Sample records for character development program

  1. Positive Character Development in School Sport Programs. ERIC Digest.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Beller, Jennifer

    This digest discusses the formal and informal processes of moral character development through sport in light of the types of programs that have shown to improve moral character, sportsmanship, and fair play, noting that such efforts involve combined lifelong formal and informal educational processes with three interrelated dimensions: knowing,…

  2. Character Development in Adolescents.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kessler, Glenn R.; And Others

    1986-01-01

    Explored the effects of a program consisting of communication and counseling skills, assertiveness training and moral dilemmas on the character development of high school students. The results demonstrated that the character development of the students in the experimental treatment group was affected significantly over time by the program.…

  3. Participant Perceptions of Character Concepts in a Physical Activity-Based Positive Youth Development Program.

    PubMed

    Riciputi, Shaina; McDonough, Meghan H; Ullrich-French, Sarah

    2016-10-01

    Physical activity-based positive youth development (PYD) programs often aim to foster character development. This study examined youth perspectives of character development curricula and the impact these activities have on their lives within and beyond the program. This case study examined youth from low-income families in a physical activity-based summer PYD program that integrated one character concept (respect, caring, responsibility, trust) in each of 4 weeks. Participants (N = 24) included a cross section of age, gender, ethnicity, and past program experience. Semi-structured interviews were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis and constant comparative methods. Thirteen themes were grouped in four categories: building highquality reciprocal relationships; intrapersonal improvement; moral reasoning and understanding; and rejection, resistance, and compliance. The findings provide participant-centered guidance for understanding youth personal and social development through physical activity in ways that are meaningful to participants, which is particularly needed for youth in low-income communities with limited youth programming.

  4. Illuminating the Mechanisms of Character Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Farrington, Camille A.

    2017-01-01

    This paper responds to Berkowitz, Bier, and McCauley's description of effective features and practices that support character development by pushing on the question of "how" child and youth environments might "build character." Acknowledging the challenges of drawing on program evaluations and extant studies of character…

  5. Advancing Evaluation of Character Building Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Urban, Jennifer Brown; Trochim, William M.

    2017-01-01

    This article presents how character development practitioners, researchers, and funders might think about evaluation, how evaluation fits into their work, and what needs to happen in order to sustain evaluative practices. A broader view of evaluation is presented whereby evaluation is not just seen as something that is applied at a program level,…

  6. Character Development among Youth: Linking Lives in Time and Place

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lerner, Richard M.

    2018-01-01

    This article embeds the study of character development within the two-decades-long research program framed by the Lerner and Lerner model of positive youth development. Character development involves attaining the feelings, thoughts, and skills needed to act coherently across time and place to serve self and others in mutually beneficial, positive…

  7. The Fundamental Importance of Effective Program Implementation for Successful Character Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Durlak, Joseph A.

    2017-01-01

    This article reviews literature that emphasizes how both research findings and practical applications have confirmed the fundamental importance of program implementation in the spread of successful character education interventions. Attention is given to defining implementation, explaining its major elements and why it is so important, discussing…

  8. Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: A Laissez Faire Approach

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2013-03-01

    Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: A Laissez Faire Approach by Colonel Brian M. Michelson United States Army...Army Leaders: A Laissez Faire Approach 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 6. AUTHOR(S) Colonel Brian M...STRATEGY RESEARCH PROJECT Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: A Laissez Faire Approach by Colonel Brian M

  9. SOCIO-EMOTIONAL AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

    PubMed Central

    Snyder, Frank J.

