The underlying assumption of this study is the understanding of a specialized term as a summary of disciplinary knowledge, formalized at a textual level in the contextual relations which structure disciplinary lexical knowledge and are therefore essential for the successful…

This dissertation examines the administration of Islamic family law in the British Straits Settlements and the Netherlands Indies through the lens of Arab merchants in colonial courts from 1860 till 1942. During this period, Arab communities tended to seek justice…

Information Retrieval Systems normally deal with keywordbased technologies. Although those systems reach satisfactory results, they aren’t able to answer more complex queries done by users, especially those directly in natural language. To do that, there are the KnowledgeBased Systems, which…

In the last decade, the Web 2.0 brought technological changes in the manner of interaction and communication between users and applications, and among applications as well. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) offer user interfaces with a higher level of interactivity, similar…

We describe an adaptation of the knowledge gradient, originally developed for discrete ranking and selection problems, to the problem of calibrating continuous parameters for the purpose of tuning a simulator. The knowledge gradient for continuous parameters uses a continuous approximation…

A
very
controversial
issue
in
education
economics
as
well
as
the
popular
discourse
is
the
effect
of
teachers’
unions
on
education
in
America.
Using
the
tools
of
economic
analysis,
this
study
attempts
to
find
the
association
between
duty-to-bargain
laws
and

We explore, in increasing complexity, various strategies for addressing the Multi-
Armed Bandit Problem in order to find the algorithm that maximizes the clickthrough
rate in the Exploration and Exploitation Challenge 3 competition. The data used
result from the actions…

The use of clocks for timekeeping seems to be a straightforward and almost intuitive routine. Glancing at mechanical clocks designed in Edo period Japan, however, we witness how modern-day intuitions betray our attempts to understand devices created in a culture…

This research explores the metabolic role of the gut microbiota in the global
obesity crisis and rising threat of global warming. Enteric microbiota in the rumen emit
methane as a by-product of metabolite degradation. Experiments – primarily on mice –

Since China’s opening up in 1978, internal migration from rural villages to cities has
accelerated on a scale unprecedented in history. Though China now boasts over 262 million
migrant workers who are discriminated against under China’s household registration (
hukou)…