The role of death qualification in venirepersons' evaluations of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in capital trials

Death qualification is a part of voir dire that is unique to capital trials. Unlike all other litigation, capital jurors must affirm their willingness to impose both legal standards (either life in prison or the death penalty). Jurors who assert they are able to do so are deemed “death-qualified” and are eligible for capital jury service: jurors who assert that they are unable to do so are deemed “excludable” or “scrupled” and are barred from hearing a death penalty case. During the penalty phase in capital trials, death-qualified jurors weigh the aggravators (i.e., arguments for death) against the mitigators (i.e., arguments for life) in order to determine the sentence. If the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, then the jury is to recommend death; if the mitigating circumstances outweigh the aggravating circumstances, then the jury is to recommend life. The jury is free to weigh each aggravating and mitigating circumstance in any matter they see fit. Previous research has found that death qualification impacts jurors' receptiveness to aggravating and mitigating circumstances (e.g., Luginbuhl & Middendorf, 1988). However, these studies utilized the now-defunct Witherspoon rule and did not include a case scenario for participants to reference. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether death qualification affects jurors' endorsements of aggravating and mitigating circumstances when Witt, rather than Witherspoon, is the legal standard for death qualification. Four hundred and fifty venirepersons from the 11 th Judicial Circuit in Miami, Florida completed a booklet of stimulus materials that contained the following: two death qualification questions; a case scenario that included a summary of the guilt and penalty phases of a capital case; a 26-item measure that required participants to endorse aggravators, nonstatutory mitigators, and statutory mitigators on a 6-point Likert scale; and standard demographic questions. Results indicated that death-qualified venirepersons, when compared to excludables, were more likely to endorse aggravating circumstances. Excludable participants, when compared to death-qualified venirepersons, were more likely to endorse nonstatutory mitigators. There was no significant difference between death-qualified and excludable venirepersons with respect to their endorsement of 6 out of 7 statutory mitigators. It would appear that the Furman v. Georgia (1972) decision to declare the death penalty unconstitutional is frustrated by the Lockhart v. McCree (1986) affirmation of death qualification. ^

The use of a computer graphic organizer for persuasive composition writing by Hispanic students with specific learning disabilities

Many culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) struggle with the writing process. Particularly, they have difficulties developing and expanding ideas, organizing and elaborating sentences, and revising and editing their compositions (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001; Myles, 2002). Computer graphic organizers offer a possible solution to assist them in their writing. This study investigated the effects of a computer graphic organizer on the persuasive writing compositions of Hispanic middle school students with SLD. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to examine its effects on six dependent variables: number of arguments and supporting details, number and percentage of transferred arguments and supporting details, planning time, writing fluency, syntactical maturity (measured by T-units, the shortest grammatical sentence without fragments), and overall organization. Data were collected and analyzed throughout baseline and intervention. Participants were taught persuasive writing and the writing process prior to baseline. During baseline, participants were given a prompt and asked to use paper and pencil to plan their compositions. A computer was used for typing and editing. Intervention required participants to use a computer graphic organizer for planning and then a computer for typing and editing. The planning sheets and written composition were printed and analyzed daily along with the time each participant spent on planning. The use of computer graphic organizers had a positive effect on the planning and persuasive writing compositions. Increases were noted in the number of supporting details planned, percentage of supporting details transferred, planning time, writing fluency, syntactical maturity in number of T-units, and overall organization of the composition. Minimal to negligible increases were noted in the mean number of arguments planned and written. Varying effects were noted in the percent of transferred arguments and there was a decrease in the T-unit mean length. This study extends the limited literature on the effects of computer graphic organizers as a prewriting strategy for Hispanic students with SLD. In order to fully gauge the potential of this intervention, future research should investigate the use of different features of computer graphic organizer programs, its effects with other writing genres, and different populations.