    2015-01-01

    More and more researchers are studying socio-emotional and character development (SECD). The rise and progress in SECD research is encouraging, but there is a critical issue with such a multidisciplinary and fast-developing field: SECD research and evaluation can be more consistent to prevent heterogeneity in definitions and disparate theoretical, measurement, and program models. After summarizing SECD-related literature, I recommend the theory of triadic influence (TTI) as a force to generate consistency and a resource to assist in guiding the design and evaluation of SECD-related programs. The theory fills a gulf in the literature that seeks an ecological theory aligned with SECD-related programs and etiology. The recommendation of the TTI stems from 3 main advantages: (1) The TTI integrates a full range of risk and protective factors in a detailed mediation and moderation framework; (2) it takes a comprehensive view of all the stakeholders in the educational system (i.e., youth, schools, families, and communities); (3) and its utility has been substantiated by empirical evidence from a variety of fields. I discuss applications of the TTI in SECD-related work and suggest improvements for etiology research and the design and evaluation of SECD programs. PMID:26478721

  10. Adding Character to Camp Programs: Using Ropes Courses To Teach Values.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rothschild, Jack

    2001-01-01

    Steps in integrating character values into the camp curriculum are: having a vision, choosing character values and relating them to program activities, providing incentives, ensuring that all levels can be completed during the camp session, making the program age-appropriate, providing staff training, tracking campers' progress, seeking feedback,…

  11. Character Development at the United States Air Force Academy: A Phenomenological Case Study of Graduates' Reflections

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, J. Micheal

    2010-01-01

    The United States Air Force Academy develops commissionable officers of character through an intense 4-year program that includes academic, athletic, and military education and training. The literature was silent on whether the Academy effectively develops character or, if so, how the development takes place. This was a phenomenological case study…

  12. Developing Individual and Team Character in Sport

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gaines, Stacey A.

    2012-01-01

    The idea that participation in sport builds character is a long-standing one. Advocates of sport participation believe that sport provides an appropriate context for the learning of social skills such as cooperation and the development of prosocial behavior (Weiss, Smith, & Stuntz, 2008). Research in sport regarding character development has…

  13. Promoting Character Development through Teaching Wrestling in Physical Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Destani, Fitni; Hannon, James C.; Podlog, Leslie; Brusseau, Timothy A.

    2014-01-01

    Character development has become an important component of physical education that contributes directly to the affective learning domain. However, teaching character development can be challenging. The purpose of this article is to suggest that character development be promoted through the teaching of wrestling, due to the unique moral development…

  14. Character Development Practices in Higher Education Institutions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wesley, Vernon L.

    2010-01-01

    Character Development continues to be the all too unintentional elephant in the room of Higher Education. This project looked at what character development practices are being accomplished and who in higher education is making it happen. No longer satisfied with leaving the task to elementary and secondary education, higher education has begun to…

  15. Character Education with Resident Assistants: A Model for Developing Character on College Campuses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Healea, Christopher Daryl

    2005-01-01

    Character education in higher education is a challenging enterprise. There are concerns regarding academic freedom, debates about the role of the university, and criticisms of purported indoctrination. Character education initiatives in the past have often erred by neglecting what is known about individual human development, at one extreme, or by…

  16. Efficiency of Social Studies Integrated Character Education Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Katilmis, Ahmet; Eksi, Halil; Ozturk, Cemil

    2011-01-01

    In this research, it is aimed to find out (i) the efficiency of a character education program based on overt values of Turkish 7th grade social studies lesson, and (ii) its hidden effects on the academic success. This research employed a semi-experimental design with pre-test, post-test and control group For this research primarily character…

  17. On Developing HyperCard Stacks for the Study of Chinese Characters: KanjiCard.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nakajima, Kazuko

    1988-01-01

    Describes "KanjiCard," an interactive self-tutorial program for beginning students of Japanese to learn Kanji, Chinese characters used in the Japanese language. The Macintosh-developed approach uses "HyperCard" technology, computer-assisted animation, and voice digitizing to achieve enhanced graphic presentation. (Author/CB)

  18. The Development of Leader Character through Crucible Moments

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Byrne, Alyson; Crossan, Mary; Seijts, Gerard

    2018-01-01

    Business schools strive to develop leadership excellence in their students. In this essay, we suggest that educators should find ways to help students develop and deepen leader character, a fundamental component of exemplary leadership. Frequently, business school students have preconceived ideas of leadership, often neglecting leader character.…

  19. Developing Character through Literature: A Teacher's Resource Book.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading, English, and Communication, Bloomington, IN.

