In examining the use of paid television by various evangelical organizations (the "Electronic Church") as contrasted with its use by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), several important differences were discovered. First, the programs of the electronic church are usually designed much like a normal Sunday service with a "preacher" and "congregation" (the T.V. viewers). The LDS approach has been to communicate religious principles through the use of a story. Their productions are attractive to a large audience because they often feature a well-known television or motion picture celebrity, and are aired during prime-time viewing hours.The electronic church pays for its air time and production costs with money solicited from viewers. A part of every broadcast is devoted to increasing the mailing lists of the particular organization. The Mormons, on the other hand, do not ask for donations from the television audience. Their television time is paid for with the contributions of their church members.The study recommends: 1) That the LDS Church continue to make use of public service time wherever and whenever possible. 2) That the LDS Church not attempt to develop a program that could air weekly and act as a form of competition for the audiences of the electronic church. 3) That LDS communications officials carefully monitor the results of paid television specials in an attempt to identify which program elements make the broadcasts successful, and then use those elements in maximizing the success of future paid broadcasts.

[pt] O mundo globalizado e conectado através da Internet tem sido palco de profundas alterações sociais, culturais e econômicas, dentre as quais se destacam novos comportamentos e uma demanda forte e continuada por novos produtos e serviços. Uma busca incessante por novidades também se manifesta no âmbito do Ensino Superior (ES), ao qual o desafio da inovação é posto por discursos que sugerem a existência de uma crise abrangente e profunda nas instituições educacionais. A inovação no contexto educacional, contudo, tende a ser concebida, de forma reducionista, como a simples integração de tecnologias digitais na sala de aula. Quando falamos em inovação pedagógica, em particular, a discussão precisa avançar para além da preconcepção de que os professores são resistentes a mudanças. Nesse sentido, dissemina-se amplamente o conceito de Metodologias Ativas (MA), apresentado na literatura especializada como uma solução para o problema da inovação na educação. Nesse contexto, o objetivo desta pesquisa consistiu em caracterizar as concepções teórico-pedagógicas de professores universitários, de modo a identificar possíveis usos das Metodologias Ativas como um caminho para a inovação pedagógica no ES. A investigação, de cunho qualitativo, se desdobrou nos seguintes objetivos específicos: 1) analisar os espaços e modos de formação continuada de professores universitários; 2) desvendar como e com quais sentidos são conduzidas práticas pedagógicas inovadoras no Ensino Superior; e 3) caracterizar as contribuições das Metodologias Ativas para a inovação pedagógica no Ensino Superior. A pesquisa de campo foi conduzida no Centro de Teologia e Ciências Humanas da PUC-Rio, onde está representada uma variedade significativa de subáreas do conhecimento. A coleta de dados envolveu o uso de um questionário diagnóstico enviado a todos os professores do Centro (N igual a 362), bem como entrevistas aprofundadas com cinco voluntários identificados dentre o grupo de respondentes, conduzidas entre outubro de 2019 e março de 2020. O corpo de dados discursivos foi submetido a uma análise de conteúdo categorial. A fundamentação teórica adotada incluiu literatura acerca da inovação no ensino superior, além de pesquisas do campo da Educação que apresentaram contribuições sobre os usos de MA no ES. Os achados foram organizados de acordo com as seguintes categorias definidas para a análise: trajetória na profissão docente; planejamento e dinâmica na sala de aula; concepções sobre inovação; e concepções sobre Metodologias Ativas. O estudo concluiu que, apesar de os professores nem sempre declararem ter familiaridade com o conceito de MA, que é uma expressão relativamente recente, muitas das estratégias de ensino relatadas por eles são consistentes com as práticas e fundamentos teóricos das MA explicitados na literatura. Por um lado, os achados sugerem que há espaço para a inovação pedagógica em termos de adaptação a novos contextos e demandas para a educação. Por outro, indicam que ideias em torno de proporcionar estímulo à atividade e ao protagonismo dos estudantes, centrais às MA, já podem ser parte integrante, ainda que tácita, do repertório teórico-metodológico de professores do ES de forma bem mais ampla do que os discursos de defesa dessas metodologias parecem sugerir. / [en] The globalized and Internet-connected world has provided the stage for profound social, cultural and economic changes. In particular, it has witnessed the emergence of new behaviors and a strong and relentless demand for new products and services. A continued search for novelties also takes place in the context of Higher Education (HE), a sector facing the challenge of innovation posed by discourses that suggest there is an encompassing and deep crisis affecting educational institutions. Innovation in educational contexts, however, tends to be conceived, in a reductionist way, as the simple integration of digital technologies in the classroom. Discussion on pedagogical innovation, in particular, needs to move beyond the preconception that teachers are resistant to change. In this sense, the concept of Active Methodologies (AM) is widely disseminated and presented in the specialized literature as a solution to the problem of innovation in education. In this context, the main aim of this research has been to investigate the theoretical-pedagogical conceptions of HE teachers, in order to identify possible uses of active methodologies as a path towards pedagogical innovation in HE. The investigation, of a qualitative nature, had the following specific objectives: 1) to analyze spaces and modes of continuing education undertaken by teachers in HE; 2) to identify practices and meanings of innovative pedagogy in Higher Education; and 3) to examine contributions of active methodologies to pedagogical innovation in Higher Education. Field research was conducted at the Centre for Theology and Humanities at PUC-Rio, where a significant variety of sub-areas of knowledge is represented. Data collection involved the use of a diagnostic questionnaire sent to all teachers at the Centre (N equal 362), as well as in-depth interviews with five volunteers identified from the group of respondents, conducted between October 2019 and March 2020. The corpus of discursive data was examined through a categorical content analysis. The theoretical basis adopted included literature on innovation in HE, in addition to research in the field of Education that presented contributions on the uses of active methodologies in HE. Findings were organized according to the following categories defined for the analysis: pathways in the teaching profession; classroom planning and dynamics; conceptions of innovation; and conceptions of active methodologies. The study concluded that, although teachers do not always claim to be familiar with the concept of AM, which is a relatively recent label, many of the teaching strategies reported by them are consistent with the practices and theoretical foundations of MA discussed in the relevant literature. On the one hand, findings suggest there is space for pedagogical innovation in terms of adaptation to new contexts and demands for education. On the other hand, they also indicate that ideas surrounding stimulating student activity and protagonism may already be an integral, albeit tacit, part of the theoretical and methodological basis of HE teachers much more widely than MA advocacy discourses appear to suggest.