Neural network based off-line handwritten text recognition system

This dissertation introduces a new system for handwritten text recognition based on an improved neural network design. Most of the existing neural networks treat mean square error function as the standard error function. The system as proposed in this dissertation utilizes the mean quartic error function, where the third and fourth derivatives are non-zero. Consequently, many improvements on the training methods were achieved. The training results are carefully assessed before and after the update. To evaluate the performance of a training system, there are three essential factors to be considered, and they are from high to low importance priority: (1) error rate on testing set, (2) processing time needed to recognize a segmented character and (3) the total training time and subsequently the total testing time. It is observed that bounded training methods accelerate the training process, while semi-third order training methods, next-minimal training methods, and preprocessing operations reduce the error rate on the testing set. Empirical observations suggest that two combinations of training methods are needed for different case character recognition. Since character segmentation is required for word and sentence recognition, this dissertation provides also an effective rule-based segmentation method, which is different from the conventional adaptive segmentation methods. Dictionary-based correction is utilized to correct mistakes resulting from the recognition and segmentation phases. The integration of the segmentation methods with the handwritten character recognition algorithm yielded an accuracy of 92% for lower case characters and 97% for upper case characters. In the testing phase, the database consists of 20,000 handwritten characters, with 10,000 for each case. The testing phase on the recognition 10,000 handwritten characters required 8.5 seconds in processing time.

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.

An Investigation of Narration Rates for the Reading While Listening Strategy

This study investigated the effects of Reading While Listening narration rates on elementary students' comprehension. Slow, normal and sentence interval narration rates were used. Results showed higher comprehension scores with the slow narration rate for students with low reading levels, and normal rate for high and medium level readers

The relationship between the use of Academic Text Talk and the comprehension of scientific academic language for diverse second graders

Changing demographics impact our schools as children come from more linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. The various social, cultural, and economic backgrounds of the students affect their early language learning experiences which expose them to the academic language needed to succeed in school. Teachers can help students acquire academic language by introducing words that are within their Zone of Proximal Development and increasing exposure to and use of academic language. This study investigated the effects of increasing structured activities for students to orally interact with informational text on their scientific academic language development and comprehension of expository text. ^ The Academic Text Talk activities, designed to scaffold verbalization of new words and ideas, included discussion, retelling, games, and sentence walls. This study also evaluated if there were differences in scientific language proficiency and comprehension between boys and girls, and between English language learners and native English speakers. ^ A quasi-experimental design was used to determine the relationship between increasing students' oral practice with academic language and their academic language proficiency. Second graders (n = 91) from an urban public school participated in two science units over an 8 week period and were pre and post tested using the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey-Revised and vocabulary tests from the National Energy Education Project. Analysis of covariance was performed on the pre to post scores by treatment group to determine differences in academic language proficiency for students taught using Academic Text Talk compared to students taught using a text-centered method, using the initial Florida Assessment for Instruction in Reading test as a covariate. Students taught using Academic Text Talk multimodal strategies showed significantly greater increases in their pre to posttest means on the Woodcock Muñoz Language Survey-Revised Oral Language Totals and National Energy Education Development Project Vocabulary tests than students taught using the text-centered method, ps < .05. Boys did not show significantly greater increases than girls, nor did English language learners show significantly greater increases than the native English speakers. ^ This study informs the field of reading research by evaluating the effectiveness of a multimodal combination of strategies emphasizing discourse to build academic language.^

The Use of a Computer Graphic Organizer for Persuasive Composition Writing by Hispanic Students with Specific Learning Disabilities

Many culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students with specific learning disabilities (SLD) struggle with the writing process. Particularly, they have difficulties developing and expanding ideas, organizing and elaborating sentences, and revising and editing their compositions (Graham, Harris, & Larsen, 2001; Myles, 2002). Computer graphic organizers offer a possible solution to assist them in their writing. This study investigated the effects of a computer graphic organizer on the persuasive writing compositions of Hispanic middle school students with SLD. A multiple baseline design across subjects was used to examine its effects on six dependent variables: number of arguments and supporting details, number and percentage of transferred arguments and supporting details, planning time, writing fluency, syntactical maturity (measured by T-units, the shortest grammatical sentence without fragments), and overall organization. Data were collected and analyzed throughout baseline and intervention. Participants were taught persuasive writing and the writing process prior to baseline. During baseline, participants were given a prompt and asked to use paper and pencil to plan their compositions. A computer was used for typing and editing. Intervention required participants to use a computer graphic organizer for planning and then a computer for typing and editing. The planning sheets and written composition were printed and analyzed daily along with the time each participant spent on planning. The use of computer graphic organizers had a positive effect on the planning and persuasive writing compositions. Increases were noted in the number of supporting details planned, percentage of supporting details transferred, planning time, writing fluency, syntactical maturity in number of T-units, and overall organization of the composition. Minimal to negligible increases were noted in the mean number of arguments planned and written. Varying effects were noted in the percent of transferred arguments and there was a decrease in the T-unit mean length. This study extends the limited literature on the effects of computer graphic organizers as a prewriting strategy for Hispanic students with SLD. In order to fully gauge the potential of this intervention, future research should investigate the use of different features of computer graphic organizer programs, its effects with other writing genres, and different populations.