    Based on the idea that the most important foundation of education is character development, this book guides teachers and parents in building strong character traits while reading and discussing popular books. Children's books and young adult books draw students into discussions that can lead to action and to personal development. Thoughtful…

  20. Systematic review of character development and childhood chronic illness.

    PubMed

    Maslow, Gary R; Hill, Sherika N

    2016-05-08

    To review empirical evidence on character development among youth with chronic illnesses. A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed and PSYCHINFO from inception until November 2013 to find quantitative studies that measured character strengths among youth with chronic illnesses. Inclusion criteria were limited to English language studies examining constructs of character development among adolescents or young adults aged 13-24 years with a childhood-onset chronic medical condition. A librarian at Duke University Medical Center Library assisted with the development of the mesh search term. Two researchers independently reviewed relevant titles (n = 549), then abstracts (n = 45), and finally manuscripts (n = 3). There is a lack of empirical research on character development and childhood-onset chronic medical conditions. Three studies were identified that used different measures of character based on moral themes. One study examined moral reasoning among deaf adolescents using Kohlberg's Moral Judgement Instrument; another, investigated moral values of adolescent cancer survivors with the Values In Action Classification of Strengths. A third study evaluated moral behavior among young adult survivors of burn injury utilizing the Tennessee Self-Concept, 2(nd) edition. The studies observed that youth with chronic conditions reasoned at less advanced stages and had a lower moral self-concept compared to referent populations, but that they did differ on character virtues and strengths when matched with healthy peers for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Yet, generalizations could not be drawn regarding character development of youth with chronic medical conditions because the studies were too divergent from each other and biased from study design limitations. Future empirical studies should learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature on character development among youth with chronic medical conditions.

  1. Systematic review of character development and childhood chronic illness

    PubMed Central

    Maslow, Gary R; Hill, Sherika N

    2016-01-01

    AIM: To review empirical evidence on character development among youth with chronic illnesses. METHODS: A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed and PSYCHINFO from inception until November 2013 to find quantitative studies that measured character strengths among youth with chronic illnesses. Inclusion criteria were limited to English language studies examining constructs of character development among adolescents or young adults aged 13-24 years with a childhood-onset chronic medical condition. A librarian at Duke University Medical Center Library assisted with the development of the mesh search term. Two researchers independently reviewed relevant titles (n = 549), then abstracts (n = 45), and finally manuscripts (n = 3). RESULTS: There is a lack of empirical research on character development and childhood-onset chronic medical conditions. Three studies were identified that used different measures of character based on moral themes. One study examined moral reasoning among deaf adolescents using Kohlberg’s Moral Judgement Instrument; another, investigated moral values of adolescent cancer survivors with the Values In Action Classification of Strengths. A third study evaluated moral behavior among young adult survivors of burn injury utilizing the Tennessee Self-Concept, 2nd edition. The studies observed that youth with chronic conditions reasoned at less advanced stages and had a lower moral self-concept compared to referent populations, but that they did differ on character virtues and strengths when matched with healthy peers for age, sex, and race/ethnicity. Yet, generalizations could not be drawn regarding character development of youth with chronic medical conditions because the studies were too divergent from each other and biased from study design limitations. CONCLUSION: Future empirical studies should learn from the strengths and weaknesses of the existing literature on character development among youth with chronic medical conditions

  2. The Importance of Character Development: An Interview with Ron Kinnamon.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kinnamon, Ron

    2003-01-01

    Building good character in today's youth is an adult issue because children learn values from adults. Adults must demonstrate the core values: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. Camps have developed expertise in character development and can provide leadership in the community in character education.…

  3. Preventing Negative Behaviors Among Elementary-School Students Through Enhancing Students’ Social-Emotional and Character Development

    PubMed Central

    Snyder, Frank J.; Acock, Alan C.; Vuchinich, Samuel; Beets, Michael W.; Washburn, Isaac J.; Flay, Brian R.

