University of Memphis

About: University of Memphis is a education organization based out in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 7710 authors who have published 20082 publications receiving 611618 citations. The organization is also known as: U of M.

Automated Evaluation of Text and Discourse with Coh-Metrix

Abstract: Coh-Metrix is among the broadest and most sophisticated automated textual assessment tools available today. Automated Evaluation of Text and Discourse with Coh-Metrix describes this computational tool, as well as the wide range of language and discourse measures it provides. Section I of the book focuses on the theoretical perspectives that led to the development of Coh-Metrix, its measures, and empirical work that has been conducted using this approach. Section II shifts to the practical arena, describing how to use Coh-Metrix and how to analyze, interpret, and describe results. Coh-Metrix opens the door to a new paradigm of research that coordinates studies of language, corpus analysis, computational linguistics, education, and cognitive science. This tool empowers anyone with an interest in text to pursue a wide array of previously unanswerable research questions.

Schumpeter's ghost: Is hypercompetition making the best of times shorter?

Abstract: At the center of Schumpeter's theory of competitive behavior is the assertion that competitive advantage will become increasingly more difficult to sustain in a wide range of industries. More recently, this assertion has resurfaced in the notion of hypercompetition. This research examines two large longitudinal samples of firms to discover which industries, if any, exhibit performance that is consonant with Schumpeterian theory and the assertions of hypercompetition. We find support for the argument that over time competitive advantage has become significantly harder to sustain and, further, that the phenomenon is limited neither to high-technology industries nor to manufacturing industries but is seen across a broad range of industries. We also find evidence that sustained competitive advantage is increasingly a matter not of a single advantage maintained over time but more a matter of concatenating over time a sequence of advantages. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Perfectionism, the impostor phenomenon and psychological adjustment in medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy students

Abstract: Extensive attention has been paid over the past three decades to the stressors involved in training in the health professions. Although empirical studies have identified demographic subgroups of students most likely to become distressed during training, less research has been carried out to evaluate the impact of students' personality characteristics on their adjustment. Severe perfectionism is one such personality trait that has been shown to increase the risk for anxiety and depressive disorders in other populations. Another set of personality traits linked to increased psychological problems has been labelled the 'impostor phenomenon', which occurs when high achieving individuals chronically question their abilities and fear that others will discover them to be intellectual frauds. Both perfectionism and the impostor phenomenon would seem to be pertinent factors in the adjustment of health professional students; however, these character traits have not been empirically examined in this population. In the present study psychological distress, perfectionism and impostor feelings were assessed in 477 medical, dental, nursing and pharmacy students. Consistent with previous reports, the results showed that a higher than expected percentage of students (27.5%) were currently experiencing psychiatric levels of distress. Strong associations were found between current psychological distress, perfectionism and impostor feelings within each programme and these character traits were stronger predictors of psychological adjustment than most of the demographic variables associated previously with distress in health professional students. Implications for future research, limitations of this study and clinical recommendations are discussed.

Seismic moment assessment of earthquakes in stable continental regions—III. New Madrid 1811–1812, Charleston 1886 and Lisbon 1755

Abstract: SUMMARY The sizes of three major or great historical earthquakes are reassessed using the isoseismal-area-regression tools developed in Parts I and II of this study of stable continental region (SCR) seismicity. The earthquakes are 1811 New Madrid, central United States, and its following sequence; 1886 Charleston, coastal South Carolina; and 1755 Lisbon, oceanic intraplate off the continental shelf of Portugal. The analysis confirms the large size of these events and for the first time places constraints on the uncertainty of their seismic moment release. Because of the exceptionally low seismic-wave attenuation of eastern North America (ENA), a separate North American regression of seismic moment on isoseismal area was developed. Additionally, the unknown western extents of the New Madrid isoseismal areas were calibrated with the patterns of the M 6.3-6.6 1843 and 1895 earthquakes. Application of Part II analysis procedures with these corrections yields New Madrid size estimates, expressed as moment magnitude, of M 8.1±0.31 for the 1811 December 16, M 7.8±0.33 for the 1812 January 23, and M 8.0±0.33 for the 1812 February 7 principal events. The Charleston earthquake's magnitude decreases from M≳7.4 to M 7.3±0.26 after compensation for the effect of coastal plain sediments on its inner isoseismals. Intensity regressions for Lisbon are calibrated against the isoseismal pattern of the nearly co-located M 7.8 1969 St Vincent earthquake, which in this case increases the predicted size of Lisbon from M 8.4 to M 8.7±0.39. These size estimates are supported by data from independent phenomena: extent and severity of liquefaction, the maximum distance of induced landslides, and for Lisbon, tsunami wave amplitudes. Estimated source parameters are controlled by crustal or lithospheric temperature, which governs the depth extent of brittle faulting. Using estimated continental and oceanic geotherms, viable fault lengths are 30–80 km for Charleston, 120–180 km for 1811 New Madrid, and 180–280 km for Lisbon for average displacements of 2–4 m, 8–11 m, and 10–14 m, respectively, and for average static stress and strain drops. At the estimated seismic moments of this study, the 1811 New Madrid and the 1755 Lisbon events are, respectively, the largest known SCR and oceanic lithosphere earthquakes.

Linguistic Features of Writing Quality

Abstract: In this study, a corpus of expert-graded essays, based on a standardized scoring rubric, is computationally evaluated so as to distinguish the differences between those essays that were rated as high and those rated as low. The automated tool, Coh-Metrix, is used to examine the degree to which high- and low-proficiency essays can be predicted by linguistic indices of cohesion (i.e., coreference and connectives), syntactic complexity (e.g., number of words before the main verb, sentence structure overlap), the diversity of words used by the writer, and characteristics of words (e.g., frequency, concreteness, imagability). The three most predictive indices of essay quality in this study were syntactic complexity (as measured by number of words before the main verb), lexical diversity (as measured by the Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity), and word frequency (as measured by Celex, logarithm for all words). Using 26 validated indices of cohesion from Coh-Metrix, none showed differences between high- and lo...