The problem studied was the poor academic achievement of middle school students in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Research indicates that a growth mindset positively affects a student's academic achievement and motivation to learn. However, despite the importance of mindset in fostering student success and enhancing learning, mindset remains underexplored in the CNMI. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to fill this gap in knowledge by investigating teachers' knowledge, perceptions, and practices concerning mindset in the CNMI. Three research questions examined teachers' knowledge and perceptions of mindset in the CNMI and how teachers described and demonstrated the use of mindset in their practices. Dweck's seminal work on mindset served as the conceptual framework. Social constructivism guided the study process. Qualitative data were collected from 15 purposively sampled teachers at a local CNMI middle school. Data were analyzed through categorization and codification, from which emerging themes were used to answer research questions. Results indicated that teachers in the local middle school have limited knowledge and inaccurate perceptions regarding the mindset concept. Accordingly, the analysis recommended the need for and served as the basis for the design of a professional development workshop about mindset for teachers throughout the CNMI to enhance teacher instruction and improve student learning, thus promoting positive social change.

<p>This thesis presents new techniques for data management of run-time data objectsin component-based embedded real-time systems. These techniques enabledata to be modeled, analyzed and structured to achieve data managementduring development, maintenance and execution.The evolution of real-time embedded systems has resulted in an increasedsystem complexity beyond what was thought possible just a few years ago.Over the years, new techniques and tools have been developed to manage softwareand communication complexity. However, as this thesis show, currenttechniques and tools for data management are not sufficient. Today, developmentof real-time embedded systems focuses on the function aspects of thesystem, in most cases disregarding data management.The lack of proper design-time data management often results in ineffectivedocumentation routines and poor overall system knowledge. Contemporarytechniques to manage run-time data do not satisfy demands on flexibility,maintainability and extensibility. Based on an industrial case-study that identifiesa number of problems within current data management techniques, bothduring design-time and run-time, it is clear that data management needs to beincorporated as an integral part of the development of the entire system architecture.As a remedy to the identified problems, we propose a design-time data entityapproach, where the importance of data in the system is elevated to beincluded in the entire design phase with proper documentation, properties, dependenciesand analysis methods to increase the overall system knowledge.Furthermore, to efficiently manage data during run-time, we introduce databaseproxies to enable the fusion between two existing techniques; ComponentBased Software Engineering (CBSE) and Real-Time Database ManagementSystems (RTDBMS). A database proxy allows components to be decoupledfrom the underlying data management strategy without violating the componentencapsulation and communication interface.</p> / INCENSE

In text analysis, authorship attribution occurs in a variety of ways. The field of computational linguistics becomes more important as the need of authorship attribution and text analysis becomes more widespread. For this research, pre-existing authorship attribution software, Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program (JGAAP), implements a named entity recognizer, specifically the Stanford Named Entity Recognizer, to probe into similar genre text and to aid in extricating the correct author. This research specifically examines the words authors use around named entities in order to test the ability of these words at attributing authorship / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / Computational Mathematics / MS; / Thesis;

När man kombinerar ett objektorienterat programmeringsspråk och en relationsdatabas uppstår en del problem för utvecklare eftersom objektorienterade programmeringsspråk och relationsdatabaser har olika fokus, objektorienterade programmeringsspråk fokuserar på att avbilda verkliga objekt och relationsdatabaser fokuserar på data. De problem som uppstår kallas med ett samlingsnamn för object-relational mismatch. Det finns flertalet ramverk för att hantera dessa problem. Ett av dem är Entity Framework.Syftet med detta projekt var att utvärdera hur utvecklare tycker att Entity Framework fungerar för att lösa problematiken runt object-relational mismatch, hur det är för utvecklare att lära sig använda Entity Framework samt hur tillgången på inlärningsmaterial är.Under vår studie har vi lärt oss använda Entity Framework samtidigt som vi gjort en studie av tillgången på inlärningsmaterial. Vi har också byggt om en applikation så att den använder Entity Framework. Vi har jämfört den ombyggda applikationen med den gamla applikationen för att kunna se vilken skillnad som Entity Framework bidrog till.Vi kom fram till att Entity Framework hanterar object-relational mismatch på ett bra sätt som bland annat gör att utvecklingsprocessen kortas ner då inte lika mycket kod behöver skrivas. Utvecklare med tidigare kunskaper i .NET-programmering upplever att det är lätt att lära sig Entity Framework. Att det upplevs lätt att lära sig Entity Framework hänger förmodligen ihop med att tillgången på inlärningsmaterial är god.

