This thesis embodies the results of an investigation of a residence exclusively devoted to those who r blind. Working within the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism, the primary focus of this study was to discover whether relationship existed between the pattern of group organization within the residence and the perception of the attitudes of the sighted towards the blind. Underlying its approach was the assumption that how the residents perceived the attitudes of the sighted was related to how they evaluated themselves. A second focus of this study was to determine the basis and extent of group formation within the residence. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

No / The rise of reassurance policing in the UK, informed by ideas drawn from a Signal Crimes Perspective, replaced a narrow focus on controlling crime with a broader emphasis on communicating security. This paper provides a sympathetic critique of dominant assumptions implied in this policy shift concerning the reassurance function of policing. Important in these theoretically informed policy debates is the idea that the police and their partners, through symbolic communications, can influence the extent to which individuals perceive that order and security exist within urban spaces. The paper draws on research findings to illustrate the contrasting ways visible signifiers of crime and formal controls are received and interpreted by diverse audiences. It challenges assumptions about the impact of criminal activities upon perceptions of safety and contributes insights into the unintended effects of formal controls that have implications for our understanding of local social order.

The Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year, is the most important festival in China. On every Lunar New Year's Eve since 1983, the state-run China Central TV (CCTV), the only national TV station in China, has held a celebrating gala. This thesis attempts to examine the CCTV Spring Festival Galas as a case study of China's statist nationalism. The research questions of this thesis are: what techniques and technologies have the CCTV Spring Festival Galas used to construct a Chinese national space? How have the CCTV Spring Festival Galas describe the Chinese national space? And what changes have taken place in these techniques and technologies as well as in the descriptions? To answer these questions, this thesis conducts a comparative research, comparing both the commonalities and differences between the galas of 1984-86 and those of 2004-06. Employing an interpretative textual analysis approach, it analyzes the videos of these six years' galas and explores the political meanings of words and programs in the galas. This thesis finds that in order to imagine a united Chinese national space, the galas mainly represent China in terms of classes, ethnic groups and places. With the presence of minorities and people from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, the galas focus on the boundary of the Chinese nation to construct the unity of China. Furthermore, in order to construct the greatness of this united Chinese national space, the galas use heroes and sites to symbolize China. The presence of traditional elements helps create a temporal dimension of the Chinese national space. As a result of, and in response to, the socio-economic changes in the last two decades, the techniques and technologies used by the galas have changed. Besides the great changes in stage settings and technologies, the major changes in the techniques include: in the 2004-06 galas, hosts play a much more important role in interpreting the political meanings of the programs and presenting the state's nationalist narrative to the audience, the Chinese Communist Party occupies a more central place in the galas, and home increasingly means individual family instead of the country of China. Correspondingly, the way the galas treat singers, actors, and hosts from Hong Kong and Taiwan has also changed. / Master of Arts

Hooking up can carry a vast array of definitions, embody a multitude of implications, and is still somehow an almost unavoidable part of college life. The present study applies identity theory to the relatively new culture of sex and dating at college, more predominantly known as hookup culture, in order to examine the types of identities that might affect hookup behaviors. Identity theory is a particularly useful framework to understanding hookup culture because of its ability to examine how the individual (college student) situates oneself in the larger social environment (college). This study also incorporates commitment to identity as well as how certain meanings reflect that identity. Utilizing two waves of data from the "College Identity Study"—collected between 2015-2016 and surveying college students at a large, southeastern public university, aged 18-24 (n=187). Regression analyses were run in order to predict hookup behaviors using the partier identity, commitment to partier identity, and partier identity meanings. Ultimately, the model supports the hypothesis that college students who claim the partier identity are more likely to hook up, though commitment to this identity is low overall. / Master of Science / Hooking up can mean many different things to different people, but is still somehow an almost unavoidable part of college life. This paper looks at this relatively new culture of sex and dating on campus, also known as hookup culture, in order to better understand who is more likely to hook up. By using survey data from a “College Identity Study”—collected between 2015-2016 at a large, southeastern public university, from students aged 18-24—the study analyzes what kinds of college identities are most likely to engage in hooking up behaviors. Ultimately, the hypothesis that college students who claim the partier identity are more likely to hook up was supported, meaning there is a positive relationship between partying and hooking up.