    2013-01-01

    Purpose Examine the effects of a comprehensive, school-wide social-emotional and character development program using a positive youth development perspective. Specifically, we examined a mediation mechanism whereby positive academic-related behaviors mediated the intervention effects on substance use, violence, and sexual activity. Design Matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design. Setting Twenty (10 intervention and 10 control) racially/ethnically diverse schools in Hawaii. Subjects Elementary-aged students (N = 1784) from grade 5. Intervention The Positive Action program. Measures Students self-reported their academic behaviors, together with their substance use, violence, and voluntary sexual activity; teachers rated students’ academic behaviors, substance use, and violence. Analysis Structural equation modeling. Results Students attending intervention schools reported significantly better academic behavior (B = .273, SE = .039, p < .001) and significantly less substance use (B = −.970, SE = .292, p < .01, incidence-rate ratio [IRR] = .379), violence (B = −1.410, SE = .296, p < .001, IRR= .244), and sexual activity (B = − 2.415, SE = .608, p < .001, odds ratio = .089); boys reported more negative behaviors than girls. Intervention effects on student-reported substance use, violence, and sexual activity were mediated by positive academic behavior. Teacher reports corroborated these results, with rated academic behavior partially mediating the effects of the intervention on rated negative behaviors. Conclusion This study (1) provides evidence that adds insight into one mechanism through which a social-emotional and character development program affects negative outcomes and (2) supports social-emotional and character development and positive youth development perspectives that posit that focusing on youths’ assets may reduce negative behaviors. PMID:23470183

  4. Clearinghouse Established for Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Benninga, Jaques; Minkler, John

    1997-01-01

    Examines the planning, implementation, and mission of the Clearinghouse for Character Education at California State University, Fresno. Materials collected at the Clearinghouse include samples of model programs, research, contacts for program development, and instructional resources for teachers, schools, and districts interested in character…

  5. The Problems of Authority and the Want of Apprenticeship in Soldiers' Character Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berghaus, Paul T.

    2016-01-01

    Militaries that take a character development approach in their moral education programs but rely heavily on authority figures as subject matter experts to teach soldiers face two serious problems. First, soldiers improperly defer to their instructors and, as a result, do not understand the moral virtues taught in class. Second, instructors are in…

  6. Re-Emphasizing Character Education in Early Childhood Programs: Korean Children's Experiences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Guang-Lea

    2013-01-01

    Character education efforts are influenced by the cultures in which they are implemented. This article describes the character education provided to children in Korea, both in school and at home. The author explores how the Korean early childhood education system strives to ensure positive character development among children. These discussions…

  7. Character Education of the Most Developed Countries in ASEAN

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Istiningsih

    2016-01-01

    Character education into an international issue, especially in developing countries. More specifically in Indonesia, character education is a major issue in the 2012's to the present. What kind of education that may build character? To be able to answer this question, we need a broad and deep research. Research simpler related to character…

  8. Building Strengths of Character: Keys to Positive Youth Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Park, Nansook

    2009-01-01

    Character is vital force for positive development and societal well-being. Character strengths play important roles in positive youth development, not only as broad-protective factors, preventing or mitigating psychopathology and problems, but also as enabling conditions that promote thriving and flourishing. Recent research findings show that…

  9. Measuring Behavioral Outcomes Associated with Comprehensive Character Education Programs: A Practical Approach to Using Fewer Schools in School-Randomized Controlled Trials While Maintaining Adequate Statistical Power

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holtzapple, Carol K.

