Despite the many clear advantages that ontology has to offer as a standardized knowledge representation language, many intelligent system developers still find it difficult to jump on the band wagon and represent all their application knowledge using ontology. This difficulty and hesitation stems primarily from the fact that, while most ontology languages provide native support for reasoning about the domain's structures, they do not provide adequate support for computational planning -- the kind of reasoning used by many intelligent systems to derive their purposeful behaviors. To overcome this challenge, a lot of work has been done to discover a practical way to seamlessly incorporate planning into ontology languages. As it has been well-established in the literature however, this is a very challenging task from both a theoretical and practical stand point, and many of the reported works in this direction either have had very limited success, or have been done in ad hoc and less reusable manners. In this thesis, we report our pursuit of a new approach to integrating planning into ontology-driven applications. This approach promises to overcome the difficulties faced by many of the existing approaches. In addition to producing a reusable and extensible framework for doing computational planning in ontology-driven applications, our pursuit also raises and answers some interesting ontology research questions that could have potential impacts on several application domains beyond the integration of planning and ontological modeling.

As we near the 60th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, questions still remain about its salience and our ability to provide equal educational opportunities to students of all races and ethnicities. Additionally, scholars and observers alike note the continual shift toward resegregation in American schools, but few have probed exactly why this occurs and the empirical implications of this shift. As such, this dissertation project explores the “new” political domain of school desegregation policy to understand why some school districts are resegregating while others maintain their racial balance, and the substantive implications of this divide for minority students. The goal of this research is two-fold. First, I investigate the determinants of desegregation policy, arguing that a set of institutional (representation), structural, and management factors best predict a district’s level of racial balance as an indicator of the active pursuit of desegregation. Second, I examine student outcomes and performance under both educational settings—racially balanced and imbalanced—to determine where students fare better and how much the racial context matters to student outcomes. I frame this question theoretically in the organizational theory research on external control, in which I argue that the policy environment, in this case, the racial context as denoted by the level of racial balance, influences the extent to which structure, representation, and management affect outcomes. I compare outcomes under the two policy environments, racially balanced and imbalanced districts, to see their effect on the noted factors and where students fare better. The general results show that the broad assumption and desegregation literature finding that racially balanced schools are better for minority students is not supported. Minority students can also gain the same if not better outcomes in racially imbalanced districts. I also find that while the tested predictors play an important role, the policy environment significantly contributes to their role and outcomes. For policy makers and practitioners this means that one way to gain the equality that the Brown decision sought is to shift the focus on improving board and teacher representation or management strategies and practices. The dissertation challenges assumptions of political decisions and outcomes that fail to consider the external policy environment.

What is the meaning of the right to vote, and the concurrent right to play a meaningful role in the electoral process as guaranteed by s. 3 and informed by the equality provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? These questions, and whether the current Canada Elections Act adequately respects them are considered in light of jurisprudence concerning democratic rights including the Supreme Court's recent Figueroa decision. / The English Jenkins Commission is examined, as are the lessons to be learned from the experiences of Germany, South Africa, Italy, and New Zealand with proportional representation voting. At home, the tentative steps toward voting reform in Quebec, British Columbia, PEI, and the work of the Law Commission of Canada are discussed. Finally, basic goals for voting reform are suggested and measured against model recommendations. The prospects for reform ultimately depend on a rebalancing of the values of democracy and power.

Concept mapping in college-level physics was investigated. The study was carried out in three parts. First, an attempt was made to validate concept mapping as a method of evaluating student learning at the junior college level (ages 16-21). Several measures were found to be sensitive to differences in students' achievement. Second, the effectiveness of concept mapping as an instructional strategy was investigated. It was found that the strategy led to improvement in multistep problem-solving performance but not in performance on single step problems. Third, the concept maps made by experts in the field were compared with the maps made by high achieving and average achieving students to see if this is yet another way in which high performance and expertise are related. It was found that the high achieving students made maps which more nearly resembled the maps made by experts than those made by average achieving students.

Syfte och frågeställningar: Att studera huruvida sändningsutrymmet för kvinnor respektive män i TV:s sportbevakning förändrats över tid (1998 respektive 2012). – Hur mycket utrymme i tid får kvinnor i förhållande till män i TVs sportbevakning år 2012 jämfört med år 1998? – Vilka sporter förekommer i sändningarna, hur kategoriseras dem samt hur ser fördelningen av män och kvinnor ut? Metod och material: Kvantitativ innehållsanalys av 24 sportsändningar från SVT. Huvudresultat: Män har behållit sin dominans samtidigt som kvinnor närmat sig något, men har fortfarande långt kvar.

