This study investigates a semi-automatic method for creation of topical labels representing the topical concepts in information objects. The method is called rotated latent semantic indexing (rLSI). rLSI has found application in text mining but has not been used for topical labels generation in digital libraries (DLs). The present study proposes a theoretical model and an evaluation framework which are based on the LSA theory of meaning and investigates rLSI in a DL environment. The proposed evaluation framework for rLSI topical labels is focused on human-information search behavior and satisfaction measures. The experimental systems that utilize those topical labels were built for the purposes of evaluating user satisfaction with the search process. A new instrument was developed for this study and the experiment showed high reliability of the measurement scales and confirmed the construct validity. Data was collected through the information search tasks performed by 122 participants using two experimental systems. A quantitative method of analysis, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), was used to test a set of research hypotheses and to answer research questions. The results showed a not significant, indirect effect of topical label type on both guidance and satisfaction. The conclusion of the study is that topical labels generated using rLSI provide the same levels of alignment, guidance, and satisfaction with the search process as topical labels created by the professional indexers using best practices.

The aim of this research paper is to evaluate the techniques used to collect latent prints from documents in Addis Ababa Police Commission and give some recommendations on how to cope with the problem. The researcher started off by looking at the general orientation of the research and how the research has been done. Then in the next chapter, the meaning and objective of Forensic Investigation, right or mandate to investigate, the meaning of physical evidence and the prints and techniques used internationally to collect latent prints are discussed. In the third chapter, the best method of collecting latent prints from documents and the method and practice of collecting latent prints from documents at Addis Ababa Police Commission Forensic Evidence Collection Department were discussed. Finally, the finding of the research and some critical recommendations were given. Latent prints from documents are very crucial to identifying the suspects and for legal proceedings or the court process. Even if it is known by the police officers, the techniques and the materials they are using to collect latent prints are with powders which are less effective. According to the research, the Ninhydrin chemical is the best technique recommended to collect latent prints from documents This research paper gives a truly unique perspective on how latent prints should be collected from documents.

Introduction: Despite management advances worldwide, tuberculosis still remains a serious uncontrolled disease. The absence of either a ‘gold’ standard diagnostic test, or a conventional rapid ‘reference’ laboratory test for asymptomatic Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) carriers complicates disease control. Through mandatory screening of high-risk groups, early diagnosis of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) cases allows recognition and better control of the tuberculosis pandemic. Materials and Methods: The current tuberculosis screening guidelines as recommended by the World Health Organization, chest X-ray and tuberculin skin test were assessed and revealed rises in TB morbidity and fatality trends in the Kuwait population (low incidence country). In order to evaluate options for LTBI diagnosis, the current work implemented a 4-month prospective, observational, repeated-measure and randomly implemented survey on 180 new immigrants to Kuwait using a structured risk factor questionnaire whilst, simultaneously evaluating the performance of the two standard diagnostics (chest X-ray and tuberculin skin test) with the new biomarker interferon gamma release assays (T-SPOT .TB test and QuantiFERON Gold In-Tube test (QNF-GIT)); which detect the release of interferon gamma (INF-γ) released from sensitization to specific MTB antigens. Results: Associations between various epidemiological risk factors - such as socio-demographic status, smoking and environmental exposure-contact - were associated in the laboratory diagnosed LTBI participants. Positive identification of LTBI prevalence detected by two radiologists was 10.1% having ‘moderate’ inter-reader agreement (Kappa = 0.505), compared to no positives being detected by three pulmonologists. TST results were negative (less than 10-mm ‘cut-off’) even in the 86.1% Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccinated expatriates. Estimated LTBI using QNFGIT was 28.3% compared to 41.1% positive T-SPOT .TB test. Both interferon gamma assays revealed concordant ‘abnormal’ results in 26.1% with ‘good’ agreement (kappa = 0.627). Conclusion: Detection of latent tuberculosis infection can be facilitated by introducing evidence-based diagnostic classification depending on history taking of epidemiological-related risk factors and chest X-ray plus either interferon gamma assays.