    2011-01-01

    Character education programs support the development of positive character traits in children and adults. Effective violence prevention programs improve pro-social competencies and reduce negative behaviors in students by enhancing protective factors (strong bonds with teachers; clear rules of conduct that are consistently enforced) and targeting…

  10. Character selecting advisor for a role-playing game

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Redfield, Carol L.; Berlanga, Felicia

    1994-01-01

    Role-playing games have been a source of much pleasure and merriment for people of all ages. The process of developing a character for a role-playing game is usually very, very time consuming, delaying what many players consider the most entertaining part of the game. An expert system has been written to assist a player in creating a character by guiding the player through a series of questions. This paper discusses the selection of this topic, the knowledge engineering, the software development, and the resulting program that cuts the time of character development from about 4 hours to 30 minutes. The program was written on a PC and an Apollo in CLIPS 4.3 and currently runs on the Apollo.

  11. A database application for wilderness character monitoring

    Treesearch

    Ashley Adams; Peter Landres; Simon Kingston

    2012-01-01

    The National Park Service (NPS) Wilderness Stewardship Division, in collaboration with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute and the NPS Inventory and Monitoring Program, developed a database application to facilitate tracking and trend reporting in wilderness character. The Wilderness Character Monitoring Database allows consistent, scientifically based...

  12. Character, Social-Emotional, and Academic Outcomes among Underachieving Elementary School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grier, Leslie K.

    2012-01-01

    One purpose of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of a character assessment scale (the Character Assessment for School Age Children; CASAC) based on 6 pillars of character (Josephson Institute, 2009). Many youth development and character education programs utilize some, if not all, of the pillars of character explicitly or…

  13. Improved Characters and Student Learning Outcomes through Development of Character Education Based General Physics Learning Model

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Derlina; Sabani; Mihardi, Satria

    2015-01-01

    Education Research in Indonesia has begun to lead to the development of character education and is no longer fixated on the outcomes of cognitive learning. This study purposed to produce character education based general physics learning model (CEBGP Learning Model) and with valid, effective and practical peripheral devices to improve character…

  14. A character string scanner

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Enison, R. L.

    1971-01-01

    A computer program called Character String Scanner (CSS), is presented. It is designed to search a data set for any specified group of characters and then to flag this group. The output of the CSS program is a listing of the data set being searched with the specified group of characters being flagged by asterisks. Therefore, one may readily identify specific keywords, groups of keywords or specified lines of code internal to a computer program, in a program output, or in any other specific data set. Possible applications of this program include the automatic scan of an output data set for pertinent keyword data, the editing of a program to change the appearance of a certain word or group of words, and the conversion of a set of code to a different set of code.

  15. Character trees from transcriptome data: Origin and individuation of morphological characters and the so-called "species signal".

    PubMed

    Musser, Jacob M; Wagner, Günter P

    2015-11-01

    We elaborate a framework for investigating the evolutionary history of morphological characters. We argue that morphological character trees generated by phylogenetic analysis of transcriptomes provide a useful tool for identifying causal gene expression differences underlying the development and evolution of morphological characters. They also enable rigorous testing of different models of morphological character evolution and origination, including the hypothesis that characters originate via divergence of repeated ancestral characters. Finally, morphological character trees provide evidence that character transcriptomes undergo concerted evolution. We argue that concerted evolution of transcriptomes can explain the so-called "species signal" found in several recent comparative transcriptome studies. The species signal is the phenomenon that transcriptomes cluster by species rather than character type, even though the characters are older than the respective species. We suggest the species signal is a natural consequence of concerted gene expression evolution resulting from mutations that alter gene regulatory network interactions shared by the characters under comparison. Thus, character trees generated from transcriptomes allow us to investigate the variational independence, or individuation, of morphological characters at the level of genetic programs. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  16. Women Out of View. An Analysis of Female Characters on 1987-88 TV Programs.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Steenland, Sally; Whittemore, Lauren

    This study of the images of women as portrayed on new television programs in 1987-88 not only compared them with the images of the last season, but examined the similarities and differences between these characters and real life women. Each continuing female character on every new show was coded for race, age, occupation, marital and socioeconomic…

