Owing to the booming development of the WWW, it creates many new challenges for information filtering. Information Filtering (IF) is an area of research that develops tools for discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information. IF can find good matches between the web pages and the users' information needs. Users first give descriptions about what they need, i.e., user profiles, to start the services. A profile index is built on these profiles. A series of incoming web pages will be put into the matching process. Each incoming web page is represented in the same form of the user profile. In this way, the users who are interested in an incoming web page can be identified by comparing the descriptions of the web page with each user profile. At last, the web page will be recommended to the users whose profiles belong to the filtered results. Therefore, a critical issue of the information filtering service is how to index the user profiles for an efficient matching process. When we index the user profile, we can reduce the costs of storage space and the processing time for modifying the user profiles. In this thesis, first, we propose a count-based tree method, which takes the count of each keyword into consideration, to reduce the large storage spaces as needed by the tree method. Next, three large-itemset-based methods are proposed to reduce the storage space, which are called the count-major large itemset method, the weighted large itemset method and the hybrid method. In these three large-itemset-based methods, we first cluster profiles with similar interests into the same group. Next, for each cluster, we apply the mining association rules techniques to help us to construct the index strategies. We design three methods by using the idea of the Apriori algorithm which is one of well-known approaches in mining association rules. But, we modify the minimum support and the goal in the Apriori algorithm. We may not always output the large itemset Lk. That is, we may only use Lw, where w < k. In summary, the cost of storage spaces of our four methods are less than that of the tree method proposed by Yan and Garcia-Molina. According to our simulation results, each of our four methods may provide the best result when different input data sets. Next, we propose a large-itemset-based approach to the incremental update of the index structure for storing keywords to reduce the update cost. When someone's interests are often changed, we must care about the way how to provide the low update cost of the index structure. We take the weight of each keyword into consideration. That is, each keyword can be distinguished the long-term interest which has weight above the threshold from the short-term interest which has weight below the threshold. Owing to that the probability of modifying the short-term interests is higher than that of modifying the long-term interests, we can update the short-term interests locally. According to our simulation results, our method really can reduce the update cost as needed by Wu and Chen' methods.

With the rapid and constant changes taking place in information technology and internet, only firms participating in the creation and utilization of knowledge can hope to obtain the advantageous position in today¡¦s knowledge-based economy. Thus, the issues surrounding knowledge management (KM) have attracted more and more concern from both industry and academia. To add value with KM, we need KMS, which involve the application of IT systems and other organizational resources to manage knowledge strategically, are a relatively recent phenomenon. The goal of this research is to find the significant factors that link with KMS use and individual performance by using diamond model and contingency theory, which emphasizes the importance of fit. We combine with three distinct factors of compatibility, including (1) Technology - Task Compatibility (2) Technology - People Compatibility (3) Technology - Organization Compatibility, to mold an integrated model. An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and seven hypotheses are developed in this study, and then we use PLS to analyze it. The results reveal that Technology-Task compatibility contributes most to the use of KMS. It implies that KMS should fulfill the task needs of users, and therefore, people will use more functions of the KM systems frequently. Besides, Technology-People compatibility has similar effect on the use of KMS. This suggests that it will enhance the usage if the KMS is more compatible with users¡¦ past experience and value. We also found that Technology - Organization compatibility has least impact on usage, but it still needed to take into consideration and worthy to discuss in the future research. In sum, unlike much prior research that has focused on only a limited aspect of compatibility, we provide a more comprehensive conceptual definition that disaggregates the content of compatibility into three distinct and separable constructs and the findings of this study provides some suggestions for the KMS research.

Recent developments in video technology have opened up the possibility for people to watch movies in many different ways. For example one person may use a kinetoscope. Others may go to cinemas or join in a movie festival, yet others use a DVD player, watch them on the internet or even on mobile devices. Do movie fans use all or a number of these ways or just pick one of them? How do they select the way they watch the movies? What factors influence them in this selection? These are the important questions which this research addresses. This research utilises product attributes to collect the data from 531 respondents surveyed in Kaohsiung City and analysed by statistics using quantitative empirical methods. It finds that consumers¡¦ preferences for the product attributes and for the movie seeing are related to their lifestyles and demographic variables, and there is a level of significance in these factors: self-benefit, cheerful mind, efficiency, level of socialisation, and economics, in the product attribute for each consumer cluster based on lifestyle. In the preference of product usage, there is the level of significance in these factors: ¡§cinema, and legal and illegal download from the internet¡¨. However, there is no level of significance in these factors: ¡§cable TV, video and disk rent, video and disk purchase, and illegal copy purchase¡¨. Further, in product attribute related to demographic statistical variables, there is separately a level of significance in these factors: gender, education background, marriage, children-raising, and career, in self-benefit, cheerful mind, efficiency, and level of socialisation. And in the relationship of the preference of product usage and demographic statistical variables, there is a significant correlation between most demographic statistical variables and certain preferences of product usage. Keywords: Product Attribute, Preference of Usage, Movie Viewing Products, Lifestyle, Demographics.

