Showing papers by "University of Hartford published in 1994"

A recursive multiple model approach to noise identification

Abstract: Correct knowledge of noise statistics is essential for an estimator or controller to have reliable performance. In practice, however, the noise statistics are unknown or not known perfectly and thus need to be identified. Previous work on noise identification is limited to stationary noise and noise with slowly varying statistics only. An approach is presented here that is valid for nonstationary noise with rapidly or slowly varying statistics as well as stationary noise. This approach is based on the estimation with multiple hybrid system models. As one of the most cost-effective estimation schemes for hybrid system, the interacting multiple model (IMM) algorithm is used in this approach. The IMM algorithm has two desirable properties: it is recursive and has fixed computational requirements per cycle. The proposed approach is evaluated via a number of representative examples by both Monte Carlo simulations and a nonsimulation technique of performance prediction developed by the authors recently. The application of the proposed approach to failure detection is also illustrated. >

Family Interaction and Individual Psychological Health

Abstract: Two studies explored the relationships between individual psychological health (PH) status and perceptions of family interaction and family climate variables as perceived by young adults. Psychological health was defined within inter- and intrapersonal domains, represented by social interest and psychological hardiness. Scores on social interest and hardiness instruments were standardized and added to put the construct of psychological health into practice. Family interaction variables were measured with Family Adaptability and Cohesion Evaluation Scales-III (FACES-III), the Children's Report of Parent Behavior Inventory-30 (CRPBI-30), Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (PAC), Family Satisfaction Scale (FSS), and the Family Environment Scale (FES). Multivariate analyses indicated that PH status was associated with several family variables, with cohesion emerging as a key dimension. Implications for counseling are discussed.

Detection threshold selection for tracking performance optimization

Abstract: A technique for the evaluation of the track loss probability and the estimation error during track maintenance in clutter has been developed recently by the authors. This work overcomes the limitation of an earlier technique that does not handle the transient process of tracking divergence. Track loss, being a "runaway" phenomenon, clearly requires transient evaluation capability. The new technique provides, without the need for expensive Monte Carlo simulations, the probability that a hack is maintained in the presence of all sources of uncertainty encountered In a tracking process. This technique is of a hybrid nature; it involves explicit probabilistic accounting of both the continuous and the discrete uncertainties. Here it is demonstrated how this technique can be used for the selection of the detection threshold to optimize the overall performance of a detection-trading system. >

Real Estate Brokerage Service Quality: An Examination

Abstract: Service quality is an important issue in the U.S. economy. Perceptions of what constitutes quality service may differ between consumers and service providers. Greater disparity may exist between pe...

The Poisson-lognormal model for bibliometric/scientometric distributions

Abstract: The Poisson-lognormal model assumes that the intensity parameter of a Poisson process has a lognormal distribution in a sample of observations. This model can yield highly skewed, discrete distributions, but must be estimated by numerical methods. When applied to many of the empirical data sets related to the ‘laws’ of Lotka, Bradford, and Zipf, this compound Poisson model produces good to excellent fits. Discussion includes possible ‘causal’ processes and some implications for future bibliometric and scientometric studies.

Promoting Strategic Learning

Abstract: Learning strategies can supply the approaches and techniques students need to become successful and independent learners

Social anxiety, only skin deep? The relationship between ratings of physical attractiveness and social anxiety

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between social anxiety and physical attractiveness using Langlois’ (1986) developmental approach to physical attractiveness. Two hundred and fifty‐eight students from two different institutions participated in the study. First, participants completed the dyadic and group apprehension dimensions of the PRCA 24. Second, two hundred and thirty‐eight of the 258 participants agreed to have their photographs taken for the study. The photographs were rated for physical attractiveness by eight raters from a third institution. Consistent with Langlois’ theory, the results indicate physical attractiveness was significantly correlated to dyadic apprehension (r = ‐.16, p — .01), group apprehension (r‐ ‐.17, p < .01) and the communication apprehension composite (r = ‐.19, p < .01). Physical attractiveness and gender did not, however, interact in their relationship to communication apprehension. The implications of these results are discussed and suggestions for future research are ...