  17. The Impact of Character Education Curricula on Youth Educators

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harms, Kristyn Marie; Fritz, Susan; Rockwell, S. Kay

    2004-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine degrees of internalization of character traits across two groups (K-12 teachers and Extension staff) with varying years of participation in character education professional and program development activities. An online survey was developed to collect data describing the 109 respondents, the extent of…

  18. Similarities and Differences of Preferred Traits in Character Education Programs by Ethnicity and Class According to Parents, Faculty/Staff, and Students at Two Middle Schools in California

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boen, Jennifer

    2010-01-01

    This study provides two perspectives on the various character traits provided by character education programs by comparing the voices of minority and lower-lower middle class stakeholders with those of upper middle class stakeholders. The literature on the values and virtues based approaches to moral development and character education were…

  19. The Effects of Privileging Moral or Performance Character Development in Urban Adolescents

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Seider, Scott; Novick, Sarah; Gomez, Jessica

    2013-01-01

    This study compared the effects of emphasizing moral character development or performance character development at three high-performing, high-poverty urban middle schools. Performance character consists of the qualities that allow individuals to regulate their thoughts and actions in ways that support achievement in a particular endeavor. Moral…

  20. Piaget's stages of cognitive development and adult character structure.

    PubMed

    Malerstein, A J; Ahern, M M

    1979-01-01

    Psychonalytic and Piagetian findings are bridged by understanding character structure. Social cognition of the three character types corresponds to three phase of cognitive development: Symbolic, Intuitive, and (Concrete) Operational. A child constructs his supergo by coordinating his perceptions of his caretaking as he coordinates other perceptions in the Operational Period.

  1. Building innovative and creative character through mathematics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Suyitno, Hardi; Suyitno, Amin

    2018-03-01

    21st century is predicted as the century with rapid development in all aspects of life. People require creative and innovative character to exist. Specifically, mathematics has been given to students from the kindergarten until the middle school. Thus, building character through mathematics should begin since the early age. The problem is how to build creative and innovative character through mathematics education? The goal expected from this question is to build innovative and creative characters to face the challenges of the 21st century. This article discusses the values of mathematics, the values in mathematics education, innovative and creative character, and the integration of these values in teaching mathematics that support the innovative and creative character building, and applying the values in structurely programmed, measurable, and applicable learning activities.

  2. Promoting Character Development through Coach Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Power, F. Clark; Seroczynski, A. D.

    2015-01-01

    Can youth sports build character? Research suggests that the answer to this question leads to 2 further questions: (1) can youth sport coaches be effectively prepared to become character educators, and (2) can character education take place in today's competitive youth sport environment? (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006; Power, 2015; Power &…

  3. Management Theory Meets Student Development Theory: Implications for Student Affairs Programming.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Durand, Henry F.; Reister, Barry W.

    One goal of student affairs programming is the promotion of character development. Based on the assumption that empathy training will have a significant impact on character development, a study was designed which incorporated the listening skills (empathy) training of the Sierra Project (Whitely, 1982) with the Hersey/Blanchard model for…

  4. Internalization of Character Traits by Those Who Teach Character Counts!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harms, Kristyn; Fritz, Susan

    2001-01-01

    Cooperative extension personnel (n=53) completed a Web-based survey analyzing the impact of the Character Counts! program on extension, their personal lives, and society. Results demonstrated that extension educators and assistants were more likely to make ethical decisions as a result of teaching Character Counts! The need for increased…

