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This thesis proposes an alternative governance structure for east central Europe – the Intermarium. The Intermarium is based on the development of a supplementary federal structure capable of controlling factionalism and nationalism utilizing concepts from James Madison’s Tenth Federalist. In particular, James Madison’s approach to mitigating and preventing the formation of dangerous factions is found to be compatible with preexisting notions of federalism in east central Europe and offers a potential regional political solution that merits further study. In reaching the above proposal, the ...

In the past twenty years or so, assessment in education has become increasingly viewed as a means of guiding and improving student learning, rather than simply measuring it. The assessment for learning (AfL) movement, arising primarily from mainstream primary and secondary education in the UK, strongly advocates this formative, learning-centered view of assessment. At the level of classroom practice, AfL is comprised of a number of key procedures including: the use of effective feedback, self-and peer assessment, questioning and classroom dialogue, and the formative use of summative tests. Bas...

This study was conducted in order to define what constitutes color education in the undergraduate interior design curriculum. The study was also intended to assess students' knowledge of color upon completing their design education and preparing to enter the profession. The research for this study was conducted via the following: an evaluation of the curriculum of 96 accredited interior design programs and several course syllabi and supporting materials; a survey of final-year students regarding their views of color education; an interview with a former Council for Interior Design Accredit...

Since the 1960s, a new subgenre (cruel-Jidaigeki) has been introduced to Japanese period films, with its own rules. This subgenre requires a new hero. During this research, I found out that Sanjuro, the first recognised hero of this genre, who appears in Yojimbo for the first time and stands as the model for the other cruel-period films, is indeed a complicated man. Firstly, he is after money. The idea is that because he exemplifies the modern Japanese man who is trapped in a new money-oriented society, he needs to represent the financial difficulties of common men. Secondly, in the course of ...

Despite the growing popularity and influence of Japanese animation in America and other parts of the world, the importance of anime studies as audio-visual translation has not been well-recognized academically. In order to throw new light on this problem, the author attempts to clarify distinctive characteristics of English dubs of Japanese animated films between the 1980s and the 2000s, including Hayao Miyazaki's, in descriptive ways: through a corpus-based statistical analysis of vocabulary and a qualitative case study approach to the multimodal text from a synchronic and diachronic point of...

This thesis focuses on the development of an artificial intelligence system for a heterogeneous ensemble of mobile robots. Many robots in the ensemble may have limited processing, communication, sensing, and/or actuation capabilities. This means that each robot may not be able to execute all tasks that are input to the system. A hierarchical system is proposed to permit robots with superior processing and communication abilities to assign tasks and coordinate the less computationally able robots. The limited processing robots may also utilise the resources of superior robots during task execut...

When in 1900 David Hilbert produced a list of 23 mathematical problems and expressed optimism in the power of the human mind to proffer positive solutions to them, little did he know that it would take much of the century for solutions to be found for some of the problems. The problems numbered 1, 2, and 10 which concern mathematical logic and which gave birth to what is called the entscheidungsproblem or the decision problem were eventually solved though in the negative by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing in their famous Church-Turing thesis. Given any fixed machine M and input n, there are gamm...

The purpose of this study was to examine the complexities of successful attainment and achievement of 10 Mexican American males in a rural Southwest community college. This study strives to offer insights concerning the questions: (a) what behavioral patterns of current family, peers, and conditions in school have influenced the educational decisions of these Mexican American males? and (b) what social conditions motivate these Mexican American males to seek and achieve higher education despite adversity? This qualitative research was also aimed at establishing and understanding how a selec...

The study examined the effects of rural and urban orientations on pupils’ performance on WISC-R (a standardised intelligence test). The study made use of an experimental method. The data were collected on a sample of 100 primary school pupils (50 rural and 50 urban). The participants were from grade 5 and had an average age of 10 years. The independent variable was the environment in which the pupil was raised. The dependant variable was the performance of the pupils on the WISC-R intelligence test. The control group of the study was the rural pupils, whilst the urban based pupils were the exp...

With over thirty-five years in the making, hip-hop has grown and developed into a global phenomenon. Despite its global expansion from the Bronx, New York, in the 1970s, the hip-hop arts confront criticism, both aesthetically and culturally. Repeatedly criticized as an art that glorifies misogyny, pimping, prostitution, objectification of women, crime, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination, scholars denounce the hip-hop arts as ignorant, offensive garbage, devoid of any aesthetics and culture. However, this is a limited, one-sided view of the hip-hop arts and culture. From local urban ...