Em 2009, a Federação Internacional de Judô (FIJ) instituiu um sistema de ranqueamento (SR) para classificar os atletas em suas categorias de disputa e para os Jogos Olímpicos de Londres 2012. Porém, o SR não considera o fenômeno conhecido como home advantage, relacionado à vantagem de vencer quando se compete em casa. Esse fenômeno ainda não foi estudado no judô e se comprovado traz implicações para o SR. Assim, o objetivo deste estudo foi verificar se há ocorrência de home advantage nas competições que integram o SR no judô, para a conquista de medalha e número de lutas vencidas. Para tal, foram analisadas todas as competições internacionais de judô do SR realizadas em 2009. Para verificar se os atletas que competiram em casa tiveram mais chance de conquistar medalha foi utilizada a análise de regressão logística e para verificar se houve associação do número de lutas vencidas e competir em casa foi utilizado o modelo linear generalizado de Poisson. Os modelos contaram com uma variável de ajuste referente à qualidade relativa dos atletas em duas possibilidades: posição no SR da FIJ e neutro (construído com lutas disputadas em território neutro). A amostra foi dividida em: Grupo I - todas as participações; Grupo II - somente os atletas que haviam competido dentro e fora de casa. Dado que alguns atletas não puderam lutar em território neutro e, portanto, não tiveram codificação para esse SR, foram criados duas subamostras do Grupo I e do Grupo II, excluindo os atletas sem codificação nesta variável. Todas as análises foram realizadas considerando os gêneros conjunta e separadamente. A variável qualidade relativa foi significante em todas as análises e também modificou os modelos (p<0,001). Ao considerarmos a subamostra do Grupo II, a razão de chance para conquista de medalhas foi superior para os atletas que competiram em casa para o grupo masculino (2,33; p<0,001) e feminino (1,58; p = 0,019). A associação entre número de lutas vencidas e competir em casa foi significante para os atletas do masculino (p<0,001), mas não significante para o feminino (p = 0,088). A ausência da vantagem no feminino para número de lutas vencidas pode ter sido limitada e confundida com o número reduzido de atletas participantes em muitas das competições. As atletas que conquistaram medalha em competições mais vazias, não precisaram vencer mais lutas, dado que um número reduzido de vitórias garantia a medalha. É possível que a torcida seja a principal responsável pelos achados, tanto por influenciar o julgamento dos árbitros a favorecer os atletas da casa como pela motivação para os atletas. Outra possibilidade é que aspectos associados à dominância territorial tenham influenciado as disputas masculinas, porém não as femininas. Assim, foi comprovada a existência do home advantage nas competições que integram o SR de judô para conquista de medalha no masculino e feminino, e para número de lutas vencidas apenas para o masculino. Desta forma, é provável que os atletas de países que sediam competições do SR tenham vantagem para a obtenção da classificação olímpica / In 2009 the International Judo Federation (IJF) established a ranking system (RS) to classify athletes in the competition categories and in the distribution of vacancies for the London 2012 Olympic Games. Nevertheless, the RS does not consider the phenomenon known as home advantage, i.e. the advantage of winning when competing in your home country. This phenomenon has not been studied in judo and its implications for the RS have not been proven. The objective of this study was to determine whether there was occurrence of home advantage in competitions that use the RS in judo, in winning a medal, and in the number of matches won. Therefore, we analyzed all international judo competitions using the RS in 2009. Logistic regression analysis was used to verify if the athletes who competed in their home countries were more likely to win a medal, and we used the Poisson generalized linear model to check whether there were associations between the number of matches won and competing at home. The models have an adjustment variable in the relative quality of athletes in two possibilities: position in the IJF RS and matches played on neutral territory. The sample was divided into two groups: Group I all participants and Group II only athletes who had competed inside and outside their home country. Given that some athletes could not fight on neutral territory and therefore did not have this RS coding, a sub-sample of Group I and a sub-sample of Group II were created, excluding athletes without the coding from this variable. All tests were performed considering the groups together and separately. The relative quality variable was significant in all tests and also modified the models (p <0.001). For the sub-sample of Group II the odds ratio for winning medals was higher for the athletes who competed at home for the male group (2.33, p <0.001) and the female group (1.58, p = 0.019). The association between the number of matches won and competing at home was significant for the male athletes (p <0.001), but not for the females (p = 0.088). The absence of the female advantage in the number of matches won may have been limited and confused by the small number of athletes participating in many of the competitions. The athletes who won medals in competitions with fewer competitors did not need to win more matches since a small number of wins guaranteed the medal. It is possible that the crowd was mainly responsible for the findings, both in influencing the judgement of the referees to favour the home athletes and in motivating the athletes. Another possibility is that aspects related to territorial dominance influenced the male competitors but not the female competitors. Thus, the existence of home advantage was observed in the competitions that used the judo RS in the achievement of medals for males and females, and in the number of matches won, only for males. Thus, it is likely that athletes from countries that host competitions using the RS have an advantage for obtaining the Olympic classification