A hybrid conditional averaging technique for performance prediction of algorithms with continuous and discrete uncertainties

Abstract: Increasing attention has been given to hybrid algorithms those that involve both continuous-valued and discrete-valued uncertainties. The performance of these algorithms are, however, difficult to evaluate without recourse to costly and time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations. In this paper, a general and accurate technique for nonsimulation performance evaluation of hybrid algorithms is presented. This technique gives full consideration to the important scenario dependence of the performance by using a scenario-conditional expectation of the performance. The system mode sequence is adopted as the essential description of the scenario. Two versions of the technique are given: mode-sequence-conditional, and current-mode-conditional. The first one is applied to the notable interacting multiple model algorithm and the second one to the popular probabilistic data association filter for tracking in clutter. The accuracy of the technique is demonstrated via examples.

Toward a Pedagogy of the Enthymeme: The Roles of Dialogue, Intention, and Function in Shaping Argument.

Abstract: "I teach composition using an enthymematic approach." Or I might say, "I teach composition from the enthymeme" or "with the enthymeme." Unfortunately, the word enthymeme is more likely to alienate composition teachers than to attract their interest and attention, despite a growing body of scholarship that positions the enthymeme at the very heart of the composing process. According to the viewpoint that emerges from this scholarship, enthymematic reasoning is fundamental to cognition and discourse, and hence to writing. If so, then talking about the enthymeme ought to be an essential and powerful way of talking about the composing process, and of teaching it (Grimaldi, Gage, Green, Walker, Porter, Hood, Emmel, among others). Part of the difficulty of explaining what is meant by "teaching enthymematically" resides in the word enthymeme itself, which, unlike more familiar composition terminology (thesis, evidence, conclusion), lacks a common and shared meaning, even recognition, for both students and teachers alike. As one of my students complained, "I couldn't even find it in the dictionary!" Other students have been perturbed when their other teachers do not recognize the word. As a means of understanding and discussing composition, the term enthymeme is still in the process of gaining definition and application-that is, of becoming grounded in composition theory, apart from the realms of formal logic and classical rhetorical theory. The age-old tendency to reduce the enthymeme to "a truncated syllogism," or to a mere figure of speech with little rhetorical potential beyond the moment of utterance, robs it of the fullness from which its pedagogical potential derives (see, for example, Conley's and Poster's surveys of ancient and modem interpretations of the enthymeme). Yet the enthymeme is not just a logical paradigm ("statement 1 is true because statement 2 is true") but also a conceptualization of a rich set of relationships with the potential of being expressed in a multitude of ways, of which the enthymematic and syllogistic paradigms are only the most schematic and thesis-like. A successful essay is no less enthymematic for not being

Performance prediction of tracking in clutter with nearest neighbor filters

Abstract: The measurement that is `closest' to the predicted target measurement is known as the `nearest neighbor' measurement in target tracking. A common method currently in wide use for tracking in clutter is the so-called nearest neighbor filter, which uses only the nearest neighbor measurement as if it is the true one. This paper presents a technique for prediction without recourse to expensive Monte Carlo simulations of the performance of the nearest neighbor filter. This technique can quantify the dynamic process of tracking divergence as well as the steady state performance. The technique is based on a general approach to the performance prediction of algorithms with both continuous and discrete uncertainties developed recently by the authors.

Assessing Managerial Skills in a Social Context

Abstract: This article deals with the process of assessing students' managerial abilities in a required MBA course. The article discusses the competency approach and several competency models and gives an ov...

Codes and Pragmatic Comprehension

Abstract: (1994). Codes and Pragmatic Comprehension. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 17, Communication Yearbook 17, pp. 333-343.

An Evaluation of Batra's “Fallacy of Free Trade”*

Abstract: Batra (1992) argues that international trade since 1972 has lowered the living standards of most Americans (whose income results from providing labor services), while benefiting the small group of capital owners. This commentary shows that Batra's arguments are based on incorrect data and that his analyses are grossly lopsided. Batra further claims that the manufacturing base of the United States is shrinking due to international trade and that, therefore, this sector should be protected. the facts, however, counter Batra's contention, thereby dealing a fatal blow to his policy recommendation. This commentary refutes several additional assertions in Batra's paper.