A responsabilidade enunciativa na sentença judicial condenatória

The Textual Analysis of Discourse has its origin in Text Linguistics and it aims at studying the co(n)text meaning production based on the analysis of concrete texts by offering elements to the understanding of the text as a discourse practice throughout the plans or levels of linguistic analysis. In this perspective, we intend to investigate the enunciative responsibility phenomenon in the sentencing court judgment. To do so, we review the theoretical contributions of Textual Analysis of Discourse (ADAM, 2011) and the Enunciative Linguistics from various authors, among them, Rabatel (1998, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010), Nølke (2001, 2005, 2009, 2013), Nølke, Fløttum and Norén (2004), Guentchéva (1994, 1996) and Guentchéva et al. (1994). In this direction, we investigate the enunciative responsibility through a range that comprises the phenomenon from four gradations, each one with a kind of point of view (PoV) and with links that may mark the assumption or the distance from the point of view. Regarding the legal approach of the thesis, our theoretical anchoring follows several authors, among them, Petri (1994), Soto (2001), Alvarez (2002), Alves (2003), Cornu (2005), Albi (2007), Bittar (2010), Asensio and Polanco (2011), López Samaniego (2006), López Montolío and Samaniego (2008), Montolío (2002, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), Sterling (2010), Prieto (2013), Lawrence and Rodrigues (2013) and Rodrigues, Passeggi and Silva Neto (2014). Our corpus is composed of 13 sentences from criminal cases arising from the district of Currais Novos-RN, completed in 2012. The results reveal how the judge, from various enunciative instances, builds the court decision, which allowed us to understand the configuration of (non) assumption of enunciative responsibility in the sentencing court judgment discourse genre. In conclusion, we perceive that the discourse units are envisaged or through the assumption, or the non assumption of PoV by the enunciative instances, what guides the producer organization argumentative text and his (her) communicative purposes. With that, the judge creates and/or modifies values and beliefs, induces and/or guides his (her) interlocutor by being able to demonstrate objectivity and/or preventing his (her) face through the mediated constructions or engage through the assumption of the enunciative responsibility of the propositional content of an utterance. In short, we reaffirm our belief that the (non) assumption of the enunciative responsibility configures as an argumentative mechanism strongly marked by the producer of the text with a view to their communicative purposes. The sentence, therefore, is constructed in this game of taking and/or not taking of statements according to argumentative orientation and the objectives of the text producer.

Análise sintagmática aplicada ao processo de sumarização automática de documentos do português brasileiro

This research studies the application of syntagmatic analysis of written texts in the language of Brazilian Portuguese as a methodology for the automatic creation of extractive summaries. The automation of abstracts, while linked to the area of natural language processing (PLN) is studying ways the computer can autonomously construct summaries of texts. For this we use as presupposed the idea that switch to the computer the way a language is structured, in our case the Brazilian Portuguese, it will help in the discovery of the most relevant sentences, and consequently build extractive summaries with higher informativeness. In this study, we propose the definition of a summarization method that automatically perform the syntagmatic analysis of texts and through them, to build an automatic summary. The phrases that make up the syntactic structures are then used to analyze the sentences of the text, so the count of these elements determines whether or not a sentence will compose the summary to be generated

A representação discursiva da vítima e do réu no gênero sentença judicial

This dissertation aims to identify and describe the phenomenon of discursive representation of victim and defendant in court judgment genre. Researchis part of general theoretical framework of text linguistics and more specifically in textual discourse analysis (ATD) theory developed by Jean-Michel Adam ([2008] 2011). Discursive representation notion proposed by ATD is one of the most important aspects of semantic dimension of the text, being complemented in the work of Grize (1990, 1996) from schematization notion. In this perspective, this work is guided by studies of text linguistics with Koch (2012, 2005, 2004), Marcuschi (2012, 2008, 2005), Rodrigues, Passeggi and Silva Neto (2010, 2012, 2014), with genre Bazerman (2005), Bakhtin (1992) and the juridical discourse with Capez (2012), Pimenta (2007), Lourenço (2013) and Gomes (2013) . Methodologically, is a documentary research, presenting qualitative and descriptive characters and is guided by the inductivedeductive method. Corpus consists of a judicial sentence, criminal, collected electronically from Court of Justice of São Paulo - Judiciary website in consultation Judged1st Degree, with the theme of violence against women. Analysis procedures use semantic categories of discursive representation, such as referencing, predication, modification and the spatial and temporal location. Results are focused on the construction of discursive representation of (victim and defendant) from PdV distinct enunciators, which may approach or distance themselves according to argumentative text orientation. Thus, considering social importance of forensic text and, in particular, court judgment in the lives of citizens, it was possible to realize the importance of developing research that addresses the study of text semantic dimension, especially in construction of representations of discourse objects

