The purpose of this study is to determine the impact on student use of electronic information systems when teachers have been given instruction on their use. By providing teachers with a solid introduction to the technology, a handy reference book, and an easy-to-use evaluation tool, it is expected that they will incorporate information found on the internet into their lessons at least twice a month. In addition, teachers will allow students to access information on their own, provided computers and Internet access are available, at least once a month.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to reform the corporate governance mechanisms in order to improve the quality of financial reporting and thus, enhance the confidence of investors in the stock market and in the accounting profession. Despite the efforts of the SEC, financial reporting scandals continue with record numbers of financial restatements documented by the General Accounting Office. A financial restatement is a correction of a previously misstated financial statement. There is a small volume of literature examining the effects of corporate governance mechanisms on financial restatements. The results of these studies however, are mixed and possibly explained by their narrow focus and omitted variables that could influence the effectiveness of audit committees. Consequently, this study examines the effects of independent audit committee member characteristics and auditor independence on financial restatements. Specifically, this study investigates the relationship between the likelihood of financial restatements and: (1) the expertise of the independent audit committee members, (2) the expertise and diligence of the independent audit committee members, (3) the reputation of the independent audit committee members, (4) the interaction effect of expertise, diligence and reputation, (5) the tenure of the independent audit committee members, and (6) the cash compensation paid to independent audit committee members. Prior studies have not investigated some of these variables or the interaction effects of independent audit committee member characteristics on financial restatements. This study also investigates the association between auditor independence and financial restatements. The SEC alleges that an increasing number of audit failures are due to the lack of auditor independence. One of the major sources of the lack of auditor independence is the auditor’s economic dependency on the client. The provision of non-audit services increases the financial reliance of the auditor on the client. As a result, the auditor may become reluctant to raise issues with the preparation of the financial statements at the risk of foregoing the lucrative non-audit services fees. The SEC believes that longer audit firm tenure can also impair auditor independence and Section 203 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act suggests periodic audit firm rotation. Therefore, auditor independence was measured as: (1) fees paid to the auditor, and (2) audit firm tenure. Finally, this study extends the prior literature by studying the interaction effects of independent audit committee member characteristics and auditor independence on financial restatements. This interaction effect is important because the external auditor and the audit committee are regarded vital governance mechanisms that interact and exchange dialogue in the performance of their respective oversight of the financial reporting process. Prior research has not investigated this important interaction effect. The sample of the study comprises 69 U.S. publicly listed companies that announced their restatement from 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2002. These companies were matched with 69 non-restatement companies based on industry and size. The data for the study is derived from SEC filings such as Form 10-K and DEF 14A, and Compustat. The univariate results show that compared to restatement firms, non-restatement firms generally have effective audit committee characteristics. The audit committees of non-restatement firms have members who are experts, diligent, reputable and appropriately compensated. They also pay lower non-audit services and total fees, and have audit firms with longer tenure. The multivariate results show that after controlling for other governance structures and firm specific non-governance variables, the likelihood of financial restatements is related to independent audit committee member characteristics and auditor independence. Specifically, the likelihood of financial restatements decreases when independent audit committee members are: (1) experts, (2) experts and diligent, (3) reputable, (4) experts, diligent and reputable, and (5) appropriately compensated. The audit committee member tenure variable is insignificant. In relation to the auditor independence variables, the multivariate results show that the likelihood of financial restatements increases when the non-audit services and total fees generated by the client are higher. On the other hand, the likelihood of financial restatements decreases when audit firm tenure is longer. The empirical results of this study suggest that independent audit committees are more effective overseers of the corporate financial reporting and auditing processes when: they comprise majority experts, they meet regularly, their members are reputable, and audit committee members are appropriately compensated. On the other hand, external auditors are not deemed to be effective overseers of the corporate financial reporting process when the non-audit services and total fees generated by the client are higher but are effective when audit firm tenure is long. The results support the SEC’s concerns regarding the provision of non-audit services impairing auditor independence. The results also support the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 which under Section 201 prohibits external auditors from providing certain non-audit services to its audit client. Overall, these results support the regulatory efforts to increase the quality of financial reporting by enhancing the corporate governance process related to audit committees and auditor independence. However, the results do not support calls to limit the tenure of the auditor. The results of the multivariate interaction effects suggest that, after controlling for other governance structures and firm specific non-governance variables, when the non-audit services and total fees generated by the client are higher, the likelihood of financial restatements increases under conditions when the audit committee is not effective (a non expert audit committee, an audit committee that does not meet regularly, an audit committee whose members are not reputable or an audit committee that is not appropriately compensated). The implication of this result is that it provides evidence of conditions under which restatements take place. Knowledge of such conditions could aid regulators further improve the financial reporting process and corporate governance. This knowledge will support regulators in revising policies that ensure audit committee members are not only independent but also comprise other critical qualities. These improvements to the audit committee coupled with the existing regulations on the provision of non-audit services suggest a company’s governance will be more effective. Overall, the results extend current knowledge in the sparse but growing literature related to financial restatements and corporate governance, and extend our understanding of the effectiveness and interaction of governance mechanisms in reducing financial restatements.

