21st-century scholarship and Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the world’s fifth most-used Web site, is a good illustration of the growing credibility of online resources. In his article in Ariadne earlier this year, “Wikipedia: Reflections on Use and Academic Acceptance”, Brian Whalley described the debates around accuracy and review, in the context of geology. He concluded that ‘If Wikipedia is the first port of call, as it already seems to be, for information requirement traffic, then there is a commitment to build on Open Educational Resources (OERs) of various kinds and improve their quality.’ In a similar approach to the Geological Society event that Whalley describes, Sarah Fahmy of JISC worked with Wikimedia and the British Library on a World War One (WWI) Editathon. There is a rich discourse about the way that academics relate to Wikipedia

The Heart of a Horse: 3‐D Echocardiographic Analysis of the Equine Aortic Valve

Aortic regurgitation (AR) can be a normal function of aging or a disease in younger horses. Symptoms range from no outward signs to decreased performance to sudden cardiac arrest. My study used 3‐D echocardiography, ultrasound of the heart, to look at the equine aortic valve and assess it for AR severity. Three‐dimensional echocardiography records a pyramid of tissue rather than a 2‐D plane, showing cardiac structures difficult to visualize in standard 2‐D methods. In normal valves, only the edges of the cusps were visible, as the tissue is very thin when images were taken from the right, which is standard positioning for imaging the aortic valve. I observed the cusps of the aortic valve to be thickened in horses with AR, with degree of thickening corresponding to AR severity. Left‐sided images were generally worse quality than right‐sided, but in some cases there was better visualization of some aspects of the aortic valve in left‐sided images. 3‐D echocardiography potentially could be used as a standard for diagnosis of AR, specifically by looking at cusp thicknesses, and could more specifically diagnose which part of the valve is affected by disease

The Discriminant Analysis Used by the IRS to Predict Profitable Individual Tax Return Audits

This paper discusses past and current methods the IRS uses to determine which individual income tax returns to audit. The IRS currently uses the discriminant function to give all individual tax returns two scores; one based on whether it should be audited or not and one based on if the return is likely to have unreported income. The discriminant function is determined by the IRS’s National Research Program, which takes a sample of returns and ensures their accuracy. Previously, the function was determined by the IRS’s Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program. However, this was too burdensome and time consuming for taxpayers. The data mining techniques of decision trees, regression, and neural networks were researched to determine if the IRS should change its method. Unfortunately IRS tax data were not obtainable due to their confidentiality; therefore credit data from a German bank was used to compare discriminant analysis results to the three new methods. All of the methods were run to predict creditworthiness and were compared based on misclassification rates. The neural network had the best classification rate closely followed by regression, the decision tree, and then discriminant analysis. Since this comparison is not based on IRS tax data, no conclusion can be made whether the IRS should change its method or not, but because all methods had very close classification rates, it would be worthwhile for the IRS to look into them

How Parents Influence Deviant Behavior among Adolescents: An Analysis of their Family Life, Community, and Peers

The goal of this literature review is to analyze the effect the family has on an adolescent’s behavior. It is believed that parents have direct and indirect control. Previous research has found that parents directly influence their childrens behavior through the parenting techniques utilized. Parental support is the largest influence on creating preferable behavior in adolescents. Along with the direct influence from parents, the parents have indirect control over the community through which the adolescents lives in and socializes with peers in. Adolescents require strong bonds in their community. Through these bonds, adolescents are watched over and other families reciprocate the actions. When these conditions are not provided an up-rise in juvenile crime may overtake the community. Adolescents learn greatly from their peers. The family has an indirect control over peers through community watch and their parenting techniques; teaching the child not to succumb to peer pressure. This information is vital due to the presence of juveniles in the criminal justice system

Religious Experience without Belief? Toward an Imaginative Account of Religious Engagement

It is commonly supposed that a certain kind of belief is necessary for religious experience. Yet it is not clear that this must be so. In this article, I defend the possibility that a subject could have a genuine emotional religious experience without thereby necessarily believing that the purported object of her experience corresponds to reality and/or is the cause of her experience. Imaginative engagement, I argue, may evoke emotional religious experiences that may be said to be both genuine and appropriate, despite not necessarily including beliefs of the aforementioned kind.I go on to maintain that such religious engagement is compatible not only with non-belief but also with disbelief

Beating Down the Lowly: The Criminalization of the Homeless and Alternative Solutions