Padrões de ordenação de constituintes das construções V2/V3 superficiais em cartas pessoais brasileiras dos séculos 19 e 20

In line with the model of grammar competition (Kroch, 1989; 2001), according to which the change in the syntactic domains is a process that develops via competition between different grammars, we describe and analyze the superficial constructions V2 / V3 in matrices / roots sentences of brazilian personal letters of the 19th and 20th centuries. The corpus, composed by 154 personal letters of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Norte, is divided into three century halves: (i) latter half of the 19th century; (ii) first half of the 20th century; and (iii) latter half of the 20th century. Our focus was the observation of the nature of preverbal constituents in superficial constructions V2 (verb in second position in the sentence) and V3 (verb in third position in the sentence), with a special attention on the position of the subject. Based on the various diachronical studies about the Portuguese ordination standards (Ambar (1992); Ribeiro (1995, 2001); Paixão de Sousa (2004); Paiva (2011), Coelho and Martins (2009, 2012)), our study sought to realize what are empirical ordination standards that involve superficial constructions V2 / V3 and how these patterns structure syntactically within a formal theoretical perspective (Chomsky, 1981; 1986), more specifically, in accordance with studies of Antonelli (2011), and Costa & Galves (2002). The survey results show that the data from the second half of the 19th century – unlike the first and second half of the 20th century data – have a greater balance in relation to the syntactic nature of preverbal constituent (contiguous or not), so that, in this period, the occurrence of orders with the subject in a preverbal position arrives at, at most, 52% (231/444 data); while in the 48% (213/444 data) remaining, the preverbal constituents are represented by a non-subject constituent, almost always an adverbial adjunct. Seen the results, we advocate that the brazilian personal letters of the 19th century have ordination patterns associated with a V2 system and an SV system, configuring, therefore, a possible competition process between different grammars that instantiate or a V2 system or an SV system. In other words, the brazilian letters of the 19th century instantiate a competition between the grammar of Classic Portuguese (a V2 system) and the grammars of Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese (an SV system). Therefore, that period is subject to the completion of two distinct parametric markings: (i) verb moved to the Fin core (grammar of Classic Portuguese) and (ii) verb moved to the T core (grammar of Brazilian Portuguese /European Portuguese). On the other hand, in the personal letters of the 20th century (first and second halves), there is a clear increase in ordenation patterns associated with the SV system, which shows more stable.

Vínculo empregatício: interpretação judicial do direito fundamental à relação de emprego protegida e seus efeitos

The Federal Constitution, in Article 1, sections III and IV, lifted the work as the foundation of the Federative Republic of Brazil, including work as a social guarantee in Article 6, listing in its Article 7 minimal guarantees role with respect to social rights of workers. Although elevated to constitutional rights, these social rights of workers have in the judicial interpretation of the characteristic elements of the employment relationship, sometimes a mismatch with the legal and constitutional order, when, in deciding not ponder such elements, causing damage economic and social benefits to all workers, thus affecting the very constitutional basis of worker protection, there is therefore situations in which there must be part of unavailability of rights by the employee. Therefore, identifying the characteristic elements of employment, means allow immediate legal finding about possible illegality perpetrated by the employer, precisely because the sentence recognizes be merely declaratory noting, therefore, the elements that make up the juridical system normative in order to establish the characterization of employment in step with the effective observance and guarantee of social rights and therefore the employer's performance limiter as pertains to hiring and employee dismissal. This point is it's main element of this work, which is fundamental for the exegesis of the theme to limit the autonomy of the will. There is no denying, therefore, the need to extend the effects of these guarantees in the employment contract. In this context, therefore, jumping the guarantees of employees, embodied in particular in the Consolidation of Labor Laws, and especially in the Federal Constitution and international protection instruments to ensure the fundamental right to secure employment relationship, where technological advancement, social and economic, reflect directly, such as the parassubordinação, and claiming more and more systematic resolutions, especially when evidence gaps' values, which elevate the debate about the need for increased use of precedents of order to support the judgments, often beset with aspects of unconstitutionality, all in compliance with the integration of standards, seeking legal enforcement of this bond and providing legal certainty, there emerged, so the essence of the theme: discuss to what extent the distortion of employment limits the effectiveness of social rights and what its legal effects, since the constitutional standard for social guarantees protects equally worker admission.

