Integration of Colombian refugees in Costa Rica : an ethnographic approach to the refugees' legal, economic, and social experiences

This qualitative study, based on interviews to 17 refugee families, attempts to identify the reasons behind the lack of integration of Colombian refugees in Costa Rica. The model of Immigrant Modes of Incorporation and the studies of Alejandro Portes and Julia Sensenbrenner about the sources of social capital on migrant communities provided the theoretical framework used to identify the roots of the integration challenges. The findings suggest that Costa Rican policies towards the reception and integration of Colombian refugees are exclusionary. The host labor market is marked by sentiments of xenophobia towards the sample population while reported cases of persecution in the country also inhibit this population's economic integration. The lack of social capital sources contributes to inhibit this community's development, despite their participation in informal networks. There were signs of collective action. Yet, the refugee community fails to come together, while it also seems alienated from the community of Colombian entrepreneurs in Costa Rica.

Non -traded goods, product differentiation and integration of factor markets

This research sought to determine the implications of a non-traded differentiated commodity produced with increasing returns to scale, for the welfare of countries that allowed free international migration. We developed two- and three-country Ricardian models in which labor was the only factor of production. The countries traded freely in homogeneous goods produced with constant returns to scale. Each also had a non-traded differentiated good sector where production took place using increasing returns to scale technology. Then we allowed for free international migration between two of the countries and observed what happened to welfare in both countries as indicated by their per capita utilities in the new equilibrium relative to their pre-migration utilities. ^ Preferences of consumers were represented by a two-tier utility function [Dixit and Stiglitz 1977]. As migration took place it impacted utility in two ways. The expanding country enjoyed the positive effect of increased product diversity in the non-traded good sector. However, it also suffered adverse terms-of-trade as its production cost declined. The converse was true for the contracting country. To determine the net impact on welfare we derived indirect per capita utility functions of the countries algebraically and graphically. Then we juxtaposed the graphs of the utility functions to obtain possible general equilibria. These we used to observe the welfare outcomes. ^ We found that the most likely outcomes were either that both countries gained, or one country lost while the other gained. We were, however, able to generate cases where both countries lost as a result of allowing free inter-country migration. This was most likely to happen when the shares of income spent on each country's export good differed significantly. In the three country world when we allowed two of the countries to engage in preferential trading arrangements while imposing a prohibitive tariff on imports from the third country welfare of the partner countries declined. When inter-union migration was permitted welfare declined even further. This we showed was due to the presence of the non-traded good sector. ^

Estimation of global beta and tests of capital asset pricing models

With the rapid globalization and integration of world capital markets, more and more stocks are listed in multiple markets. With multi-listed stocks, the traditional measurement of systematic risk, the domestic beta, is not appropriate since it only contain information from one market. ^ Prakash et al. (1993) developed a technique, the global beta, to capture information from multiple markets wherein the stocks are listed. In this study, the global betas are obtained as well as domestic betas for 704 multi-listed stocks from 59 world equity markets. Welch tests show that domestic betas are not equal across markets, therefore, global beta is more appropriate in a global investment setting. ^ The traditional Capital Asset Pricing Models (CAPM) is also tested with regards to both domestic beta and global beta. The results generally support the positive relationship between stocks returns and global beta while tend to reject this relationship between stocks returns and domestic beta. Further tests of International CAPM with domestic beta and global beta strengthen the conclusion.^

Integration of Satellite and Financial Data to Model Future Economic Impact of Citrus Crops (Final Project Report)

This study analyzed the health and overall landcover of citrus crops in Florida. The analysis was completed using Landsat satellite imagery available free of charge from the University of Maryland Global Landcover Change Facility. The project hypothesized that combining citrus production (economic) data with citrus area per county derived from spectral signatures would yield correlations between observable spectral reflectance throughout the year, and the fiscal impact of citrus on local economies. A positive correlation between these two data types would allow us to predict the economic impact of citrus using spectral data analysis to determine final crop harvests.

An evaluation of coping ability as a guide to the treatment of persons diagnosed with schizophrenia and substance abuse

This dissertation introduced substance abuse to the Dynamic Vulnerability Formulation (DVF) and the social competence model to determine if the relationship between schizophrenic symptomatology and coping ability in the DVF applied also to the dually diagnosed schizophrenic or if these variables needed to be modified. It compared the coping abilities of dually and singly diagnosed clients in day treatment and identified, examined, and assessed the relative influence of relevant mediating variables on two dimensions of coping ability of the dually diagnosed: coping skills and coping effort. These variables were: presence of negative and nonnegative symptoms, duration of mental illness, type of substance used, and age of first substance use.^ A priori effect sizes based on previous empirical research were used to interpret the results related to the comparison of demographic, socioeconomic, and treatment characteristics between the singly and dually diagnosed study samples. The data suggested that the singly diagnosed group had higher coping skills than the dually diagnosed group, particularly in the areas of housing stability, work affect, and total social adjustment. The dually diagnosed group had lower scores on one aspect of coping effort--agency or self-efficacy. The data supported the presence of an inverse relationship between symptom severity and coping skills, particularly for the dually diagnosed group. The data did not support the presence of an inverse relationship between symptom severity and coping effort, but did suggest a positive relationship between symptom severity and one measure of coping effort, agency, for the dually diagnosed group. Regression equations using each summary measure of coping skill--social adjustment and role functioning--yielded statistically significant F-ratios. Thirty-six percent of the variance in social adjustment and thirty-one percent of the variance in role functioning were explained by the relative influence of the relevant variables. Both negative and non-negative symptoms were the only significant predictors of social adjustment. The non-negative symptoms variable was the sole significant predictor of role functioning. The results of this study provided partial support for the use of the Dynamic Vulnerability Formulation (DVF) with the dually diagnosed. ^