Over the last several decades there has been a debate among social scientists on whether the United States has become, or is in the process of being, politically polarized. These conversations started with discussion of the “culture wars,” moved to the discussion of selective exposure and media outrage, and currently involve concerns about online radicalization and the spread of online misinformation. Throughout these themes one characteristic has remained constant: a lack of systematic evidence despite anecdotes and feelings of animosity between the two parties. Today researchers are beginning to shift from operationalizing political polarization as growing divides in attitudes towards policy issues towards a focus on political animosity. Scholars attempting to understand the origins of affective polarization have looked at the effect of political identity, out-group perceptions, and the diffusion of moral and emotional content in social media networks. In the current study I build on this literature using a panel of longitudinal data Twitter users to examine whether there is an association between following prominent partisan Twitter accounts and the expression of emotional valence through Tweeting or Retweeting. I take a relational approach to analysis by examining how this relationship varies between networks of Twitter users and under different historical circumstances. I argue that this relational approach is necessary for understanding how political polarization is unfolding in the country and that the lack of a relational approach may explain why political polarization has been downplayed in systematic studies. This study finds that the amount of political polarization on Twitter is dependent both on cultural and historical context. It makes contributions to the literature on political polarization in the United States, research methodology, and has implications for reducing radicalization in online spaces.

The thesis aims to develop a deep learning model for facial emotion recognition using Convolutional Neural Network algorithm and Multiclass Classification along with Hyper-parameter tuning using Bayesian Optimization to improve the performance of the model. The developed model recognizes seven basic emotions in images of human beings such as fear, happy, surprise, sad, neutral, disgust and angry using FER-2013 dataset.