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<p>The aim of this essay was to investigate the knowledge of, and attitudes towards unbiased English usage amongst Swedish upper secondary school students. For the purpose of this study, a survey was carried out at an upper secondary school in southern Sweden. In the theoretical background section, terms such as political correctness and gender-neutral language use are defined. In addition, references are made to studies in the United States and Europe on students’ awareness of these aspects of language.</p><p>For the present study, a survey was carried out in which 41 students answered 13 questions in written form. The students attend their third year at four different programmes at upper secondary school.</p><p>The results show that a majority of the students are very aware of the sensitivity of referring to persons of colour, and they are even afraid of being perceived as racists if they use terms such as black American. As regards non-sexist language use, the Swedish students were aware of the fact that terms such as firefighter and police officer can be used to designate both men and women. However, the students have little knowledge of the title Ms and of the neutral alternative to chairman, chair.</p>

Reproduction de : Thèse d'exercice : Pharmacie : Nantes : 2008. / Bibliogr.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-91). Also available in electronic version. Access restricted to campus users.

The word zenzen is an adverb that is used frequently in daily conversational Japanese. From the Meiji period (1868-1912) until the early Showa period (1924-1989) the word was used together with both affirmative and negative words to form expressions. In the early Showa period the grammatical rules in education changed so that the only acceptable use was together with a negative word. From the 1990’s onward, the use together with an affirmative word has made a comeback especially among younger Japanese people. However even though the usage together with an affirmative word has made a comeback and was considered normal once in history, in today’s society it is still considered as slang and thus not recommended usage in formal situations. Foreign language learners however, tend not to learn a language only by textbooks but also by imitating the language of native Japanese speakers and Japanese popular culture. This may lead to a confusion regarding what words are acceptable to use in conversations. Therefore in this study, an online survey that examines the usage and attitudes regarding the word zenzen aimed at Japanese language learners at Swedish universities was conducted. The results of the survey showed that although a majority of the learners showed a good understanding of the usage, more than half of the learners displayed a feeling of confusion regarding the usage of the word. The gender comparison regarding the usage showed no major differences. Having lived in Japan, having Japanese friends whom you speak Japanese with regularly and length of Japanese study was associated with an increased understanding of the usage. Regular consumption of Japanese popular culture, however, was not associated with an increased understanding of the usage. A literature analysis was also conducted to examine the attitudes regarding the usage of zenzen in a variety of books with topics including business language and books aimed at Japanese language teachers. The results showed that zenzen used together with a negative word was considered as the norm while zenzen used together with an affirmative word was not recommended to be used in formal situations. When recommending proper usage of the word zenzen together with an affirmative word to foreign learners of Japanese, hijou-ni and totemo was seen as better alternatives to zenzen in a formal situation.

Poster presentation from the Living the Future 8 Conference, April 23-24, 2012, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson, AZ. / The Library Space Usage Assessment project was initiated in September 2011 in an attempt to answer questions about how public spaces were currently being utilized at the University of Arizona Libraries. The project team utilized iPads and an online data collection form to gather data on customer activity over a period of three weeks during the fall 2011 semester. This poster presents an overview of the tools and methodology developed by the project team to conduct the assessment. The presentation also highlights the results of the project team's assessment efforts and how those results informed recent changes to library services.

Logistic mixed effects models are used to determine whether optimal codons associate with two specific properties of the expressed protein: solvent accessibility, aggregation propensity, or evolutionary conservation. Both random components and fixed structures in the models are decided by following certain selection procedures. More models are also developed by considering different factor combinations using the same selection procedure. The results show that evolutionary conservation is the most important factor for predicting for the optimal codon usage for most amino acids; aggregation propensity is also an important factor, and solvent accessibility is the least important factor for most amino acids.The results of this analysis are consistent with the previous literature, provide more straightforward way to study the research question and also more information for the insight relationships. / text