Uma descrição sonora contemporânea do imagético tradicional armorial como subsídio para abordagens interpretativas do ciclo de canções “Visagem” de Nelson Almeida

This study suggests sonorous ambiences from the propose of images configured according to the description in “A Visagem da Moça Caetana” by Ariano Suassuna in order to create individual sonorous possibilities that may help musicians to play the piece. The cycle, composed in 1996 (for voice, viola, cello, bass clarinet/clarinet), is formed by three untitled songs. Its text is an excerpt from the “Folheto XLIV”, from the Romance d’A Pedra do Reino e o príncipe do sangue do vai-e-volta, and describes a sentence of death illustrated by symbols of the Armorial imagery, with neologisms and the peculiar accent from the Sertão in northeast Brazil. In addition to the analysis of technical difficulties to play, this study informs interpreters of the sonorous timbre and texture used by Nelson Almeida to describe tradition through contemporary musical language. The metaphors and transgressions of reason in Suassuna’s book were explored to create three image compositions so that they may lead interpreters to the sonorous description of the inanimate objects and the affections to which the poetry refers, expanding any technical-interpretative indications limited by musical notation. This research used the Visagem scores, the literature on the theme, discussions with the musicians that played the piece, interviews with Almeida, and composers’ reports. To illustrate the theory, the three images are available, printed as woodcut in cordel literature.

Of madness and many-valuedness: an investigation into Suszko's Thesis

Suszko’s Thesis is a philosophical claim regarding the nature of many-valuedness. It was formulated by the Polish logician Roman Suszko during the middle 70s and states the existence of “only but two truth values”. The thesis is a reaction against the notion of many-valuedness conceived by Jan Łukasiewicz. Reputed as one of the modern founders of many-valued logics, Łukasiewicz considered a third undetermined value in addition to the traditional Fregean values of Truth and Falsehood. For Łukasiewicz, his third value could be seen as a step beyond the Aristotelian dichotomy of Being and non-Being. According to Suszko, Łukasiewicz’s ideas rested on a confusion between algebraic values (what sentences describe/denote) and logical values (truth and falsity). Thus, Łukasiewicz’s third undetermined value is no more than an algebraic value, a possible denotation for a sentence, but not a genuine logical value. Suszko’s Thesis is endorsed by a formal result baptized as Suszko’s Reduction, a theorem that states every Tarskian logic may be characterized by a two-valued semantics. The present study is intended as a thorough investigation of Suszko’s thesis and its implications. The first part is devoted to the historical roots of many-valuedness and introduce Suszko’s main motivations in formulating the double character of truth-values by drawing the distinction in between algebraic and logical values. The second part explores Suszko’s Reduction and presents the developments achieved from it; the properties of two-valued semantics in comparison to many-valued semantics are also explored and discussed. Last but not least, the third part investigates the notion of logical values in the context of non-Tarskian notions of entailment; the meaning of Suszko’s thesis within such frameworks is also discussed. Moreover, the philosophical foundations for non-Tarskian notions of entailment are explored in the light of recent debates concerning logical pluralism.

22 years of Predictive Testing for Huntington’s Disease : The Experience of the UK Huntington’s Prediction Consortium

Corrigendum European Journal of Human Genetics (2016) 24, 1515; doi:10.1038/ejhg.2016.81 22 Years of predictive testing for Huntington’s disease: the experience of the UK Huntington’s Prediction Consortium Sheharyar S Baig, Mark Strong, Elisabeth Rosser, Nicola V Taverner, Ruth Glew, Zosia Miedzybrodzka, Angus Clarke, David Craufurd, UK Huntington's Disease Prediction Consortium and Oliver W Quarrell Correction to: European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication, 11 May 2016; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2016.36 Post online publication the authors realised that they had made an error: The sentence on page 2: 'In the first 5-year period........but this changed significantly in the last 5-year period with 51% positive and 49% negative (χ2=20.6, P<0.0001)' should read: 'In the first 5-year period........but this changed significantly in the last 5-year period with 49% positive and 51% negative (χ2=20.6, P<0.0001)'.