US sociology has historically denied slavery and colonialism as demanding of sociological study. The roots of this can be examined at the turn of the twentieth century in the early years of the institutionalization of the discipline in American universities. The inattention stems from a white supremacist racial ontology that underpins US sociology in general (embedded in the category of modernity and the category of sociology itself). There are traces or identifiable ‘moments of silencing’ during the first ten years of the American Journal of Sociology (AJS), the discipline’s first professional journal in the US, in which early (white) sociologists hide the colonial and slavery-dependent material roots of modernity behind a “positivistic” philosophy of social science and a mix of the biologically and culturally inflected ideologies of scientific racism. The persistence of the notion of modernity as given and the unconscious positivist epistemology of mainstream US sociology causes it to stall in face of the paralyzing contradiction between a stated interest in addressing inequality and a simultaneous refusal to examine the issues of power and inequality in the conditions of its own founding.

Examensarbetet har inneburit iterationer för att ta reda på hur sektionen Research & Development, Truck layout (RTL) på Scania kan förbättra planering och styrning för att säkra hög leveransprecision. RTL består av sju grupper som arbetar med chassiutveckling. Fler av grupperna på sektionen har börjat resan mot ett agilt arbetssätt för att öka sin flexibilitet och säkra sina leveranser. Det agila arbetssättet visar sig ha en positiv inverkan på leveranssäkerheten hos de grupper som lyckats med implementeringen. Inledningsvis observerades den dagliga styrningen, en gång hos varje grupp. För att ta reda på mer om gruppernas olika förutsättningar intervjuades respektive gruppchef. Fler av grupperna besöktes igen för att komplettera data om nuläget. En enkät skickades ut till medarbetarna på sektionen, svarsfrekvensen blev drygt 70 % och det konstateras att majoriteten svarade positivt i frågor om hur det är att arbeta i sin grupp. Däremot var de inte lika positiva kring hur stor nytta den dagliga styrningen bidrar med. En sprintplanering följdes hos den grupp som kommit längst med att arbeta agilt för att se hur planering av en fyra veckors sprint går till. Intervjuer hölls med sakkunniga för att få reda på mer om agilt arbete samt daglig styrning. Daglig styrning är ett av de forum som finns för planering och styrning, efter att ha studerat daglig styrning, sprintplanering samt teorier om agilt arbetssätt valde vi att fokusera examensarbetet på att optimera den dagliga styrningen. Utifrån observationer, intervjuer och teori kring agilt arbete samt daglig styrning användes kvalitetsverktyg. Utifrån två områden som kvalitetsverktygen resulterade i upptäcktes förbättringspotential för den dagliga styrningen. Syftet med daglig styrning måste klargöras samt regelbundet diskuteras hos samtliga grupper på RTL. De behöver även arbeta med fokus och hålla sig till sådant som är relevant för den dagliga styrningen / In order to find out how the Scania section RTL can improve planning and management to ensure high delivery precision this thesis work has consisted of iterations. The section Research Truck Layout (RTL) consists of seven groups that are working with chassis development. In order to increase their flexibility and secure their deliveries some of the groups have begun working towards agile methodologies. The agile methodologies has proven to have a positive impact on the delivery precision in the groups that succeeded with implementation. Initially, once in every group, the groups daily meetings was observed. In order to find out more about the groups different pre-requisite interviews were conducted with the group managers. Several of the groups were visited again to complete data about their current state. A survey was sent to the employees on the section, the response rate was over 70% and it showed that most employees had positive feeling towards working in their group. However, they were not as positive in regards to the benefits of daily management meetings. A followup was made on the group that was furthest along in working agile, the follow-up was made by observing the planning of a sprint. Interviews was held with experts to find out more about agile work as well as daily meetings. Daily management is a forum for planning and management, after studying daily management, sprint planning and theories of agile working methods, we chose to focus this thesis work on optimizing daily management. Based on observations, interviews, theories about agile methodologies and with the support of quality tools, two areas emerged which both have an improvement potential for a day-to-day management. The first area is the purpose of daily management, it has to be clarified and regularly discussed within all groups. The other area is focus, it needs to be worked on so that the meetings only contain topics that is relevant.