In the current economy, the issue of homelessness is increasingly pervading the normal constructs of society. Thousands of men, women, and children struggle to find a place to sleep and enough food to satisfy their hungry stomachs. While many people suffer under these conditions, local governments continue to create new anti-homeless legislation to further eject them out of society. Bans prevent the homeless from urinating, sleeping, camping, and panhandling in public through fines and prison sentences. The laws specifically target the homeless, discriminating against them for actions which are necessary for daily survival. The legal system only further hurts this already destitute population rather than alleviating the problem. Thus, this paper looks at the numerous reports and case studies that evaluate the current criminalizing efforts in order to offer alternative solutions to this social injustice. The accumulating effect of constant segregation and punishment results in a constant cycle of homelessness and the dehumanization of certain citizens. By reevaluating the current trend of criminalization, local governments can actually assist the homeless and provide life-changing services rather than contributing to the discrimination. Handcuffing the homeless only exacerbates the social problem plaguing America

An Analysis of Differences in Approaches to Systems of Linear Equations Problems Given Multiple Choice Answers

This descriptive study focuses on the approaches college students (ages 20 -24) use when solving systems of linear equations problems that have multiple choice answers. Participants were from a midsize public university in the northeast. Four approaches were considered – three forwards approaches: 1) substitution, 2) elimination, and 3) graphing, and one backwards approach: plugging in the x and y values from each multiple choice option. Participants solved systems of linear equations problems and answered questions based on their methods in a structured clinical interview. Each participant also filled out a questionnaire. It was shown from the results of this study that the major of a student does not change the approach used to solve a problem by very much. Most students in the study chose to use substitution to solve the problems, usually because this was the method students remembered most and was deemed the “easiest” method by the students

Ofermod and Aristocratic Chivalry in J.R.R. Tolkien\u27s The Lord of the Rings

This paper explores connections between J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1953 Essays and Studies publication The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son and representations of ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in The Lord of the Rings. Focusing on the motivations and leadership-related decisions of Denethor and Faramir in The Lord of the Rings, this paper argues that Faramir\u27s behavior and motivations, despite Denethor’s implications to the contrary, cannot be described in terms of ofermod regardless of the risk that his choice to reject the Ring appears to pose to Gondor. By contrast, Denethor and his son Boromir represent the pride-motivated decision-making and rash heroics that Tolkien ties to ofermod and aristocratic “chivalry” in Homecoming. This becomes particularly apparent through close linguistic analysis of Denethor’s speeches to Faramir and Gandalf in The Return of the King. Ultimately, this paper argues that Denethor’s behavior leading up to and during the siege of Minas Tirith draws out a prominent danger of ofermod in Tolkien’s literature: the ability of the privileged leader to abandon hope on behalf of subordinates. By contrast, Tolkien’s protagonists represent the opposite impulse: they embrace hope on behalf of others, setting the stage for Tolkien’s eucatastrophic interventions

The Impact of Parental Divorce on the Intimate Relationships of Adult Offspring: A Review of the Literature

This literature review provides a comprehensive overview on the impact of parental divorce on the intimate relationships of adult offspring. In this review, the effects of parental divorce on adults’ relationships are associated with factors, as outlined in Christensen and Brooks (2001), which have been found to impact the attitudes toward intimacy and marriage of adult children of divorce (ACD). The factors discussed include: age of individual at time of divorce, gender, family conflict, and trust. For each factor, with the exception of family conflict, the research findings present contradictory findings on the effects of parental divorce. The lack of research on this topic does not help alleviate those inconsistencies. Therefore, the author concludes that more research needs to be conducted in this area, in addition to modifying prevailing research methods that seem to exacerbate the mixed findings

Illusionism and the Epistemological Problems Facing Phenomenal Realism

Illusionism about phenomenal properties has the potential to leave us with all the benefit of taking consciousness seriously and far fewer problems than those accompanying phenomenal realism. The particular problem I explore here is an epistemological puzzle that leaves the phenomenal realist with a dilemma but causes no trouble for the illusionist: how can we account for false beliefs about our own phenomenal properties? If realism is true, facts about our phenomenal properties must hold independent of our beliefs about those properties, so mistaken phenomenal beliefs must always remain an open possibility. But there is no way to identify the phenomenal facts that make these beliefs false other than by mere stipulation. If illusionism is true, then the state of affairs regarding what a subject's experience seems like is just the illusion itself; there are no further facts of the matter about which the subject might have mistaken beliefs, so the problem does not arise