University of Maryland, Baltimore County

About: University of Maryland, Baltimore County is a education organization based out in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Galaxy. The organization has 8749 authors who have published 20843 publications receiving 795706 citations. The organization is also known as: UMBC.

The Role of Parents in Motivating Struggling Readers.

Abstract: Interest is currently high among researchers and practitioners on the role of the family and the value of home-school collaborations in promoting children's motivation for reading. The purposes of this article are (1) to inform practitioners working with struggling readers of the latest research on home influences on reading motivation, and (2) to provide research-based suggestions to teachers as to how they might enlist the assistance of parents in motivating struggling readers. Research has shown that supportive home environments foster motivation for reading, which leads to more frequent voluntary reading, which improves reading achievement. Many collaborative interventions involving home and school have enhanced the reading motivation of struggling readers as they enhanced comprehension.

SVMs for the Blogosphere: Blog Identification and Splog Detection

Abstract: Weblogs, or blogs have become an important new way to publish information, engage in discussions and form communities. The increasing popularity of blogs has given rise to search and analysis engines focusing on the 'blogosphere'. A key requirement of such systems is to identify blogs as they crawl the Web. While this ensures that only blogs are indexed, blog search engines are also often overwhelmed by spam blogs (splogs). Splogs not only incur computational overheads but also reduce user satisfaction. In this paper we first describe our experiments on blog identification using Support Vector Machines (SVM). We compare results of using different feature sets and introduce new features for blog identification. We then report preliminary results on splog detection and identify future work.

The value of trauma center care.

Abstract: Background: The cost of trauma center care is high, raising questions about the value of a regionalized approach to trauma care. To address these concerns, we estimate 1-year and lifetime treatment costs and measure the cost-effectiveness of treatment at a Level I trauma center (TC) compared with a nontrauma center hospital (NTC). Methods: Estimates of cost-effectiveness were derived using data on 5,043 major trauma patients enrolled in the National Study on Costs and Outcomes of Trauma, a prospective cohort study of severely injured adult patients cared for in 69 hospitals in 14 states. Data on costs were derived from multiple sources including claims data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, UB92 hospital bills, and patient interviews. Cost-effectiveness was estimated as the ratio of the difference in costs (for treatment at a TC vs. NTC) divided by the difference in life years gained (and lives saved). We also measured cost-effectiveness per quality-adjusted life year gained where quality of life was measured using the SF-6D. We used inverse probability of treatment weighting to adjust for observable differences between patients treated at TCs and NTCs. Results: The added cost for treatment at a TC versus NTC was $36,319 per life-year gained ($790,931 per life saved) and $36,961 per quality-adjusted life years gained. Cost-effectiveness was more favorable for patients with injuries of higher versus lower severity and for younger versus older patients. Conclusions: Our findings provide evidence that regionalization of trauma care is not only effective but also it is cost-effective.