This thesis analyses the effect of the personal history of Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, two Australian independent filmmakers, on their style of filmmaking. It analyses their representation of film-form experimentation within national Australian art in a range of independent film works. It reflects on their cultural relation to the general history of independent filmmaking in Australia, America and Europe. It studies the circumstances tat resulted in the appearance of the Cantrills' experimental film and their relation to international art theories and film experimentation. This thesis will examine how the Cantrills' film works, which were often critical of conventional filmmaking styles, and their critical writing, statements and promotion of their independent and experimental film work contributed significantly to theoretical discussion and argument about the physical nature of film within Australia. This examination is explored through asking and answering the central question: The work of Aurtheur and Corinne Cantrell is theoretically drawn from a tradition of European arts and visually drawn from Australian landscape and urban culture; can their work be identified and undertood as Australian art?

This thesis has evaluated the use of Independent Component Analysis (ICA) on Surface Electromyography (sEMG), focusing on the biosignal applications. This research has identified and addressed the following four issues related to the use of ICA for biosignals: • The iterative nature of ICA • The order and magnitude ambiguity problems of ICA • Estimation of number of sources based on dependency and independency nature of the signals • Source separation for non-quadratic ICA (undercomplete and overcomplete) This research first establishes the applicability of ICA for sEMG and also identifies the shortcomings related to order and magnitude ambiguity. It has then developed, a mitigation strategy for these issues by using a single unmixing matrix and neural network weight matrix corresponding to the specific user. The research reports experimental verification of the technique and also the investigation of the impact of inter-subject and inter-experimental variations. The results demonstrate that while using sEMG without separation gives only 60% accuracy, and sEMG separated using traditional ICA gives an accuracy of 65%, this approach gives an accuracy of 99% for the same experimental data. Besides the marked improvement in accuracy, the other advantages of such a system are that it is suitable for real time operations and is easy to train by a lay user. The second part of this thesis reports research conducted to evaluate the use of ICA for the separation of bioelectric signals when the number of active sources may not be known. The work proposes the use of value of the determinant of the Global matrix generated using sparse sub band ICA for identifying the number of active sources. The results indicate that the technique is successful in identifying the number of active muscles for complex hand gestures. The results support the applications such as human computer interface. This thesis has also developed a method of determining the number of independent sources in a given mixture and has also demonstrated that using this information, it is possible to separate the signals in an undercomplete situation and reduce the redundancy in the data using standard ICA methods. The experimental verification has demonstrated that the quality of separation using this method is better than other techniques such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and selective PCA. This has number of applications such as audio separation and sensor networks.

