所餘金額數目時，長者不可自行補貼差額以動用贊助。此外，$100 的「助學金」和 $200 的「自由選擇」贊助金兩者餘款是不能合併使用。

調查目的

是次仁濟醫院董事局社會服務部委任嶺南大學亞太老年學研究中心對「仁濟老友記行動」計劃進行詳細評估及分析，以了解該項計劃對參與長者的成效，並對此計劃的未來發展方向作出建議。

A Report On An Evaluation Of The Hope, Worldwide Seniors Day 2003, Cheung Ming, Alfred Chan, Meng Soi, Florence Fong, Siu Ping, Ella Ng

APIAS Monograph 專題論文

The HOPE worldwide 1 (HWW) in Hong Kong has been chartered as a charity organization since 1993 with its focus on organizing service programmes in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Amongst these, the Hope for Seniors Day is one of the many attempts initiated by the HWW to meet the urgent needs of the growing ageing population in Hong Kong. Starting from 1996, volunteers from corporations and social organizations have been recruited for the Hope for Seniors Day on an annual basis. The programme aims at giving practical assistance to elderly people who are living alone in public housing estates, …

Performance Benchmarking Australian Fixed Interest Funds: Some Optimal Factors, Victor Soucik, David E. Allen

Research outputs pre 2011

In this paper we analyse the performance of fixed interest managed funds. We examine five measurement models across three risk-free proxies, nine benchmarks (covering conditional and unconditional as well as single and multi factor definitions) over two independent periods in an effort to identify (in a consistent setting) the most accurate and least biased methodology. The use of an Australian dataset, sourced from the Australian fund-rating agency ASSIRT means that we can provide some independent results from US studies of these. There is little prior work on Australian fixed-interest managed funds. We examine three risk-free proxies, six benchmark classes encompassing …

Policy And Program Implications Of The Matching Grants Program In The Philippines, Marilou Palabrica-Costello, Nimfa Ogena, Alejandro N. Herrin

Reproductive Health

In 1999, the Philippines Department of Health, with support from USAID and technical assistance from Management Sciences for Health (MSH), implemented the matching grants program (MGP) as a component of the local government performance program. The MGP aims to improve the capability of municipalities and component cities to expand service delivery, and to achieve significant increases in rates of fully immunized children, vitamin A supplementation, tetanus toxoid immunization for women, as well as in the use of family planning methods, especially modern methods. Upon the request of the USAID Mission, the Frontiers in Reproductive Health program worked closely with MSH …

Emergent Behavior In Phonological Pattern Change, M. Dras, K. David Harrison

Linguistics Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Reducing Automobile Emissions In Southern California: The Dance Of Public Policies And Technological Fixes, Rudi Volti

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

For many years I have taught at a small liberal arts college in Southern California. When first-year students arrived at the college in the early 1970s, they settled into the usual things that occupy freshmen. A few weeks would go by, and then they would make a remarkable discovery: tall mountains would appear to the north as autumn weather dissipated the heavy blanket of smog that had obscured them. Today, the air is not perfectly clear in September, but students are aware of the mountains from the day they move into the dormitories. The region's partial victory over smog illustrates …

Entheogens: True Or False?, Roger Walsh

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Despite 40 years of dialogue, debate still continues over whether psychedelics are capable of

inducing genuine mystical experiences. This paper first reviews the arguments against this possibility

and shows that all of them contain shortcomings. One reason the debate still continues is

that there has been no adequate theory of mystical states and their relationship to the factors

which produce them. Consequently a theory of mystical states based on Charles Tart’s systems

model of consciousness is proposed. This theory suggests how identical states of consciousness can

be induced by very different means, including contemplative practices and chemical substances,

and yet …

The Feasibility Of Computer-Assisted Survey Interviewing In Africa: Experience From Two Rural Districts In Kenya, Paul C. Hewett, Annabel Erulkar, Barbara Mensch

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This paper explores the use of an audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (audio-CASI) methodology in a household survey of adolescents in two districts of Kenya. Computer software was developed as part of a research project comparing audio-CASI with traditional methods of interviewing about sensitive behaviors, including sexual initiation, risky sexual behavior, coerced sex, and drug and alcohol use. The paper describes the experience of carrying out a household-based study using computers and explores the technical challenges faced by the data collection teams. Few problems emerged with the computer hardware and software, despite the difficult interviewing conditions. The adolescent respondents easily adapted to …