The purpose of the study was to identify the effects of the influence of cooperating teachers on how student teachers prioritize particular goals of education. This was accomplished by administering a predetermined list of eighteen educational goals to a group of student teachers prior and subsequent to their quarter-long student teaching experience, and to their respective cooperating teachers during their student teaching quarter. The list enabled the teacher groups to rank the goals in order of priority. In this way the cooperating teachers' goal rankings were compared to both the student teachers' pre and post student teaching goal rankings. Twenty-three student teachers and their respective cooperating teachers in secondary and special education served as subjects. The Phi Delta Kappa Goal Setting Instrument was used as the goals list in the study. The questions explored were: 1) are there differences between the relative importance as signed to selected educational goals by student teachers prior to the student teaching experience and the relative importance assigned to the same goals by the cooperating teachers; 2) are there differences in the relative importance assigned to selected educational goals by student teachers before their student teaching experience as compared to their assigned rankings after their student teaching experience; and 3) is there a relationship between any changes in the relative importance assigned by the student teachers prior and subsequent to the student teaching experience and the relative importance assigned by the cooperating teachers. To test the hypotheses under investigation, eighteen one-way analyses of variance with repeated measures were computed. Significant F ratios were found for two of the eighteen goals; the remaining F ratios were not statistically significant. The results suggest some tentative support for student teachers' goal prioritizations of two goals changing after the student teaching experience. Some tentative support was also suggested on these two goals for the student teachers' goal prioritizations changing after the student teaching experience to become more similar to the cooperating teacher' s goal prioritizations. However, the lack of significant change in sixteen of the eighteen goals more strongly suggested that the influence of a) the experience of the student teaching activity and b) the cooperating teachers' own goals prioritization biases upon the student teachers did not markedly affect student teacher goal prioritization behavior. The possibilities that the teacher groups had initial general agreement on goal priorities, that the goals may represent stable educational values, and that instrumentation concerns may have affected the results were then discussed.

Chapter 1: The Determinants of the Production of Research by US Universities Chapter 2: Investment in Vocational and General Human Capital: A Theoretical Approach Chapter 3: Urban Migrations and the Labor Market Chapter 4: Local social capital and geographical mobility Chapter 5: Social Supervision and Electoral Stability on the Geographical Scale in Belgium

The journal cited frequency is usually an index to weigh an academic research achievement and may provide useful information for the academic society. However, it is spectulated that it may be influenced by factors such as the citing frequencies of other journals, the price of the journal and so on. In this work, as an initial attempt we will investigate the correlation between the citing frequency and cited frequency in the same journal. The data is taken the JCR (Journal Citation Reports) annually published by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) to understand the relationship between citing and cited patterns. Moreover, Impact Factor from the JCR has also been used as a basis of ranking, we will discuss about the variation in journal ranking in all fields based on Markov chain modeling. The ranking based on a modified impact factor will be used to compare with that by the original impact factor provided by the JCR.

The objective of this thesis is to better understand the impact of paper and printer types on xerographic print quality. To achieve this objective, commercially printed samples comprising of ten different paper substrates printed using three different xerographic printers were examined. The print quality of these samples was assessed in terms of print microgloss and its nonuniformity, print density, print and gloss mottle, print roughness, and visual ranking. This study showed that print mottle conducted by Fast Fourier Transform produced the best correlation with visual ranking at the size range of 0.1 - 1mm, while print gloss mottle was found to affect print quality regardless of the mottle size. Brightness, opacity, basis weight, gloss 75, and roughness of these paper substrates were found to have the most significant effect on print quality. All of the optical properties of paper included in this analysis showed a strong correlation to print quality.

The objective of this thesis is to better understand the impact of paper and printer types on xerographic print quality. To achieve this objective, commercially printed samples comprising of ten different paper substrates printed using three different xerographic printers were examined. The print quality of these samples was assessed in terms of print microgloss and its nonuniformity, print density, print and gloss mottle, print roughness, and visual ranking. This study showed that print mottle conducted by Fast Fourier Transform produced the best correlation with visual ranking at the size range of 0.1 - 1mm, while print gloss mottle was found to affect print quality regardless of the mottle size. Brightness, opacity, basis weight, gloss 75, and roughness of these paper substrates were found to have the most significant effect on print quality. All of the optical properties of paper included in this analysis showed a strong correlation to print quality.