The information overload problem becomes imperative with the explosion of information, and people need some agents to facilitate them to filter the information to meet their personal need. In this work, we conduct a research for the article classification in the tourism domain so as to identify articles that meet users¡¦ information need. We propose an information need orientation model in tourism, which consists of four goals: Initiation, Attraction, Accommodation, and Route planning. These goals can be characterized by 13 features. Some of the identified features can be enhanced by WordNet and Named Entity Recognition techniques as supplement techniques. To test the effectiveness of using the 13 features for classification and the relevant methods, we collected 15,797 articles from TripAdvisor.com, the world's largest travel site, and randomly selected 600 articles as training data labeled by two labelers. The experimental results show that our approach generally has comparable or better performance than that of using purely lexical features, namely TF-IDF, for classification, with fewer features.

Large digital libraries typically contain large collections of heterogeneous resources intended to be delivered to a variety of user communities. One key challenge for these libraries is providing tight integration between resources both within a single collection and across the several collections of the library with out requiring hand coding. One key tool in doing this is elucidating the internal structure of the digital resources and using that structure to form connections between the resources. The heterogeneous nature of the collections and the diversity of the needs in the user communities complicates this task. Accordingly, in this thesis, I describe an approach to implementing a feature identification system to support digital collections that provides a general framework for applications while allowing decisions about the details of document representation and features identification to be deferred to domain specific implementations of that framework. These deferred decisions include details of the semantics and syntax of markup, the types of metadata to be attached to documents, the types of features to be identified, the feature identification algorithms to be applied, and which features should be indexed. This approach results in strong support for the general aspects of developing a feature identification system allowing future work to focus on the details of applying that system to the specific needs of individual collections and user communities.

This research combines relational database framework and quantitative equity portfolio models based on the Barra Risk Model Handbook standard steps to design a database and computer platform for multi-factor risk management tasks. The multi-factor model facilitates fast search and efficient selection of descriptors with explanatory power for future stock returns. The design of database is divided into three steps. First, descriptors are calculated and daily-update modules constructed. This study finds 48 key descriptors which play important roles in explaining stock returns of Taiwan. Second, entity relational model is applied to sort out linkages between pieces of important information in the factor model. Lastly, database auto-run procedures are setup to update the latest raw data on a monthly basis. Model parameter update and portfolio rebalancing is hence made seamless to meet practical operation demand for such a platform. The development of the Multi-factor risk model is divided into five main steps. (1) Finding significant descriptors. (2) Forming common factors from descriptors. (3) Developing a multi-factor return model. (4) Developing a multi-factor risk model. (5) Running performance analysis and back-testing. The empirical results show that the average adjusted R-squared of the MFM model is 0.5 during the period of 1998/04~2005/11. For combining descriptors into common factors, we run factor analysis. The multi-collinearity problem existing in the descriptors is well taken care of by such procedures. We use the exponentially weighted averaging method to compute the factor returns and forecast stock ranking. A half-life of 24 months appears to deliver the best performance in Taiwan stock market.

Ocean ambient noise is one of the important parameters which affect sonar system performance. If the ocean ambient noise is estimated accurately, the prediction accuracy of sonar system performance can be promoted significantly. Ocean ambient noise includes various and diverse sources, so the characteristics of the ocean ambient noise should be analyzed by long-term observations and statistical methods. Therefore, ocean ambient noise database was developed to facilitate management, preservation, and application of these datasets which increase with time. There were two datasets of acoustic and three datasets of wind speed in this database at this point. To develop this database systematically, this study applied Entity-Relationship Model to describe the relationship between different data and Relational Model to design the required categories. The database was constructed based on Microsoft Office Access, and user-friendly graphical interfaces based on MATLAB were provided for users: wind speed regression, time series, spectrogram, and spectrum tendency for users to query the database. As the results of analysis, the intermittent, unknown, and high-level sources at southwestern sea of Taiwan in spring and summer made the noise level of low frequency about 8 to 10 dB higher in the night-time than that in the day-time. According to wind speed regression analysis, if there were sufficient data, the method would be practicable to pick a wind speed data nearby the location of acoustic data for noise estimation. As the results of the typhoon effects analysis, the noise level of 1 to 8 kHz was increased significantly by typhoons. Besides, the noise level didn¡¦t decrease immediately and significantly after the pass of typhoon because of southwestern air current caused typhoon. After the database was developed, new acoustic data will keep being measured and collected, and the network capability will be integrated into the database to make the database more accessible to users.

