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<p>This dissertation analyzes the period of late modernism (roughly 1930-1965) by attending to an understudied subgenre: fictions that depict the experiences of the dead in the afterworld. The project originated from my observation that a number of late modernist authors resorted to this type of writing, leading to the question of what made them do so. Such a project addresses the periodization and definition of late modernism, a period that has received relatively little critical attention until recent years. It also contributes indirectly to the study of European culture before and after the Second World War, identifying clusters of concerns around common experiences of belief and time during the period. </p><p>To approach this question, I adopt a situational approach. In this type of reading, I attempt to reconstruct the situations (both literary and extra-literary) of specific authors using historical and biographical material, then interpret the literary work as a response to that situation. Such a methodology allows me to ask what similarities between situations led to these convergent responses of afterlife writing. My primary objects are afterlife novels and plays by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Wyndham Lewis, Flann O'Brien, and Samuel Beckett.</p><p>I find that the subgenre provided late modernists with the literary tools to figure and contest changes in experiences of belief and time in mid-20th century Europe. The situation of modernism is marked by <italic>the loss of belief in the world</italic>, a failure in the faith in action to transform the world, and <italic>the serialization of time</italic>, the treatment of time as static repetition and change as something that can only occur at the individual rather than the systemic level. While earlier modernists challenged these trends with the production of idiosyncratic private mythologies, late modernists encountered them as brute facts, leading to a shift in aesthetic sensibilities and strategies. Belief was split between private opinion and external submission to authority, and change reappeared under the figure of catastrophe.</p> / Dissertation

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With regard to infectious diseases, the most economical, direct, and efficient way to prevent them is timely inoculation and a comprehensive policy of vaccination. Such steps not only reduce the overall mortality rate, but also lessen a patient¡¦s susceptibility to serious complications once infected, and therefore their length of hospital stay. It is the foundation of disease prevention in all countries, and should be the primary focus of every public health department. This survey is based on a health belief model and a self-constructed questionnaire. Its sample base are parents whose children have visited one of two local hospitals, each of which is in a different administrative region. A total of 350 questionnaires were distributed. Recoveries were 270, of which 237 were useable. The effective response rate, therefore, is 67.7%. The useable recoveries were analyzed by SPSS, 17th edition, and verified and assumed by mean, standard deviation, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis and Logistic regression analysis. The most influential factors on parents¡¦ decision whether or not to accept streptococcus pneumoniae vaccination (SPV) were as follows: 1.The greater the understanding of SPV and its policy, the greater the number of vaccinations 2.The perceived importance of good health 3. Age variability 4. The interrelationship between the perception and the policy of vaccination, the benefits of - and barriers to ¡V action, and the virulence and severity of the disease The results of this research suggest the public perception of SPV is the most important factor governing its efficacy. It is recommended, therefore, that public health departments campaign for SPV in a variety of different ways,( e.g. in newspapers and magazines, on TV, at pediatric clinics, at health centers, etc.) in order to establish a free and open flow of information to the public at large. It is in the hope of reducing the current mortality rate, length and cost of hospital stay and the serious complications arising from infection, that we offer the following data as reference for future planning.

This paper has two researches direction, one is in the pricing and application of a probation option, the other is in the pricing and application of an American option. In the research of a probation option, this paper used the concept of the marketing strategy to be the source of financial innovation, and therefore decision a new exotic option. We call this option is a probation option. We introduce the application of this option, and further more to device the value of this option. Beside, this option also can apply to the field of marketing, and to calculate the cost of marketing strategy. In the research of an American, this paper proposes a new method- the implied belief model, to obtain a closed-form solution of the value of the American option. We analyze the value of the American option through the view point of the sellers of the options. By adopting this method, we derive the upper bound for the value of an American option. Then we define the belief value of seller to obtain a closed-form solution of the value of an American option. Finally, we apply the method to S&P 100 American option and deduce the implied belief value.