Accounting for postretirement benefits: early adopters of SFAS 106.

Abstract: A study of companies that adopted SFAS 106 early reveals the companies generally have not funded retiree health benefits. The timing of a firm's adoption of the accounting standard is affected by a number of variables specific to that firm.

Phase noise in low bit rate transportable Ka band satellite terminals

Abstract: The development of low bit rate terminals for use with wide bandwidth Ka band transponders, such as ACTS, has forced a reconsideration of phase noise and how it effects low bit rate systems. In this paper we initially calculate the cumulative effect of the phase noise contributions from the oscillators in the ground based transmitter, satellite transponder, and the ground based receiver. We will discuss the cases where the carrier power-to-phase noise power ratio is much larger and much smaller than the carrier power-to-noise/interference power ratio. We extend our results to the case of non-white phase noise spectrum and compare with actual oscillator spectra. We also will discuss complications arising from the fact that one cannot change the phase noise characteristics of the spacecraft. We conclude by illustrating how these analyses can be used to predict the increase in error probability due to phase noise. >

The rhetoric of the reasoned social scientific fact

Abstract: An analysis is provided for one possible practical link between rhetorical and social scientific inquiry. That link is found in the rhetoric of the reasoned social scientific fact. Understanding this point of intersection involves grounding a rhetorical theory of how to create and to evaluate arguments (a rhetorical theory of invention and judgment) in the practical problems that confront contemporary social scientists during their efforts to construct reasoned social facts. The applicability of this invention and judgment framework to analysis of the rhetoric of social science is illustrated with reference to a controversy over the legitimacy of rules theoretic explanations of human communication processes. Implications of the practical link between rhetorical and social scientific inquiry are then drawn out.

Predict Dem Bones

Abstract: IN A COLLEGE LEVEL DATA STRUCTURES or Algorithms course, students are often asked to write computer-based solutions to a variety of problems. When discussing trees and tree traversals, the topic of backtracking as a programming technique often arises. Certain classics, such as the 8-queens problems, graph-map coloring problem, or knapsack-bin packing problem are often used to elucidate the topic. The author presents a detailed analysis and computer-based solution of a puzzle addressing the arrangement of dominioes on a grid. Like its more famous brethren, the solution makes use of backtracking to generate all possible answer to the problem. Details of how to approach the analysis of a problem requiring backtracking as well as methods and techniques that can be used to map the abstract problem solution into an actual C program code are presented.

‘Consorted in one Harmonee’: The Faerie Queene , 1590, Books One to Three

Abstract: In 1590 the first three books of The Faerie Queene were published. It was not only the culmination of its author’s literary life but arguably, more than any other poem of its age, epitomizes the ambitions, failures and contradictions of the Elizabethan political and religious establishment and its poetry. In 1596 the poem was reissued, with some revisions, including a major change made to the ending the poem had been given in 1590, and with three additional books. The contradictions of both the poem and the age are especially evident in the books added in 1596, which will be the topic of the following chapter; in the 1590 Faerie Queene, despite what in retrospect can also be seen as major intellectual contradictions, there is a buoyancy and confidence about the role of poetry (and Spenser’s own career as a poet) within the Elizabethan court, the English state, and within Spenser’s life itself that the second group of three books blur. Like the Shepheardes Calender, which launched Spenser’s career as a poet, the 1590 Faerie Queene is a product of a confidence that art can, without an loss of integrity, become a ‘work of state’, that a poet may pursue his literary vocation as well as being recognized as central to the well-being of the society.

The Construction of a Literary Life

Abstract: The writing of a ‘literary life’ of Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–98) is a project of which Spenser himself would have approved — indeed, it was a project to which he dedicated much of the energies of his adult life. Born in London in the early 1550s, Spenser grew up in the formative years of the early Elizabethan regime, and lived to within a few years of its end. His career and the beliefs he espoused throughout his adult life were closely bound up with the contradictory material practices and ideological struggles of the Elizabethan regime, including those over the nature and value of ‘literary’ experience and therefore of the whole concept of a ‘literary life’.