The study concerns the inter-relationship between media reform and civil society in Thailand between 1995-2000. It examines case studies of two selected television organisations - the production company Watchdog and the broadcast channel Independent Television (iTV) - and analyses their internal production decision-making processes, their public affairs programs and their urban and rural audiences. Debates about civil society and media reform between 1995-2000 influenced the government's media regulation policies to the extent that more attention was paid to media freedom as intended by Articles 39, 40 and 41 in the 1997 Constitution. Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) took an important role in monitoring government policies on media reform under the Constitution and issues about media re-regulation and ownership were canvassed, although the drawn out National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) selecting process delayed media reform. The transparency of the selection process of the NBC has been widely debated among NGOs, media scholars and media professionals. Most Thai public affairs programs in the period were shown on iTV, Channel 9 and Channel 11 and were in the minority compared with entertainment. Thai television stations normally screened entertainment programs to make profits, while they usually would not allow producers to air open debates critical of the government. Also, public affairs programs that were screened often were given inappropriate airtimes. Watchdog and iTV treated public affairs programs in different ways. Watchdog, originating from an NCO, the Creative Media Foundation, emphasized public participation in local community-oriented programs - such as Chirmsak Pinthong's Lan Ban Lan Muang - which exemplified civic journalism on television. In contrast, iTV was created in 1996 to meet the promise made in 1992 after Black May that a non-state commercial channel would be introduced. It was organised by journalists from the Nation Multimedia Company and focused on current national news issues which seldom allowed public participation. Both organisations attempted to maintain their professionalism despite political and business pressures. Chirmsak and Watchdog were accused of bias favoring the Democrat Party and often encountered program censorship. ITV staff, especially in the news department led by Suthichai Yoon and Thepchai Yong, unsuccessful fought. Shin Corps 2000-2001 takeover of the station that had been brought on by the financial problems of iTV and the Siam Commercial Bank after the economic crisis of 1997. There were three main concepts of civil society in the period 1997-2000 - Communitarianism, Self-sufficiency and Good Governance. These ideas were advanced by reformers such as Dr. Prawase Wasi and Thirayut Boonme, and were reinforced by His Majesty King Bhumibol's December 1997 Birthday Speech that endorsed the ideal of national self-sufficiency. Thai civil society debates often were involved with rural people, while the 8th National Development Plan and the Chuan government's policy on decentralisation aimed to strengthen the rural sector as an antidote to the 1997 crisis. However, the aims of civil society reformers were at times too idealistic and were viewed with skepticism by some middle class urban critics. The continuing influence of electoral corruption in rural areas also obstructed civil society ideals, while decentralisation and community development still maintained a top-down way of development and depended on government support. These difficulties in implementing pro-civil society reforms in the political process were paralleled by difficulties in developing public interest programs on Thai television. Current affairs and investigative journalism programs, such as iTV Talk, Tod Rahad and Krong Satanakarn, did not often open public discussion on the programs. Rather, the regular format of panel discussions, consisting of elites and some celebrities, tended to focus on national topics rather than local issues. The hosts of many of these public affairs programs depended on their own celebrities status and tended to invite well-known guests, whereas community-oriented programs such as Lan Ban Lan Muang and Tid Ban Tang Muang promoted civic journalism and deliberative democracy more effectively. The latter programs allowed the public to participate in the programs as the main actors and even proposed their own agendas. However, a limited study of three audience focus groups - an expert urban group, a young middle class urban group, and a rural group - found considerable scepticism about the possibility of developing public interest awareness via television programs. The expert and young middle class groups criticised both the hosts and the style of a selection of current affairs programs, which they thought were too serious and also biased. Some also considered that current affairs programs were a platform for the people in power rather than providing a space for the public. Therefore, they rarely watched them. In contrast, the rural group who participated in Lan Ban Lan Muang, believed that the program was useful for development communication. The audience gained information about other communities and used the media as the means to publicise their own community. However, they rarely watched it because the airtime of the program was the same as a popular entertainment program on Channel 3. The researcher used qualitative research methods to collect data, including indepth interviews, focus groups, participant observation, program recording and document analysis. Theoretically, the study has attempted to combine the approaches of western and Thai scholars. The main approach used to explain the relationship between the media and civil society is media and public sphere theory, as introduced by Habermas, and combined with the perspectives on media re-regulation of the Thai scholar Ubonrat Siriyusak. In terms of analysing Watchdog and iTV, the researcher used political economy perspectives to understand decision-making in both organisations. In addition, an organisational culture approach was used to explore conflicts of interest that arose in both organisations due to their different sub-cultures. Civic journalism, framing theory and development communication theory were further employed to examine the television programs and their roles in promoting the public interest and development projects, while the audience groups were considered in the context of participatory communication theory and reception theory.

