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Auditory and visual speech recognition unfolds in real time and occurs effortlessly for normal hearing listeners. However, model theoretic descriptions of the systems level cognitive processes responsible for integrating auditory and visual speech information are currently lacking, primarily because they rely too heavily on accuracy rather than reaction time predictions. Speech and language researchers have argued about whether audiovisual integration occurs in a parallel or in coactive fashion, and also the extent to which audiovisual occurs in an efficient manner. The Double Factorial Paradi...

The United States government spends billions of dollars on home ownership programs in low and moderate income communities. However, there is paucity of academic research to assess the socioeconomic impacts of these programs. The purpose of this empirical research was to assess their possible impacts. The key research question explored the relationship between low and moderate income home ownership, the independent variable, and the dependent variables of the rates of crime, unemployment, high school graduation, and standardized test scores in the communities concerned. The research...

The establishment of alternative education, private foundations, and networks linked to socio-political and spiritual advocacies distinguishes the Thai social movement in this research. This research is a qualitative study that has made use of historical accounts to associate with data gathered from extensive interviews and case studies in order to inquire as to whether alternative education represents an historical spiritual tradition of opposition to reform hegemony, and whether it has had an impact on state reform efforts. Also investigated was whether there are some historical patterns ass...

Language choice has become a common phenomenon in interracial encounters in which speakers are always faced with the challenge of choosing an appropriate language in various domains of communication. In multilingual and multiracial societies, language choice can sometimes be crucial because of its social, political, and economic impact on the speakers. Even in the smallest unit of a society which is the family, language choice plays an important role particularly in interactions between husbands and wives who come from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It is therefore the objectiv...

The environmental reports of 12 Scottish Strategic Environmental Assessments have been subject to critical analysis in order to assess the extent to which they include Cumulative Effects Assessment (CEA) as a required component under the SEA directive. The anticipated benefits of assessing Cumulative Effects in a strategic setting are wide-ranging and well researched, yet there appears little documented evidence of this in the Scottish context. The level of Cumulative Effects inclusion in the reports studied was investigated, along with the parameters that appear to limit the success of the la...

The presence and influence of the media in modern times has increased to a point where they have seamlessly permeated every aspect of contemporary life, a situation that has led some to attribute them ideal qualities to promote and strengthen human rights values, while others perceive their commercial interests as an obstacle to perform such a task. This dissertation analyses the role of the media in promoting human rights, based primarily on a theoretical discussion which examines the problem from four different angles: the idealistic perception mainly promoted by the United Nations; the real...

Multi-Agent Geo-Simulation (MAGS) is a modelling paradigm which has attracted a growing interest from researchers and practitioners for the study of various phenomena in a variety of domains such as traffic simulation, urban dynamics, environment monitoring, as well as changes of land use and cover, to name a few. These phenomena usually involve a large number of simulated actors (implemented as software agents) evolving in, and interacting with, an explicit spatial environment representation commonly called Virtual Geographic Environment (VGE). Since a geographic environment may be complex an...

The thesis explores the syntactic and semantic dimensions of four linguistic elements that appear in Modern Greek arguably as quantifiers and modifiers, i.e., in the form of Quantificational Modifiers (QMods) olos 'all, whole, overall' and its extension olikos 'total', merikos 'some, a few, partial', ligos 'some, few, little, insignificant' and polis 'many, great, considerable'. Such QMods are analyzed as 'measure' quantifiers of scalar semantics that appear in a syntactic position common to adjectival modifiers. The thesis explores specific sets of reading and their interpretations. Such a ph...

Relations with Latin America have never been and will probably never be a priority for the People's Republic of China (PRC), as they will be a dependent variable of domestic economic needs and other more important foreign policy goals – among all, the ties with the United States. During the first forty years of existence, geopolitical and economic considerations (Latin America was considered to be Washington's backyard and the economies of the region were not complementary with that of China) were keeping the PRC away from the area; nevertheless, things have changed ever since the end of the C...

Benjamin's work has been classified either according to the principles of historical materialism, or according to the principles of metaphysics. This fragmentation of his ideas, however, obscures the real impetus of his oeuvre, particularly in the interpretation of his central notion of redemption. If instead one considers Benjamin as a critic of the everyday in search of a mechanism for change, influenced by the historical condition and his intellectual contemporaries, then we are able better to understand his narrative. The Weimar Republic was a period dominated by the dialectic between hope...