In the realm of natural language programming, translating free-form sentences in natural language into a functional, machine-executable program remains difficult due to the following 4 challenges. First, the inherent ambiguity of natural languages. Second, the high-level verbose nature in user descriptions. Third, the complexity in the sentences and Fourth, the invalid or semantically unclear sentences. Our first solution is a Large Language Model (LLM) based Artificial Intelligence driven assistant to process free-form sentences and decompose them into sequences of simplified, unambiguous sentences that abide by a set of rules, thereby stripping away the complexities embedded within the original sentences. These resulting sentences are then used to generate the code. We applied the proposed approach to a set of free-form sentences written by middle-school students for describing the logic behind video games. More than 60% of the free-form sentences containing these problems were sufficiently converted to sequences of simple unambiguous object-oriented sentences by our approach. Next, the thesis also presents "IntentGuide," a neuro-symbolic integration framework to enhance the clarity and executability of human intentions expressed in freeform sentences. IntentGuide effectively integrates the rule-based error detection capabilities of symbolic AI with the powerful adaptive learning abilities of Large Language Model to convert ambiguous or complex sentences into clear, machine-understandable instructions. The empirical evaluation of IntentGuide performed on natural language sentences written by middle school students for designing video games, reveals a significant improvement in error correction and code generation abilities compared to previous approach, attaining an accuracy rate of 90%. / Master of Science / Imagine if you could talk to machines in everyday language and they could understand exactly what you meant, turning your words into programs that do exactly what you describe. That's the goal of the thesis. We've developed a system that helps machines make sense of the kind of free-form language that people, especially students, use when they describe what they want a computer to do. Understanding and converting everyday language into computer code is a complex challenge, primarily because the way we naturally speak can be vague, overly detailed, or just complex. This thesis presents a new tool using artificial intelligence that helps break down and simplify these sentences. By transforming them into clearer, rulefollowing instructions, this tool makes it easier for machines to understand and execute the tasks we describe. The technology was tested using descriptions from middle-school students on how video games should work. Over 60% of these complex or unclear descriptions were sufficiently converted into straightforward instructions that a machine could use. Additionally, a new system called "IntentGuide" was introduced, combining traditional AI methods with advanced language models to improve how effectively machines can interpret and act on human instructions. This improved system showed a 90% accuracy in understanding and correcting errors in the students' game descriptions, marking a significant step forward in helping computers better understand us.

Software testing is a fundamental part of the software development process. However, testing is still costly and consumes about half of the development cost. The path explosion problem often necessitates one to consider an extremely large number of paths in order to reach a specific target. Symbolic execution can reduce this cost by using symbolic values and heuristic exploration strategies. Although various exploration strategies have been proposed in the past, the number of Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver calls for reaching a target is still large, resulting in longer execution times for programs containing many paths. In this paper, we present two partitioning strategies in order to mitigate this problem, consequently reducing unnecessary SMT solver calls as well. In sequential partitioning, code sections are analyzed sequentially to take advantage of infeasible paths discovered in earlier sections. On the other hand, using dynamic partitioning on SSA-applied code, the code sections are analyzed in a non-consecutive order guided by data dependency metrics within the sections. Experimental results show that both strategies can achieve significant speedup in reducing the number of unnecessary solver calls in large programs. More than 1000x speedup can be achieved in large programs over conflict-driven learning. / Master of Science

When representing statements about knowledge in an extensional logic, it occasionally happens that undesired conclusions arise. Such extraneous conclusions are often the result of substitution of equals for equals or existential instantiation within intensional operators such as Know. In the past, efforts at solving this problem have centered on modifications to the logic. In this thesis, I propose a solution that leaves the logic intact and changes the representation of the statements instead. The solution presented here has four main points: 1) Only propositions can be known. 2) Relations rather than functions should be used to describe objects. 3) Temporal reasoning is often necessary to represent many real world problems. 4) In cases where more than one label can apply to the same object, an agent's knowledge about labels must be explicitly represented. When these guidelines are followed, statements about knowledge can be represented in standard first-order predicate logic in such a way that extraneous conclusions cannot be drawn. Standard first-order theorem provers (like Prolog) can then be used to solve problems which involve reasoning about knowledge / M.S.