Narrative inquiry provides an opportunity to humanize the human sciences, placing people, meaning, and personal identity at the center of research, inviting the development of reflexive, relational, dialogic, and interpretive methodologies, and drawing attention to the need to focus not only on the actual but also on the possible and the good. In this chapter, we focus on the intellectual, existential, empirical, and pragmatic development of the turn toward narrative. We trace the rise of narrative inquiry as it evolved in the aftermath of the crisis of representation in the social sciences. The chapter synthesizes the changing methodological orientations of qualitative researchers associated with narrative inquiry as well as their ethical commitments. In the second half of the chapter, our focus shifts to the divergent standpoints of small-story and big-story researchers; the differences between narrative analysis and narratives under analysis; and narrative practices that seek to help people form better relationships, overcome oppressive canonical identities, amplify or reclaim moral agency, and cope better with contingencies and difficulties experienced over the life course. We anticipate that narrative inquiry will continue to situate itself within an intermediate zone between art and science, healing and research, self and others, subjectivity and objectivity, and theories and stories.

Software testing, specifically in the medical device field, has become increasingly complex over the last decade. Technological enhancements to simulate clinical scenarios and advancements in communicating to medical devices have created the need for better testing strategies and methodologies. Typical medical device companies have depended on manual testing processes to fulfill Food and Drug Administration (FDA) submission requirements specifically Class III devices which are life supporting, life sustaining devices. At St. Jude Medical, software testing of Class III devices such as implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), pacemakers, and pacing analyzers are given top priority to ensure the highest quality in each product. High emphasis is made on improving software testing for ease of use and for catching more software errors in each device. A significant stride in testing has automated the process and has provided software verification teams with the tools they need to successfully test and deliver high quality products. By creating software libraries which interact with communication to the other interfaces needed to test medical devices, test engineers can focus on fully testing device requirements and will not be concerned with how each test will interact with the device or any other testing tools. The main focus will be a specific St. Jude Medical device known as the Pacing System Analyzer (PSA). The PSA device will be used to demonstrate how verification engineers are able to benefit from software libraries and allow the testing process and test development to be fully automated. New technologies and standards will be created to simulate clinical scenarios and to communicate to new devices. The goal is to use software engineering principles to create standard test libraries which sustain these changes while still allowing testers to focus on finding issues for each device.

Livscykelanalys är en metod som utformades och utvecklades för att kvantifiera miljöpåverkan från produkter och tjänster för mer än trettio år sedan. Sedan dess har den kontinuerligt förbättrats och blivit mer och mer robust. Som tillverkare av kemiska produkter och monomerer använder Arkema livscykelanalys för att mäta sina produkters miljöpåverkan. Detta görs för att förstå enskilda produkters fotavtryck samt företagets övergripande miljöpåverkan. För att göra detta används ISO-normerna 14040 och 14044. Dessa normer anger generiska ramar för LCA-beräkningar men är inte specifika för den kemiska industrin. Med tanke på att metodologiska svårigheter kan uppstå inom den kemiska sektorn har många riktlinjer och rekommendationer publicerats på senare tid. I denna uppsats studeras och jämförs några av dessa riktlinjer. Tillämpningen av dessa metoder utförs på två produkter inom Arkemas portfölj: akrylsyra och etylakrylat, som är byggstenar för många polymerer. Resultaten av utvärderingen visar på områden där förbättringar kan göras. För de studerade produkterna är råvarorna de största bidragande orsakerna. Därför kan det vara fördelaktigt att övergå från petroleumbaserade material till biobaserade. Att välja den minst miljöpåverkande produktionsvägen är också ett sätt att aktivt minska produkternas koldioxidavtryck. / Life Cycle Assessment is a methodology that has been designed and developed to quantify the environmental impacts of products and services more than thirty years ago. Since then, it has been in continuous improvement and becomes more and more robust. As a producer of chemical products and monomers, Arkema uses Life Cycle Assessment to measure the environmental impact of its products. This is done to understand the footprints of individual products as well as the company's overall environmental impact. To do so, the ISO norms 14040 and 14044 are used. These norms set generic frames for LCA calculation but are not specific to the chemical industry. Considering that methodological difficulties can arise in the chemical sector, many guidelines and recommendations are being published recently. In this thesis, some of those guidelines are studied and compared. The application of these methodologies is performed on two products within Arkema’s portfolio: acrylic acid and ethyl acrylate, which are building blocks for many polymers. The results of the assessment reveal areas where improvements can be made. For the products studied, the main contributors are the raw materials. Therefore, transitioning from petroleum-based materials to biobased ones could be beneficial. Additionally, selecting the least impactful production route is also a way to actively reduce the carbon footprint of the products.

No description available.