本文的研究主旨在於探討，威權轉型期我國獨立選民的一些特性。就獨立選民的淵源來說，獨立選民是美國政治文化下的特有產物，並且被賦於理想的公民、優秀的公民及理想的民主人等稱號。然而，美國的獨立選民是否如規範論所言，是一理想公民呢？而更重要的是，我國獨立選民的情形是如何呢？這是本文所要探討的主要研究課題。 　　透過此一研究焦點，本文的研究架構如下： 　　第一章：導論的部份，旨在說明研究問題與動機，以及本文所使用選舉調查資料的來源（政大選舉研究中心，民國七十八年三項公職人員選舉），並對這些資料進行檢定。 　　第二章：獨立選民的意義及測量。這一章，首先探討的是獨立選民的意義，其次是探究獨立選民的測量法或研究法，再次是討論與獨立選民息息相關的政黨認同，以及政黨認同所引起的一些問題。最後，我們將對政黨認同、獨立選民在我國的適用性提出討論，並說明本文政黨認同和獨立選民的測量方式。 　　第三章：我國獨立選民的組成及其社會背景分析。這一章，我們將先討論我國政黨認同的分佈以及穩定性，並與其他民主國家做一比較。而此章的第二部份，主要在探討獨立選民的社會背景，而這些社會背景包括有教育、省籍、職業、年齡、主觀社會階層和性別。獨立選民的社會背景分析，除了單一變項的分析外，我們亦以多變項再做深入的探討。 　　第四章：獨立選民的政治涉入。如前述所言，假如獨立選民是一理想公民，則他們的政治涉入應是高的。本章旨在分析我國獨立選民是否比一般選民（政黨認同者）為高，或是如政黨認同理論所說，獨立選民的政治涉入是所有選民中最低者。 　　第五章：獨立選民的政治態度。本章旨在討論獨立選民的政治態度是否比政黨認同者還中立，或者從另外一個角度來說，是否比政黨認同者少有黨派色彩呢？抑或他們對政治態度的反應，是呈現另外一種風貌？假如，獨立選民是一理想公民，則他們的政治態度應是中立或是少黨派的，並且能積極地將他們的態度表現出來。 　　第六章：結論部份。本文的結論，分為二個部份。在第一部份中，我們將對前述的研究做一總結，並據此對我國獨立選民的特性做一簡單的描述。此外，由於本文所用的調查資料距今已有五年了，而我國的政治（政黨）在這其間經歷了相當大的變化，因此本文的最後將討論七十八年後獨立選民的新發展，並論及獨立選民與「新黨」的關係和可能的發展。

<p>Problemformulering: Är informationen på prisjämförelsesidorna tillförlitlig samt oberoende av återförsäljare som kan ha intresse i att uppvisa partisk information?</p><p>Syfte: Syftet är att, med hjälp av en explorativ undersökning samt användning av både kvantitativa och kvalitativa undersökningsmetoder, få klarhet i om informationen på prisjämförelsesidorna är tillförlitlig och därmed även oberoende av återförsäljare som kan ha intresse i att uppvisa partisk information.</p><p>Metod: Vårt tillvägagångssätt har bestått av både en kvantitativ och en kvalitativ metod. Den kvantitativa metoden har grundats i två separata explorativa tvärsnittsstudier och den kvalitativa metoden har bestått av 7 strukturerade intervjuer.</p><p>Vår ansats kan liknas vid en induktiv metod, då vi utgått från insamlad primärdata. Resultatet från dessa anknyts sedan till generella teorier. </p><p>Undersökningsobjekt: Vi har valt att studera de tre prisjämförelsesidor som anser sig vara informationsoberoende: Compricer, Pricerunner och Prisjakt.</p><p>Teori: Utifrån vår undersökning har vi valt teorier om marknadsföring på Internet, om e-handel, marknadsföringsmixen och slutligen Porters femkraftsmodell. Teorierna kommer ligga som en grund till vår analysdel</p><p>Slutsatser:Vår slutsats visade att informationen på de 3 prisjämförelsesidorna inte är fullständigt tillförlitlig. Vi fann att pricerunner inte är oberoende och att Prisjakt är oberoende, medan undersökningen ej visade klarhet i Compricers situation.</p> / <p>Problem quest: Are the information on the price comparison sites reliable and independent from selling agents who can have interest in showing partial information.</p><p>Purpose: The purpose is to investigate if the information on the Swedish Shopping agent sites are reliable, and even to investigate if unjust special treatment of the selling agents is common.</p><p>Methodology: Our approach has comprehended both a quantitative and a qualitative method. The quantitative method is based on two separate explorative cross-section studies, and the qualitative method has implicated 7 structured interviews. Since we have started with the collection of data, and after that expounded it with the general theories, our thesis are much like a inductive method.</p><p>Disquisition object: We have chosen to study the three Internet selling agents who consider themselves to apply independent information: Compricer, Pricerunner and Prisjakt.</p><p>Theory: Because of our disquisition have we chosen theories about marketing on Internet, e-business, the marketing mix and Porters five force model. The theories act like a base to our analysis of the data.</p><p>Conclusions: Our conclusion showed that the three selling agents aren’t reliable about the quotation of prices. Totally they had mistaken the price for 1/6 of the products. We found out that Pricerunner aren’t independent and that Prisjakt are relatively independent. The disquisition didn’t clarified Compricers grade of independents.</p>