<p>This dissertation examines the political representation of non<&ndash>citizen Latinos in the U.S. states. Specifically, it investigates why lawmakers, seen as primarily driven by the goal of reelection, would be compelled to vote for or sponsor legislation to favor this non<&ndash>citizen, non<&ndash>voting population.</p><p>Using newly collected data on bill sponsorship and roll call voting, combined with data collected from an original survey of current state lawmakers, I test a more nuanced version of David Mayhew<&rsquo>s reelection theory. I examine the short<&ndash>term and long<&ndash>term reelection goals of lawmakers finding that both current and potential future voting populations in a district (including non<&ndash>citizens) have significant effects on voting and sponsorship decisions. In addition, I find evidence to suggest that personal characteristics of a lawmaker, most notably ethnic identity, also affect legislative behavior. In line with an alternative <&ldquo>good public policy theory,<&rdquo> my results demonstrate that even when electoral pressures are low, Latino lawmakers remain significantly more likely to support non<&ndash>citizen interests when compared to all other lawmakers. The broader implication of this finding is that descriptive representation matters and the identity link between Latino legislators and non<&ndash>citizen Latinos in society encourages behavior that is not fully explained by standard reelection theories.</p> / Dissertation

TITEL: Lika makt oavsett kön   FÖRFATTARE: Felicia Jarl &amp; My Nilsson HANDLEDARE: Thomas Karlsson EXAMINATOR: Petter Boye PROGRAM: Ekonomprogrammet och Detaljhandel &amp; Service Management KURS: Företagsekonomi III – Examensarbete 2FE71E NIVÅ: Kandidatuppsats, 15 hp    SYFTE: Syftet med studien är att studera styrelsesammansättningen, med avseende på kön, inom detaljhandel- och finansbranschen. Vi vill även belysa samt studera sambandet mellan kvinnlig representation i styrelserna och branschernas kunder samt anställda.    METOD: För att kunna uppfylla studiens syfte har vi utgått ifrån en abduktiv ansats. Vi har genomfört statistiska tester samt kvalitativa intervjuer med fyra respondenter från näringslivet. Materialet användes sedan för att förklaras med hjälp av teorier för att slutligen kunna svara på studiens forskningsfrågor och för att studiens syfte skulle kunna uppfyllas.   SLUTSATS: Kvinnlig representation har ökat mellan åren 2002 och 2014, vi kan alltså se en positiv trend som visar att kvinnor har ökat i detaljhandel- och finansbranschens styrelser. Vi har även kommit fram till att anställda har en viss påverkan på hur sammansättningen ser ut i styrelsen, med avseende på kön. Oavsett vilket kön individen har kan vi se indikationer via studien som påvisar att kvinnor och män värderas olika vid en tillsättning av en styrelsepost. Nätverk lyfts även fram som en av de starkaste faktorerna för att en kvinna ska bli vald som styrelseledamot.

No description available.

Current explanations for anchoring phenomena seem to be unable to account for the diversity of effects found by 40 years of research. Additionally, the theories do not have much to say about the processes that make anchors so resilient to modification. I argue that by focusing on the mechanisms involved in spatial representation, we can account for most anchoring effects which have spatial components.

Through the years, stereotypical representation of others has been present in video games. There exist numerous games which consist of characters that are being represented stereotypical in a negative way. The aim of this thesis is to discuss how stereotypes occur ingame animation and to see if an understanding of the culture represented will help inavoiding negative stereotypes. Possessing knowledge of the represented culture, I proposethat a negative stereotypical representation of others can be kept to a minimum in theanimations of the game Crest. This was tested on ten participants from Sweden and tenparticipants from South Africa with a qualitative questionnaire. Based on the questionnaire results, it can be seen that the majority of the participants think the animations was stereotypical. However, the participants also think the animations were not represented in a negative way, meaning that they find the animations stereotypical in a positive way. Thus, it indicates that with the knowledge of the culture represented, negative stereotypes in game animation can be minimized. This study shall serve as a small part of a solution to a worldwide and larger problem of stereotypical representations in game animation and games in general. With a larger and broader research on the subject, an answer to how to avoid negative stereotypes in games might be found.