Historical analysis of two contemporary issues at the International Community School of Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire: Local -hired and overseas -hired teacher relationships. Community perceptions of the U.S. Embassy at ICSA

This study was a qualitative investigation to ascertain and describe two of the current issues at the International Community School of Abidjan, examine their historical bases, and analyze their impact on the school environment.^ Two issues emerged during the inquiry phase of this study: (1) the relationship between local-hired and overseas-hired teachers in light of the January 1994 devaluation which polarized the staff by negating a four-year salary scale that established equity, (2) the school community's wide variance in the perceived power that the U.S. Embassy has on school operations based on its role as ICSA's founding sponsor.^ A multiple studies approach was used in gathering data. An extensive examination of the school's archives was used to reconstruct an historical overview of ICSA. An initial questionnaire was distributed to teachers and administrators at an educational conference to determine the scope of the 1994 devaluation of the West and Central African CFA and its impact on school personnel in West African American-sponsored overseas schools (ASOS). Personal interviews were conducted with the school staff, administration, school board members, and relevant historical participants to determine the principal issues at ICSA at that time. The researcher, an overseas-hired teacher, also used participant observations to collect data. Findings based on these sources were used to analyze the two issues from an historical perspective and to form conclusions.^ Findings in this study pertaining to the events induced by the French and African governments' decision to implement a currency devaluation in January 1994 were presented in ex post-facto chronological narrative form to describe the events which transpired, describe the perception of school personnel involved in these events, examine the final resolution and interpret these events within a historical framework for analysis.^ The topic of the U.S. Embassy and its role at ICSA emerged inductively from open-ended personal interviews conducted over the course of a year. Contradictory perspectives were examined and researched for accuracy and cause. The results of this inquiry presented the U.S. Embassy role at ICSA from a two-sided perspective, examined the historical role of the Embassy, and presented means by which the role and responsibility of the U.S. Embassy could best be communicated to the school community.^ The final chapter provides specific actions for mediation of problems stemming from these issues, implications for administrators and teachers currently involved in overseas schools or considering the possibility, and suggestions for future inquiries.^ Examination of a two-tier salary scale for local-hired and overseas-hired teachers generated the following recommendations: movement towards a single salary scale when feasible, clearly stated personnel policies and full disclosure of benefits, a uniform certification standard, professional development programs and awareness of the impact of this issue on staff morale.^ Divergent perceptions and attitudes toward the role of the U.S. Embassy produced these recommendations: a view towards limiting the number of Americans on ASOS school boards, open school board meetings, selection of Embassy Administrative Officers who can educate school communities on the exact role of the Embassy, educating parents through the outreach activities that communicate American educational philosophy and involve all segments of the international community, and a firm effort on the part of the ASOS to establish the school's autonomy from special interests. ^

A conceptual framework for understanding contemporary child slavery

This thesis developed a conceptual framework aimed at enhancing our understanding of contemporary child slavery. A new variety of slavery exists today, the result of forms of forced servitude that existed alongside slavery many centuries ago. This is tantamount to slavery. There is, however, a critical lack of awareness about important aspects of the reality of this new child slavery. The framework and definitions of slavery in usage today, though interesting and sufficient to cover historical situations, are unable to adequately describe the conditions of the child slavery. Using existing literature and research, this thesis conceptualized children's labor in a manner that allows a clearer perception of the exploitation of their labor within and beyond the household. Explanatory factors such as culture, the age of victims, the number of hours worked and the ability or not of the victim to volunteer or withdraw their participation in the specific activities were employed to determine if particular situations should be considered as child slavery, repressive child labor or merely as child work. Important distinctions were made between the use of children's mental and physical energy in defined activities. ^

A methodological framework for modeling pavement maintenance costs for projects with performance-based contracts