This thesis will examine highly rated Minor League baseball players and how they subsequently perform in their Major League careers. Specifically, this study has collected data on over 800 players ranked on the prospect lists of Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and John Sickels. Using regression analysis, I have examined the correlation between ranking and future performance, as well as studying other factors like position and age to determine if there are common characteristics to successful prospects.

This thesis explores three models of a good school: the Modified Academic Index Model, the Demographically-Adjusted Model, and the Equity Model. The Modified Academic Index Model uses test scores, from the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System 2008 and 2009 academic year, to measure good schools. The Demographically-Adjusted Model uses these test scores while controlling for certain demographic variables. The Equity Model uses standard deviations of these test scores to measure quality schools. Rankings of the 228 public high schools in Kentucky are developed for each model. The rankings of the models are then compared.

Feature selection based on feature ranking has received much attention by researchers in the field of text classification. The major reasons are their scalability, ease of use, and fast computation. %, However, compared to the search-based feature selection methods such as wrappers and filters, they suffer from poor performance. This is linked to their major deficiencies, including: (i) feature ranking is problem-dependent; (ii) they ignore term dependencies, including redundancies and correlation; and (iii) they usually fail in unbalanced data. While using feature ranking methods for dimensionality reduction, we should be aware of these drawbacks, which arise from the function of feature ranking methods. In this thesis, a set of solutions is proposed to handle the drawbacks of feature ranking and boost their performance. First, an evaluation framework called feature meta-ranking is proposed to evaluate ranking measures. The framework is based on a newly proposed Differential Filter Level Performance (DFLP) measure. It was proved that, in ideal cases, the performance of text classifier is a monotonic, non-decreasing function of the number of features. Then we theoretically and empirically validate the effectiveness of DFLP as a meta-ranking measure to evaluate and compare feature ranking methods. The meta-ranking framework is also examined by a stopword extraction problem. We use the framework to select appropriate feature ranking measure for building domain-specific stoplists. The proposed framework is evaluated by SVM and Rocchio text classifiers on six benchmark data. The meta-ranking method suggests that in searching for a proper feature ranking measure, the backward feature ranking is as important as the forward one. Second, we show that the destructive effect of term redundancy gets worse as we decrease the feature ranking threshold. It implies that for aggressive feature selection, an effective redundancy reduction should be performed as well as feature ranking. An algorithm based on extracting term dependency links using an information theoretic inclusion index is proposed to detect and handle term dependencies. The dependency links are visualized by a tree structure called a term dependency tree. By grouping the nodes of the tree into two categories, including hub and link nodes, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to handle the term dependencies by merging or removing the link nodes. The proposed method of redundancy reduction is evaluated by SVM and Rocchio classifiers for four benchmark data sets. According to the results, redundancy reduction is more effective on weak classifiers since they are more sensitive to term redundancies. It also suggests that in those feature ranking methods which compact the information in a small number of features, aggressive feature selection is not recommended. Finally, to deal with class imbalance in feature level using ranking methods, a local feature ranking scheme called reverse discrimination approach is proposed. The proposed method is applied to a highly unbalanced social network discovery problem. In this case study, the problem of learning a social network is translated into a text classification problem using newly proposed actor and relationship modeling. Since social networks are usually sparse structures, the corresponding text classifiers become highly unbalanced. Experimental assessment of the reverse discrimination approach validates the effectiveness of the local feature ranking method to improve the classifier performance when dealing with unbalanced data. The application itself suggests a new approach to learn social structures from textual data.

This dissertation research is focused on how we, as researchers, ‘influence’ others researchers. In particular, I am concerned with the notion of what constitutes the ‘influence’ of a scholar and how ‘influence’ is conferred upon scholars. This research is concerned with the construct called ‘scholarly influence’. Scholarly influence is of interest because a clear “theory of scholarly influence” does not yet exist. Rather a number of surrogate measures or concepts that are variable are used to evaluate the value of one’s academic work. ‘Scholarly influence’ is broken down into ‘ideational influence’ or the influence that one has through publication and the uptake of the ideas presented in the publication, and ‘social influence’ or the influence that one has through working with other researchers. Finally through the use of the definition of ‘scholarly influence’ this dissertation tries to commence a definition of ‘quality’ in scholarly work.