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The ambition of the study Nyanser av beroende is to analyze and problematize the concept of addiction. A broader aim is to investigate if it in the Swedish population exists different patterns of addiction and how these patterns then look like. The empirical material constitutes of Negativa konsekvenser av ANDT-bruk i den svenska vuxna befolkningen 2014. The selection consists of 26 257 individuals with a response rate of 59, 3 percent (N=15 576). The individuals that at some time during the last year used any narcotic substance and fulfilled at least one of the addiction criterias in the diagnose manual DSM-IV are subjects to the analysis (N=560). By the analyze method of Latent klassanalys (LCA), patterns of addiction have been investigated. The theoretical framework consists of medical and social addiction theory. This to see how different patterns of addiction comply with the medical and social perspectives that can be found in DSM-IV. In the latent class analysis, four different groups with different patterns of addiction are identified: Kontrollförlust, Försökt minska intag, Hard core gruppen och Tolerans. The group’s patterns have further on been connected with sociodemographic factors and substance use. The result of this study indicate that addiction is not a homogeneous concept but that there are differences concerning patterns of use and sociodemographic factors.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Agricultural Economics / Jason S. Bergtold / Timothy J. Dalton / Adoption of technological improvements are crucial to increase agricultural productiviy to help reduce poverty by obtaining higher farm incomes due to higher productivity and lower production costs. However, the introduction of new agricultural technologies has not always been successful or had diffuse adoption. Factors that determine farmers’ adoption decisions are: 1) farm and farmers' characteristics; 2) technology attributes, and 3) the farming objective. Understanding these factors and how they affect adoption of new technologies on the farm is crucial to assure higher levels of adoption. The over all purpose of this thesis is to explore the adoption process of new technologies and practices by farmers. This is accomplished through three essays to meet the objectives of the thesis. The purpose of the first essay was to evaluate whether or not farmers in the western U.S. are willing to grow specialized oilseed crops that could be used for certified hydrotreated renewable jet (HRJ) fuel production and incorporate them into existing wheat-based production systems under contract. Results indicate that providing oilseeds crops and contracts with desired attributes and features would positively affect farmers' decisions to incorporate oilseed crops into their rotation system. Preferred seed and contract attributes that may affect a farmer’ adoption decision differ across different geographic regions of the U.S. The second essay focused on identifying factors that impact participation and farmers' decision to adopt soil conservation and fertilization management practices for cassava producers in Thailand and Vietnam. Results indicate that asset ownership and cassava yield positively influence participation. Adoption of new practices was positively linked to farmers’ participation in training activities, use of fish ponds (as a measure of alternative agricultural practices), presence of a nearby starch factory, and slope of the land. Finally, the purpose of the third essay was to examine extension educators' characteristics that affect educators' selection decision of outreach methods in the U.S. This essay examines the diffusion process that impacts adoption of best management practices by farmers. The decision extension educators make for selecting a teaching method is affected by the relationship between the objectives of the learning process and the characteristics of the teaching method.

by Ming-long Lam. / Thesis (M.Ph.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1987. / Bibliography: leaves 41-43.

by Mannon Wong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 42-47). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 2 --- Maximum Likelihood Estimations of Polyserial Correlations --- p.7 / Chapter 3 --- Normal Curvature and the Conformal Normal Curvature of Lo- cal Influence --- p.12 / Chapter 3.1 --- Normal Curvature --- p.14 / Chapter 3.2 --- Conformal Normal Curvature as an Influential Measure --- p.16 / Chapter 4 --- Influential Observations in the Estimations of Polyserial Corre- lations and the Thresholds --- p.18 / Chapter 4.1 --- Case-weights perturbation --- p.18 / Chapter 4.2 --- "Observations Influencing the Estimates of = (μ, Σ, ε，T)" --- p.20 / Chapter 4.3 --- "Observations Influencing the Estimates of θ1 = （(μ, Σ)" --- p.25 / Chapter 4.4 --- Observations Influencing the Estimates of θ2 = （(ε，T) --- p.27 / Chapter 5 --- Examples --- p.28 / Chapter 5.1 --- Cox's Data --- p.28 / Chapter 5.2 --- Aids Data --- p.32 / Chapter 5.3 --- Simulation Data --- p.35 / Chapter 6 --- Discussion --- p.38 / Chapter 7 --- References --- p.42 / Chapter A --- Appendix I --- p.48 / Chapter B --- Appendix II --- p.50 / Chapter C --- Appendix III --- p.73

Plagiarism detection is gaining increasing importance due to requirements for integrity in education. The existing research has investigated the problem of plagrarim detection with a varying degree of success. The literature revealed that there are two main methods for detecting plagiarism, namely extrinsic and intrinsic. This thesis has developed two novel approaches to address both of these methods. Firstly a novel extrinsic method for detecting plagiarism is proposed. The method is based on four well-known techniques namely Bag of Words (BOW), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), Stylometry and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The LSA application was fine-tuned to take in the stylometric features (most common words) in order to characterise the document authorship as described in chapter 4. The results revealed that LSA based stylometry has outperformed the traditional LSA application. Support vector machine based algorithms were used to perform the classification procedure in order to predict which author has written a particular book being tested. The proposed method has successfully addressed the limitations of semantic characteristics and identified the document source by assigning the book being tested to the right author in most cases. Secondly, the intrinsic detection method has relied on the use of the statistical properties of the most common words. LSA was applied in this method to a group of most common words (MCWs) to extract their usage patterns based on the transitivity property of LSA. The feature sets of the intrinsic model were based on the frequency of the most common words, their relative frequencies in series, and the deviation of these frequencies across all books for a particular author. The Intrinsic method aims to generate a model of author “style” by revealing a set of certain features of authorship. The model’s generation procedure focuses on just one author as an attempt to summarise aspects of an author’s style in a definitive and clear-cut manner. The thesis has also proposed a novel experimental methodology for testing the performance of both extrinsic and intrinsic methods for plagiarism detection. This methodology relies upon the CEN (Corpus of English Novels) training dataset, but divides that dataset up into training and test datasets in a novel manner. Both approaches have been evaluated using the well-known leave-one-out-cross-validation method. Results indicated that by integrating deep analysis (LSA) and Stylometric analysis, hidden changes can be identified whether or not a reference collection exists.