Integration and querying of heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed database systems

Today, databases have become an integral part of information systems. In the past two decades, we have seen different database systems being developed independently and used in different applications domains. Today's interconnected networks and advanced applications, such as data warehousing, data mining & knowledge discovery and intelligent data access to information on the Web, have created a need for integrated access to such heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed database systems. Heterogeneous/multidatabase research has focused on this issue resulting in many different approaches. However, a single, generally accepted methodology in academia or industry has not emerged providing ubiquitous intelligent data access from heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed information sources. ^ This thesis describes a heterogeneous database system being developed at High-performance Database Research Center (HPDRC). A major impediment to ubiquitous deployment of multidatabase technology is the difficulty in resolving semantic heterogeneity. That is, identifying related information sources for integration and querying purposes. Our approach considers the semantics of the meta-data constructs in resolving this issue. The major contributions of the thesis work include: (i) providing a scalable, easy-to-implement architecture for developing a heterogeneous multidatabase system, utilizing Semantic Binary Object-oriented Data Model (Sem-ODM) and Semantic SQL query language to capture the semantics of the data sources being integrated and to provide an easy-to-use query facility; (ii) a methodology for semantic heterogeneity resolution by investigating into the extents of the meta-data constructs of component schemas. This methodology is shown to be correct, complete and unambiguous; (iii) a semi-automated technique for identifying semantic relations, which is the basis of semantic knowledge for integration and querying, using shared ontologies for context-mediation; (iv) resolutions for schematic conflicts and a language for defining global views from a set of component Sem-ODM schemas; (v) design of a knowledge base for storing and manipulating meta-data and knowledge acquired during the integration process. This knowledge base acts as the interface between integration and query processing modules; (vi) techniques for Semantic SQL query processing and optimization based on semantic knowledge in a heterogeneous database environment; and (vii) a framework for intelligent computing and communication on the Internet applying the concepts of our work. ^

Effects of academic integration on the persistence and achievement of under-prepared college students

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the effect of academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, on the persistence of under-prepared college students and the achievement of those who persist. The overall design of this study compared instructor-initiated contact with conventional contact. The dependent variables were persistence, achievement, motivation and anxiety. Information was collected by administering the College-Level Mathematics Test (CLM), the Perceived Affective Contact Questionnaire (PAC), the expectancy and anxiety components of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a departmental final examination, and by accessing university records. The sample consisted of 130 college algebra students at a large, public university with a Hispanic majority. The main analyses consisted of a 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA (treatment by ethnicity by gender) to test for differences in achievement, t-tests to compare motivation, anxiety and perceived affective contact scores for the two groups, Chi-square tests to assess differences in persistence, and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation to determine the relationship between pretest scores and achievement variables. Results indicated that neither instructor-initiated contact, gender nor ethnicity is related to persistence, motivation or anxiety. A significant disordinal interaction of treatment and ethnicity was observed, with Hispanic experimental students scoring significantly higher on a test of algebra achievement than Hispanic control students. ^ Academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, has a positive influence on the achievement of Hispanic students. This may imply their positive responsiveness to the relational aspect of contact due to traditional cultural values of interdependence, acquiescence to authority and physical closeness. Such interactive feedback is a means by which students with these values are recognized as members of the university academic community, prompting increased academic effort. Training in contact initiation to promote academic integration is implied, by the results of this study, for instructors dealing with first year students, especially instructors at institutions accommodating instructional methods to the needs of diverse groups. ^

Exploring the integration of data mining and data visualization

Due to the rapid advances in computing and sensing technologies, enormous amounts of data are being generated everyday in various applications. The integration of data mining and data visualization has been widely used to analyze these massive and complex data sets to discover hidden patterns. For both data mining and visualization to be effective, it is important to include the visualization techniques in the mining process and to generate the discovered patterns for a more comprehensive visual view. In this dissertation, four related problems: dimensionality reduction for visualizing high dimensional datasets, visualization-based clustering evaluation, interactive document mining, and multiple clusterings exploration are studied to explore the integration of data mining and data visualization. In particular, we 1) propose an efficient feature selection method (reliefF + mRMR) for preprocessing high dimensional datasets; 2) present DClusterE to integrate cluster validation with user interaction and provide rich visualization tools for users to examine document clustering results from multiple perspectives; 3) design two interactive document summarization systems to involve users efforts and generate customized summaries from 2D sentence layouts; and 4) propose a new framework which organizes the different input clusterings into a hierarchical tree structure and allows for interactive exploration of multiple clustering solutions.