The Poet’s Three Worlds

Abstract: Throughout our lives, certain places — usually geographical, though if we are even normally introspective, they can also be imaginary — accumulate emotional resonance for us. They may be places associated with our childhood, or with spectacular successes or losses; they may have acquired a familiarity because we lived or worked for many years there. Some of the associations we accumulate seem ‘personal’ or subjective: here I used to come when I wanted to be alone; here I met my wife or husband or lover; at this point some terrible tragedy — the death of a friend or loved one — occurred. But even these personal associations, which together help to give shape and meaning to a life, have a collective dimension, even while we may not at the time notice what it is. We may think of certain, especially very intimate, experiences as ‘ours’; but the experiences of a particular history are inevitably forms and articulations of more general processes. Whether we speak of the shared dimension of such experiences as ‘essential’ parts of the permanent pattern of being human, or as archetypal, or as representing historically specific class or gender or ethnic constructions, there is no doubt that places — cities, countryside, names on a map, houses, vistas, imaginary worlds, activities in which we lose (or find) ourselves — are not merely neutral, but are heavily, complexly, metaphorical. In our metaphors for the places we inhabit and remember are our cultural values revealed.

Mutability and the Literary Life

Abstract: The Faerie Queene — along with the mysterious Cantos of Mutability, which were published twelve years after Spenser’s death — is often seen as the most significant poetic document of its age. This assessment has been based on the poem’s celebration of the apparent glories of the ‘golden’ Elizabethan age. But as we have surveyed Spenser’s career, it can be seen that The Faerie Queene’s significance may lie rather in its depiction of the crumbling of an archaic world and the opening up of what, for want of a better word, we can term the modern. It is especially crucial to our understanding of the transition in English cultural life, and not only in poetry, between the death of Sidney in 1586 and the outbreak of the Civil War over fifty years later. In part deliberately (and as it grew, increasingly) nostalgic, retrogressive, and disillusioned, The Faerie Queene opens for our view the emerging forces which were eventually to shatter the world it celebrates and from which it traced its origins and inspiration. Spenser criticism has rarely confronted this contradiction, preferring to explain away the frustrations, dislocations, and disruptions by searching — probably as desperately as Spenser himself might have — for principles of unity, harmony, and authority that somehow lie ‘behind’ the shifting intentions and unpredictabilities of the poem and behind the changing shape of his own life.

A ‘world … runne quite out of square’: The 1596 Faerie Queene: Books Four to Six

Abstract: The Faerie Queene is the ultimate test case in Elizabethan poetry for the ways in which power seeks to control language. It is a poem expressly dedicated to the praise of the queen, her court, and the cultural practices by which the Elizabethan regime established and maintained its power. Spenser accepts his role as that of the Orphic bard, praising, warning, and celebrating the society that not only rewarded but in a real sense created him. Thus his poem’s central figure is the queen — as head of the Church as well as the State, triumphing over heresy on the one hand and political dissent on the other, and as the inspiration of the poem itself. The queen’s response to the poem, at least to the three books published in 1590, was to reward Spenser with a pension. From Spenser’s viewpoint, such a reward was appropriate, an acknowledgment not only of his poetic achievements but of poetry’s usefulness as part of the nation’s ideological underpinning. More consciously than any other poem in the last two decades of the century, The Faerie Queene is ‘Art become a work of State’, asserting that beneath the contingent world the values of the regime are without contradiction and that when its norms are transgressed, chaos will result. The poem is offered as a microcosm of this truth.

The Making of a Protestant Poet

Abstract: The first two chapters have provided an overview of Spenser’s ‘literary life’. In this chapter I will trace his career chronologically through his early writings as far as The Shepheardes Calender (1579), which announced both his ambitions and such a level of poetic achievement that Sidney hailed him in the Defence as ‘this, our new poet’.

The impact of JOVE on senior design projects

Abstract: The NASA JOVE program was developed with a threefold purpose: (1) to assist in the strengthening of research in US universities; (2) to encourage students to choose careers related to the space program; and (3) to encourage outreach and contacts among university faculty and others related to NASA's mission. Here, the author examines the impact of the JOVE program on university senior design projects in the USA.