This dissertation addresses two fundamental problems in computer vision—namely, multitarget tracking and event recognition in videos. These problems are challenging because uncertainty may arise from a host of sources, including motion blur, occlusions, and dynamic cluttered backgrounds. We show that these challenges can be successfully addressed by using a multiscale, volumetric video representation, and taking into account various constraints between events offered by domain knowledge. The dissertation presents our two alternative approaches to multitarget tracking. The first approach seeks to transitively link object detections across consecutive video frames by finding the maximum independent set of a graph of all object detections. Two maximum-independent-set algorithms are specified, and their convergence properties theoretically analyzed. The second approach hierarchically partitions the space-time volume of a video into tracks of objects, producing a segmentation graph of that video. The resulting tracks encode rich contextual cues between salient video parts in space and time, and thus facilitate event recognition, and segmentation in space and time. We also describe our two alternative approaches to event recognition. The first approach seeks to learn a structural probabilistic model of an event class from training videos represented by hierarchical segmentation graphs. The graph model is then used for inference of event occurrences in new videos. Learning and inference algorithms are formulated within the same framework, and their convergence rates theoretically analyzed. The second approach to event recognition uses probabilistic first-order logic for reasoning over continuous time intervals. We specify the syntax, learning, and inference algorithms of this probabilistic event logic. Qualitative and quantitative results on benchmark video datasets are also presented. The results demonstrate that our approaches provide consistent video interpretation with respect to acquired domain knowledge. We outperform most of the state-of-the-art approaches on benchmark datasets. We also present our new basketball dataset that complements existing benchmarks with new challenges. / Graduation date: 2011 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from May 12, 2011 - May 12, 2012

Chromatin insulators are short DNA sequences that, together with enhancers and silencers, orchestrate gene transcription through DNA-protein interactions in eukaryotic genomes. It has been proposed that insulators operate at the chromatin level by generating functionally independent higher-order chromatin domains. Insulators may maintain the integrity of such domains using two properties: blocking enhancer-promoter interactions and blocking heterochromatin spreading. The gypsy insulator of Drosophila was identified as a region of the gypsy retrovirus responsible for the production of tissue-specific mutations in many genes. The Suppressor of Hairy wing [Su(Hw)] protein contains 12 zinc fingers that specifically bind the gypsy insulator. Upon DNA binding, Su(Hw) recruits a second protein, Modifier of Mdg4 67.2 [Mod(mdg4) 67.2], and the interaction of both proteins is required for insulator function in vivo. We have found that three different arrays of gypsy retrovirus insertions in a yellow transgene result in unique yellow phenotypes, showing that the enhancer-blocking activity of the Drosophila gypsy insulators depends on the relative orientation of the gypsy retroviruses on the chromosome. We also observed from transgenic lines with gypsy retrovirus or insulator insertions that interaction of insulators may be regulated by active enhancers according to the relative positions of the insulators flanking the enhancers. Moreover, we show that gypsy insulators can positively modulate yellow activation and result in wild-type levels of expression when placed upstream of enhancers