Effects of academic integration on the persistence and achievement of under-prepared college students

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the effect of academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, on the persistence of under-prepared college students and the achievement of those who persist. The overall design of this study compared instructor-initiated contact with conventional contact. The dependent variables were persistence, achievement, motivation and anxiety. Information was collected by administering the College-Level Mathematics Test (CLM), the Perceived Affective Contact Questionnaire (PAC), the expectancy and anxiety components of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a departmental final examination, and by accessing university records. The sample consisted of 130 college algebra students at a large, public university with a Hispanic majority. The main analyses consisted of a 2x2x2 ANOVA (treatment by ethnicity by gender) to test for differences in achievement, t-tests to compare motivation, anxiety and perceived affective contact scores for the two groups, Chi-square tests to assess differences in persistence, and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation to determine the relationship between pretest scores and achievement variables. Results indicated that neither instructor-initiated contact, gender nor ethnicity is related to persistence, motivation or anxiety. A significant disordinal interaction of treatment and ethnicity was observed, with Hispanic experimental students scoring significantly higher on a test of algebra achievement than Hispanic control students. Academic integration, defined in terms of instructor/student contact, has a positive influence on the achievement of Hispanic students. This may imply their positive responsiveness to the relational aspect of contact due to traditional cultural values of interdependence, acquiescence to authority and physical closeness. Such interactive feedback is a means by which students with these values are recognized as members of the university academic community, prompting increased academic effort. Training in contact initiation to promote academic integration is implied, by the results of this study, for instructors dealing with first year students, especially instructors at institutions accommodating instructional methods to the needs of diverse groups.

Integration and querying of heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed database systems

Today, databases have become an integral part of information systems. In the past two decades, we have seen different database systems being developed independently and used in different applications domains. Today's interconnected networks and advanced applications, such as data warehousing, data mining & knowledge discovery and intelligent data access to information on the Web, have created a need for integrated access to such heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed database systems. Heterogeneous/multidatabase research has focused on this issue resulting in many different approaches. However, a single, generally accepted methodology in academia or industry has not emerged providing ubiquitous intelligent data access from heterogeneous, autonomous, distributed information sources. This thesis describes a heterogeneous database system being developed at Highperformance Database Research Center (HPDRC). A major impediment to ubiquitous deployment of multidatabase technology is the difficulty in resolving semantic heterogeneity. That is, identifying related information sources for integration and querying purposes. Our approach considers the semantics of the meta-data constructs in resolving this issue. The major contributions of the thesis work include: (i.) providing a scalable, easy-to-implement architecture for developing a heterogeneous multidatabase system, utilizing Semantic Binary Object-oriented Data Model (Sem-ODM) and Semantic SQL query language to capture the semantics of the data sources being integrated and to provide an easy-to-use query facility; (ii.) a methodology for semantic heterogeneity resolution by investigating into the extents of the meta-data constructs of component schemas. This methodology is shown to be correct, complete and unambiguous; (iii.) a semi-automated technique for identifying semantic relations, which is the basis of semantic knowledge for integration and querying, using shared ontologies for context-mediation; (iv.) resolutions for schematic conflicts and a language for defining global views from a set of component Sem-ODM schemas; (v.) design of a knowledge base for storing and manipulating meta-data and knowledge acquired during the integration process. This knowledge base acts as the interface between integration and query processing modules; (vi.) techniques for Semantic SQL query processing and optimization based on semantic knowledge in a heterogeneous database environment; and (vii.) a framework for intelligent computing and communication on the Internet applying the concepts of our work.

Integration of a Sedimentation Module to a Hydrologic Model and its Application to a Mercury TMDL Analysis

This research is part of continued efforts to correlate the hydrology of East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC) and Bear Creek (BC) with the long term distribution of mercury within the overland, subsurface, and river sub-domains. The main objective of this study was to add a sedimentation module (ECO Lab) capable of simulating the reactive transport mercury exchange mechanisms within sediments and porewater throughout the watershed. The enhanced model was then applied to a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) mercury analysis for EFPC. That application used historical precipitation, groundwater levels, river discharges, and mercury concentrations data that were retrieved from government databases and input to the model. The model was executed to reduce computational time, predict flow discharges, total mercury concentration, flow duration and mercury mass rate curves at key monitoring stations under various hydrological and environmental conditions and scenarios. The computational results provided insight on the relationship between discharges and mercury mass rate curves at various stations throughout EFPC, which is important to best understand and support the management mercury contamination and remediation efforts within EFPC.