Untestable faults in circuits are defects/faults for which there exists no test pattern that can either excite the fault or propagate the fault effect to an observable point, which could be either a Primary output (PO) or a scan flip-flop. The current state-of-the-art automatic test pattern generators (ATPGs) spend a lot of time in trying to generate a test sequence for the detection of untestable faults, before aborting on them, or identifying them as untestable, given enough time. Thus, it would be beneficial to quickly identify faults that are redundant/untestable, so that tools such as ATPG engines or fault simulators do not waste time targeting these faults. Our work focuses on the identification of untestable faults at low cost in terms of both memory and execution time. A powerful and memory efficient implication engine, which is used to identify the effect(s) of asserting logic values in a circuit, is used as the basic building block of our tool. Using the knowledge provided by this implication engine, we identify untestable faults using a fault independent, conflict based analysis. We evaluated our tool against several benchmark circuits (ISCAS '85, ISCAS '89 and ISCAS '93), and found that we could identify considerably more untestable faults in sequential circuits compared to similar conflict based algorithms which have been proposed earlier. / Master of Science

In recent years corporate organizations have implemented casual wear as an alternative to traditional dress codes to encourage comfort, relaxation,productivity, and manager/employee interactions. The purpose of this study was to examine gender differences related to attitudes towards casual work attire and productivity, to examine perceptions of the effects of casual attire on the office atmosphere, and to determine what constitutes appropriate casual dress in corporate offices. The study involved a comparative analysis of males and females to determine the differences between perceptions and attitudes towards corporate dressing down. The sample was comprised of 66 employees of 3 major companies in the southeast. Respondents completed the Manager /Employee Questionnaire on Corporate Dressing Down which contained 38 Likert-type questions and 2 questions requiring the respondents to rank apparel ensembles. The questionnaire was pilot tested for content validity and reliability. Data were analyzed using factor analysis, frequencies, t-tests, and MANOVAs. T -tests revealed no significant differences between male and female attitudes towards dressing down, attitudes towards productivity, perceptions of the atmosphere, and perceptions of manager and employee interactions. Examination of frequencies revealed that males and females differed in their selection of appropriate male and female casual wear for the workplace. Multiple analysis of variance indicated no significant difference between males and female perceptions of casual and traditional work attire. / Master of Science

Community is created, developed, and produced by CrossFit as an organization through their website mission statement and visual media, and the community of CrossFitters are able to respond in kind on CrossFit social media. CrossFit culture has become a tour-de-force in the health and fitness industry over recent years, where individuals come together from all walks of life to connect to others through a health and fitness-centric focused community. The high- quality promotional media produced by CrossFit HQ offers a glimpse into what the organization promotes and values, and the official webpage is the main starting point for potential new members to engage with CrossFit as an organization. Likewise, the CrossFit Facebook page offers research into how individuals in the CrossFit community engage with promoted material, as well as how they may shape their identity or understanding as a result. Fantasy theme analysis (FTA) is useful for analyzing the way CrossFitters define their identity through their membership in CrossFit culture. FTA can help explain how both the CrossFit website and Facebook posts present the "CrossFit way of life" as an ideal fitness community and its implications for members. Using symbolic convergence theory (SCT) as a lens, research will utilize fantasy theme rhetorical criticism as the methodology with which these CrossFit artifacts (both Facebook posts and corresponding comments) are analyzed in order to develop a better understanding of the fantasy themes found within the CrossFit community as well as how members develop a sense of shared reality and identity through their membership in the organization. / Master of Arts / Community is created, developed, and produced by CrossFit as an organization through their website mission statement and visual media, and the community of CrossFitters are able to respond in kind on CrossFit social media. CrossFit culture has become a tour-de-force in the health and fitness industry over recent years, where individuals come together from all walks of life to connect to others through a health and fitness-centric focused community. The high-quality promotional media produced by CrossFit HQ offers a glimpse into what the organization promotes and values, and the official webpage is the main starting point for potential new members to engage with CrossFit as an organization. Likewise, the CrossFit Facebook page offers research into how individuals in the CrossFit community engage with promoted material, as well as how they may shape their identity or understanding as a result. Using symbolic convergence theory (SCT) as a lens, research will look at CrossFit website content, Facebook posts, and corresponding content to develop a better understanding of the CrossFit community as well as how members develop a sense of shared reality and identity through their membership in the organization.