Performance-based maintenance contracts differ significantly from material and method-based contracts that have been traditionally used to maintain roads. Road agencies around the world have moved towards a performance-based contract approach because it offers several advantages like cost saving, better budgeting certainty, better customer satisfaction with better road services and conditions. Payments for the maintenance of road are explicitly linked to the contractor successfully meeting certain clearly defined minimum performance indicators in these contracts. Quantitative evaluation of the cost of performance-based contracts has several difficulties due to the complexity of the pavement deterioration process. Based on a probabilistic analysis of failures of achieving multiple performance criteria over the length of the contract period, an effort has been made to develop a model that is capable of estimating the cost of these performance-based contracts. One of the essential functions of such model is to predict performance of the pavement as accurately as possible. Prediction of future degradation of pavement is done using Markov Chain Process, which requires estimating transition probabilities from previous deterioration rate for similar pavements. Transition probabilities were derived using historical pavement condition rating data, both for predicting pavement deterioration when there is no maintenance, and for predicting pavement improvement when maintenance activities are performed. A methodological framework has been developed to estimate the cost of maintaining road based on multiple performance criteria such as crack, rut and, roughness. The application of the developed model has been demonstrated via a real case study of Miami Dade Expressways (MDX) using pavement condition rating data from Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for a typical performance-based asphalt pavement maintenance contract. Results indicated that the pavement performance model developed could predict the pavement deterioration quite accurately. Sensitivity analysis performed shows that the model is very responsive to even slight changes in pavement deterioration rate and performance constraints. It is expected that the use of this model will assist the highway agencies and contractors in arriving at a fair contract value for executing long term performance-based pavement maintenance works.

DIMUSE: An integrated framework for distributed multimedia system with database management and security support

With the recent explosion in the complexity and amount of digital multimedia data, there has been a huge impact on the operations of various organizations in distinct areas, such as government services, education, medical care, business, entertainment, etc. To satisfy the growing demand of multimedia data management systems, an integrated framework called DIMUSE is proposed and deployed for distributed multimedia applications to offer a full scope of multimedia related tools and provide appealing experiences for the users. This research mainly focuses on video database modeling and retrieval by addressing a set of core challenges. First, a comprehensive multimedia database modeling mechanism called Hierarchical Markov Model Mediator (HMMM) is proposed to model high dimensional media data including video objects, low-level visual/audio features, as well as historical access patterns and frequencies. The associated retrieval and ranking algorithms are designed to support not only the general queries, but also the complicated temporal event pattern queries. Second, system training and learning methodologies are incorporated such that user interests are mined efficiently to improve the retrieval performance. Third, video clustering techniques are proposed to continuously increase the searching speed and accuracy by architecting a more efficient multimedia database structure. A distributed video management and retrieval system is designed and implemented to demonstrate the overall performance. The proposed approach is further customized for a mobile-based video retrieval system to solve the perception subjectivity issue by considering individual user's profile. Moreover, to deal with security and privacy issues and concerns in distributed multimedia applications, DIMUSE also incorporates a practical framework called SMARXO, which supports multilevel multimedia security control. SMARXO efficiently combines role-based access control (RBAC), XML and object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) to achieve the target of proficient security control. A distributed multimedia management system named DMMManager (Distributed MultiMedia Manager) is developed with the proposed framework DEMUR; to support multimedia capturing, analysis, retrieval, authoring and presentation in one single framework.

A Methodological Framework for Modeling Pavement Maintenance Costs for Projects with Performance-based Contracts

Performance-based maintenance contracts differ significantly from material and method-based contracts that have been traditionally used to maintain roads. Road agencies around the world have moved towards a performance-based contract approach because it offers several advantages like cost saving, better budgeting certainty, better customer satisfaction with better road services and conditions. Payments for the maintenance of road are explicitly linked to the contractor successfully meeting certain clearly defined minimum performance indicators in these contracts. Quantitative evaluation of the cost of performance-based contracts has several difficulties due to the complexity of the pavement deterioration process. Based on a probabilistic analysis of failures of achieving multiple performance criteria over the length of the contract period, an effort has been made to develop a model that is capable of estimating the cost of these performance-based contracts. One of the essential functions of such model is to predict performance of the pavement as accurately as possible. Prediction of future degradation of pavement is done using Markov Chain Process, which requires estimating transition probabilities from previous deterioration rate for similar pavements. Transition probabilities were derived using historical pavement condition rating data, both for predicting pavement deterioration when there is no maintenance, and for predicting pavement improvement when maintenance activities are performed. A methodological framework has been developed to estimate the cost of maintaining road based on multiple performance criteria such as crack, rut and, roughness. The application of the developed model has been demonstrated via a real case study of Miami Dade Expressways (MDX) using pavement condition rating data from Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) for a typical performance-based asphalt pavement maintenance contract. Results indicated that the pavement performance model developed could predict the pavement deterioration quite accurately. Sensitivity analysis performed shows that the model is very responsive to even slight changes in pavement deterioration rate and performance constraints. It is expected that the use of this model will assist the highway agencies and contractors in arriving at a fair contract value for executing long term performance-based pavement maintenance works.