With the advent of Network-Centric Warfare (NCW) concepts, Command and Control (C2) Systems need efficient methods for communicating between heterogeneous systems. To extract or exchange various levels of information within the networks requires interoperability between human and machine as well as between machine and machine. This dissertation explores the Information Exchange Framework (IEF) concept of distributed data fusion sensor networks in Network-centric environments. It is used to synthesize integrative battlefield pictures by combining the Battle Management Language (BML) and System Entity Structure (SES) ontology framework for C2 systems. The SES is an ontology framework that can facilitate information exchange in a network environment. From the perspective of the SES framework, BML serves to express pragmatic frames, since it can specify the information desired by a consumer in an unambiguous way. This thesis formulates information exchange in the SES ontology via BML and defines novel pruning and transformation processes of the SES to extract and fuse data into higher level representations. This supports the interoperability between human users and other sensor systems. The efficacy of such data fusion and exchange is illustrated with several battlefield scenario examples.A second intercommunication issue between sensor systems is how to ensure efficient and effective message passing. This is studied by using Cursor-on-Target (CoT), an effort to standardize a battlefield data exchange format. CoT regulates only a few essential data types as standard and has a simple and efficient structure to hold a wide range of message formats used in dissimilar military enterprises. This thesis adopts the common message type into radar sensor networks to manage the target tracking problem in distributed sensor networks.To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed Information Exchange Framework for data fusion systems, we illustrate the approach in an air defense operation scenario using DEVS modeling and simulation. The examples depict basic air defense operation procedure. The demonstration shows that the information requested by a commander is delivered in the right way at the right time so that it can support agile decision making against threats.

Šiuolaikinė mokykla prisitaiko prie vis naujų visuomenės poreikių, tampa atvira besimokančia organizacija, kurioje labai svarbus bendradarbiavimo modelis organizacijos viduje ir organizacijos ryšiai su kitomis įstaigomis. Kaimiškose vietovėse esančios ugdymo įstaigos tenkina bendruomenės narių poreikius, sprendžia socialines, edukologines visuomenės problemas, todėl norint suteikti kvalifikuotą pagalbą bendruomenės nariams, ugdymo įstaigos kuria bendradarbiavimo tinklą, į kurį turi įtraukti viešojo sektoriaus organizacijas. Šiame darbe analizuojamos kaimo mokyklos bendradarbiavimo su viešųjų įstaigų problemos. Daug dėmesio skiriama švietimo organizacijos ryšiams su visuomene taikomoms priemonėms ir jų įtakai ieškant bendradarbiavimo būdų su kitomis organizacijomis. Įvertinama mokyklos bendradarbiavimo kultūros nauda visuomenei. Teorinėje dalyje nagrinėjama švietimo organizacijos bendradarbiavimo problema, bendradarbiavimo samprata, švietimo organizacijos kultūros įtaka mokyklos viduje ir su viešosiomis organizacijomis. Daug dėmesio skiriama švietimo organizacijos ryšiams su visuomene taikomoms priemonėms ir jų įtakai ieškant bendradarbiavimo būdų su kitomis organizacijomis. Praktinėje dalyje analizuojama kaimo mokyklos bendradarbiavimo su viešosiomis ir kitomis organizacijomis situacija. Tiriama, kokie veiksniai lemia švietimo organizacijos bendradarbiavimo kultūros kūrimą ir kas įtakoja organizacijos įvaizdžio formavimą, kuris padeda bendradarbiauti su įvairiomis... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Modern school is adapting to new needs of the society, it becomes more open learning organisation, where inside cooperation model of the organisation and its relations with other institutions are very important. Educational institutions that are located in the countryside meet the needs of community members, such institutions solve social and educational problems of the society therefore to provide qualified help to the memebers of society educational institutions create cooperation net (system) which involves public institutions. Problems of cooperation between village school and public entities are analysed in this work. A lot of attention is given to means of communication between the society and educational institution, and their influence on search of ways of communication with other organisations. The use of cooperation of the school is evaluated. The problems of cooperation of educational institution, conception of cooperation, influence of the culture of educational institution inside the school and with public entities are analyzed in the theoretical part of the work. A lot of attention is given to means of communication between the society and the educational institution and their influence on search of ways of communication with other organizations. The situation of cooperation between village school and public entities and other organizations are analysed in the practical part of the work. It is analyzed what factors condition creation of culture of cooperation... [to full text]