in yellow transgenes in which enhancers are placed out of context by &#;-DNA spacers and fail to reproduce the expression levels of yellow in wings and body cuticle. Our results provide evidence indicating that this phenomenon is independent of the boundary activity. Genetic analysis using mod(mdg4)67.2 mutant lines containing gypsy retrovirus insertions revealed that the gypsy insulator may be placed close to the yellow promoter region and be intimately involved in transcriptional activation and repression. Therefore, we suggest that insulators may also function by mediating long range interactions between enhancers and promoters.

In this thesis, the aim was to attain a deeper understanding according to the students meaning of learning related to their own responsibility and independence within a framework of an educa¬tional programme. An empirical study with an ethnographic approach was carried out during one term of a nursing programme that uses the PBL-approach. Based on observations, conversations, inter¬views and documents, three narratives were formulated. One describes the phases students experience in the planned curricula. Periods characterised of chaos, uncertainty and a heavy workload, alternate with periods of ‘cosmos’, optimism, curiosity and satisfaction. The second narrative is about students' learning objectives while realising that they have to make choices and decisions on their own to succeed. A dialectic driving force emerging from frustration and stimulation, chaos and cosmos, results in questions about what to learn and how to act. The third narrative describes how students handle these questions. The narratives reveal two dimensions. One concerns how the students form attitudes about the relevance of learning objectives and how they go about learning a knowledge base necessary for their future profession. The other dimension takes as its starting point the fact that students try to manage their learning situation taking into consideration the framework of the educa¬tional programme. These dimensions were further analysed using theoretical references. The first dimension was analysed from the perspective of teacher/learner control and a didactic analysis of the meaning of an educational setting. The second dimension was analysed on the basis of phenomenographic learning theory. As regards responsibility and independence there seems to be a point in abandoning the concept of self-directed learning. Instead of emphasising self, the interaction between people, the individual and the educational framework and the interaction with content, are found to be fundamental. This interaction includes communication, dialogue and active participation in all the parts of a learning situation. Based on the results of this study, I claim that the driving force in student-centred learning is the dialectic relation between frustration and stimulation, chaos and cosmos. This stimulates the students to engage in the teachers' traditional didactic ques¬tions concerning an educational programme: what are we going to study, how and why, and what are the objectives? The students' conduct as regards independence, vis à vis dependence, are related to a dialectic relationship between the prerequisites provided by the educational frame¬work and the students' interpretation and ability to use them. Expressions of responsibility and independence emerge as choices and decisions concerning the didactic questions, initiative, activity, search for opportunities to reflect and co-operate and self-confidence. The opposite, dependence, is characterised by strategies for “survival”. The students plan their learning situa¬tion so that the examinations and assignments can be successfully tackled, and the learning situation takes on features of a surface approach. I believe that further insights into learning in student-centred education can be found in the two dialectic relationships described above.