Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, September 1990. / Thesis Advisor(s): Read, Robert R. ; Dryer, David A. Second Reader: Whitaker, Lyn R. "September 1990." DTIC Descriptor(s): Army Training, Combat Information Centers, Organizations, Training, Battalion Level Organizations, Battlefields, Task Forces, Attack, Missions, Standards, Graphics, Military Training, Archives, Combat Forces, Discriminate Analysis, Doctrine, Frequency, Data Processing. DTIC Identifier(s): National Training Center, Army Operation. Author(s) subject terms: National Training Center, Deliberate Attack, Operational. Description based on title screen as viewed on Dec. 22, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 82). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX74918/87. / Consultation copy in 2 volumes.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2002. / Typescript. Accompanying CDROM contains the prototype of AMG web-based database and electronic copy of the thesis. Includes bibliographical references.

Information visualizations have become increasingly popular in the last decade. Viewing data visually has proved helpful in communicating or revealing information in many fields ranging from science to journalism to art. Information is incredibly malleable; given the same data, a group of designers may make wildly different information visualizations. The malleability of an information visualization leads me to believe that there are certain and finite truths in data, but when a designer converts data into information, they pass these truths through a screen of their experience. Additionally, a reader brings their own screen of experience, through which they read an information visualization. These screens of experience create infinite ways to communicate and interpret information. This report reviews some concepts and methods that I have found helpful when creating information visualizations. / text

Cyberspace has dramatically improved our daily lives in the past several decades. Meanwhile, people’s personal identifiable information (PII) is exposed online and is at risk of identity theft and cybercrimes. The Identity Ecosystem developed by the Center for Identity in the University of Texas at Austin addresses this problem and provides a statistical framework for understanding the value, risk and mutual relationships of PII. The Identity Ecosystem currently uses a general Bayesian Network Model to simulate the relationships among PII, which may be quite inaccurate for specific groups of people. This thesis proposes a solution that specializes the Bayesian Network used for particular groups of people. Both one-dimension specialization and multi-dimension specialization are investigated. Research problems like how to choose specialization criterion, how to set specialization boundaries, and how to overcome the difficult of insufficient data, are carefully studied. Specialization functionality is demonstrated based on empirical data. Finally, experiments of specialization are conducted on data obtained from online stories. This work is important in the sense that it provides a guide-line of designing more accurate models of PII within the Identity Ecosystem. / text

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This thesis explores journeys of faith and survival in three Jewish graphic novels: A Contract with God by Will Eisner, The Rabbi's Cat by Joann Sfar, and We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin. In each of these texts, the protagonists struggle with their faith and relationship with God, as they negotiate challenges as Jews living in largely unreceptive spaces. Along their journeys, the protagonists confront God in their own ways to try to make sense of the role that faith and Judaism plays in their lives. Drawing on basic principles of the relationship between Jew and God, as well as terms and concepts concerning the aesthetic construction of comics, this thesis probes into the nature of these journeys and the impact they have on the protagonists' physical and spiritual survival.

My research demonstrates how Othering practices affect the cultural status of the comics form. Comics frequently rely upon Othering practices such as stereotype when representing minority characters. This tendency contributes to the low cultural status of comics throughout the better part of the last century. In recent years, however, comics artists have cultivated revisioning techniques that challenge the use of Othering practices in comics. These efforts represent an important step in the push toward what is now known as the comics-as-literature movement, which Scott McCloud believes will allow the next generation of comics readers and artists to accept the idea that “comics can yield a body of work worthy of study and meaningfully represent the life, times and world-view of its author” (Reinventing 10). Even as Othering practices in comics create negative perceptions, these same practices, ironically, provide comics artists with the necessary mechanisms to undermine or revise these negative perceptions and to move comics into the literary arena. The primary mechanism that I focus on in this project is the denotation/connotation relationship. In “Rhetoric of the Image,” Roland Barthes -- speaking about advertising images -- suggests that “the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the semantic artifice of connotation” (“Rhetoric” 45). Building on Barthes’ work, I demonstrate how the comics image uses the denotative component in visual representations of minorities to naturalize symbolic messages (connotations) that project inferiority. This is how comics create and perpetuate Otherness. At the same time, by interrogating the denotation/connotation relationship, contemporary comics artists have been able to undermine this naturalization process and expose the misconceptions that are inherent within representations of the Other in comics. When comics commonly adopt Othering practices, they create what Charles Hatfield refers to as “encrusted connotations” (4), where the reader’s experience of a comics work is deeply affected by the social perceptions that surround comics in general. When the treatment of minorities in comics is based upon outdated stereotypes, for example, readers may assume that comics are a popular art form without literary aspirations, and the readers then treat these comics accordingly. Conversely, when comics artists challenge the encrusted connotations of the form, they undermine these connotations and open the comics readers’ eyes to the possibility that comics can indeed yield a body of work worthy of study. As I demonstrate, this revisioning work of contemporary comics artists is an important component of the comics-as-literature movement. In order to prove this, my work isolates three distinct forms of Othering that comics speak to in a prominent way. By studying the manner in which comics represent women, racial minorities and geeks, I develop the pattern by which Othering practices contribute to the cultural status of comics art. Each chapter isolates touchstone texts with regard to minority representation (Wonder Woman as gender representation, Happy Hooligan and Luke Cage as racial representation, Clark Kent as geek representation, etc.) in order to establish the formation of encrusted connotations that can then be seen across the medium as a whole. I then show how some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed comics literature of the past twenty years (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Persepolis, etc.) enters into a self-reflexive dialogue with these encrusted connotations in order to move beyond them and to help transition the form toward a higher cultural status.

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