The Relationships between Belief Change and its Influential Factors for Student Teachers in Junior High Schools Yuan-yu Chu Abstract The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between belief change and its influential factors for student teachers in junior high schools. The participants included 163 student teachers and 163 corresponding mentors in public junior high schools of South Taiwan. The employed instruments were Teacher Belief Appraisal, Professional Growth Scale for Junior High School Teachers, Intrapersonal Intelligence Appraisal, and The Questionnaire of Perceiving Teaching Environment. The employed analysis methods were descriptive statistics, Hotelling¡¦s T2, multivariate analysis of variance, repeat measure analysis, discriminant analysis, multivariate analysis of covariance, and multiple stepwise regression. The findings of this study revealed that (a) the student teachers¡¦ beliefs were toward open orientation on the whole, but their degree of openness varied in the four aspects of teacher beliefs; (b) gender did not have significant effects on the student teachers¡¦ beliefs at the beginning of their practice teaching; (c) teacher preparation systems, teaching areas, size of schools had significant effects on the student teachers¡¦ beliefs at the beginning of their practice teaching; (d) overall speaking, the student teachers¡¦ beliefs were quite stable through their practice teaching period; (e) the mentors¡¦ beliefs had positive effects on their student teachers¡¦ belief change; (f) the student teachers¡¦ professional growth motivation and teaching environment had positive effects on their beliefs at the beginning of practice teaching; (g) the student teachers¡¦ professional growth motivation and their mentors¡¦ beliefs had positive effects on their beliefs at the end of practice teaching. Finally, some suggestions were proposed for teacher preparation institutions, schools of practice teaching, student teachers, and future studies.

This thesis focuses on the importance of technology to create believably composited effects. It was found that many factors culminate in generating believability in a film, including: suspension of disbelief, the story, and the quality of the special effects. Many technical aspects lend to the creation of successful special effects and are involved during every stage of production. There is a discussion of several of the important criteria analyzed during preproduction, production, and post production. A brief history of the technical effect industry is discussed. Personal work for this project includes three case studies. In the form of short video projects, these studies are applications of the researched industry concepts. They deal with issues including incorporation of digital models into live action footage, using pre-existing footage, digital makeup, motion tracking, masking, color correction, and generation of artificial lights and shadows. The creation of these videos included video recording and editing and used Maya TM and After Effects TM. The final shorts showed examples of the strengths and weaknesses of the applied compositing techniques. Implications for the future directions of this field are also discussed.

The capability of changing beliefs upon new information in a rational and efficient way is crucial for an intelligent agent. Belief change therefore is one of the central research fields in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for over two decades. In the AI literature, two different kinds of belief change operations have been intensively investigated: belief update, which deal with situations where the new information describes changes of the world; and belief revision, which assumes the world is static. As another important research area in AI, reasoning about actions mainly studies the problem of representing and reasoning about effects of actions. These two research fields are closely related and apply a common underlying principle, that is, an agent should change its beliefs (knowledge) as little as possible whenever an adjustment is necessary. This lays down the possibility of reusing the ideas and results of one field in the other, and vice verse. This thesis aims to develop a general framework and devise computational models that are applicable in reasoning about actions. Firstly, I shall propose a new framework for iterated belief revision by introducing a new postulate to the existing AGM/DP postulates, which provides general criteria for the design of iterated revision operators. Secondly, based on the new framework, a concrete iterated revision operator is devised. The semantic model of the operator gives nice intuitions and helps to show its satisfiability of desirable postulates. I also show that the computational model of the operator is almost optimal in time and space-complexity. In order to deal with the belief change problem in multi-agent systems, I introduce a concept of mutual belief revision which is concerned with information exchange among agents. A concrete mutual revision operator is devised by generalizing the iterated revision operator. Likewise, a semantic model is used to show the intuition and many nice properties of the mutual revision operator, and the complexity of its computational model is formally analyzed. Finally, I present a belief update operator, which takes into account two important problems of reasoning about action, i.e., disjunctive updates and domain constraints. Again, the updated operator is presented with both a semantic model and a computational model.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-192). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The purpose of this study was to determine differences in the use of mental state references by typically developing 9- and 11-year-old children. Following a priming task that emphasized distinctions between physical and mental acts, children watched an 11-minute textless video and then were asked to generate an oral and a written story that focused on the mental states of the multiple characters. Narratives were transcribed, and all mental state references were classified into motivational, experiential, and belief categories. Specific mental state references were also analyzed to determine levels of semantic complexity. The study attempted to answer: 1) whether 9- and 11-year-old typically developing children differed in their ability to use more complex mental state references and 2) whether this ability varied as a function of the oral versus the written modality.The sample consisted of 26 children, ages 9;0-9;11 (15 females, 11 males), and 24 children, ages 11;00-11;11 (14 females, 10 males). The total sample (N=50) consisted of 32 Caucasian children, 15 African-American children, 2 Hispanic children, and 1 Asian-American. All children were selected from one urban elementary school located in West Central Florida, were from monolingual, English-speaking homes, and were speakers of Standard American English. A statistical analysis was conducted via a 3-way MANOVA, specifically, 2 (age 9 vs. age 11) x 4 (mental state categories) x 2 (oral versus written modality).