  5. Investigating Adolescents' Critical Consciousness Development through a Character Framework.

    PubMed

    Seider, Scott; Tamerat, Jalene; Clark, Shelby; Soutter, Madora

    2017-06-01

    Brazilian philosopher-educator Paulo Freire defined critical consciousness as the ability to engage in reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. A growing body of research has found that critical consciousness is predictive of a number of important academic and civic outcomes in adolescents from oppressed groups. The present mixed methods study considered the critical consciousness development of 335 adolescents (57% female, 92% African American or Latinx) attending urban secondary schools that sought to foster their students' critical consciousness, but featured five different pedagogical approaches. We hypothesized that considering these adolescents' critical consciousness development through a character lens would highlight ways in which different schooling models contribute differentially to their students' development of the intellectual, performance, and civic dimensions of critical consciousness. Longitudinal analyses revealed significant differences in the critical consciousness development of adolescents attending different schooling models along these dimensions. Interviews with adolescents and field work conducted at their schools offered insight into the programming and practices that may have contributed to these differences in students' critical consciousness development.

  6. Development and Evolution of Character Displacement

    PubMed Central

    Pfennig, David W.; Pfennig, Karin S.

    2012-01-01

    Character displacement occurs when competition for either resources or successful reproduction imposes divergent selection on interacting species, causing divergence in traits associated with resource use or reproduction. Here, we describe how character displacement can be mediated either by genetically canalized changes (i.e., changes that reflect allelic or genotype frequency changes) or by phenotypic plasticity. We also discuss how these two mechanisms influence the tempo of character displacement. Specifically, we suggest that, under some conditions, character displacement mediated by phenotypic plasticity might occur more rapidly than that mediated by genetically canalized changes. Finally, we describe how these two mechanisms may act together and determine character displacement’s mode, such that it proceeds through an initial phase in which trait divergence is environmentally induced to a later phase in which divergence becomes genetically canalized. This plasticity-first hypothesis predicts that character displacement should be generally mediated by ancestral plasticity and that it will arise similarly in multiple, independently evolving populations. We conclude by highlighting future directions for research that would test these predictions. PMID:22257002

  7. Developing Character and Values for Global Citizens: Analysis of pre-service science teachers' moral reasoning on socioscientific issues

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Hyunju; Chang, Hyunsook; Choi, Kyunghee; Kim, Sung-Won; Zeidler, Dana L.

    2012-04-01

    Character and values are the essential driving forces that serve as general guides or points of reference for individuals to support decision-making and to act responsibly about global socioscientific issues (SSIs). Based on this assumption, we investigated to what extent pre-service science teachers (PSTs) of South Korea possess character and values as global citizens; these values include ecological worldview, socioscientific accountability, and social and moral compassion. Eighteen PSTs participated in the SSI programs focusing on developing character and values through dialogical and reflective processes. SSIs were centered on the use of nuclear power generation, climate change, and embryonic stem cell research. The results indicated that PSTs showed three key elements of character and values, but failed to apply consistent moral principles on the issues and demonstrated limited global perspectives. While they tended to approach the issues with emotion and sympathy, they nonetheless failed to perceive themselves as major moral agents who are able to actively resolve large-scale societal issues. This study also suggests that the SSI programs can facilitate socioscientific reasoning to include abilities such as recognition of the complexity of SSIs, examine issues from multiple perspectives, and exhibit skepticism about information.

  8. Is the Scoutreach Initiative of Boy Scouts of America Linked to Character Development among Socioeconomically, Racially, and Ethnically Diverse Youth?: Initial Explorations.

    PubMed

    Wang, Jun; Champine, Robey B; Ferris, Kaitlyn A; Hershberg, Rachel M; Warren, Daniel J; Burkhard, Brian M; Su, Shaobing; Lerner, Richard M

    2017-10-01

    Youth development programs represent key tools in the work of youth-serving practitioners and researchers who strive to promote character development and other attributes of youth thriving, particularly among youth who may confront structural and social challenges related to their racial, ethnic, and/or economic backgrounds. This article conducts secondary analyses of two previously reported studies of a relatively recent innovation in Boy Scouts of America (BSA) developed for youth from low-income communities, Scoutreach. Our goal is to provide descriptive and admittedly preliminary exploratory information about whether these data sets-one involving a sample of 266 youth of color from socioeconomically impoverished communities in Philadelphia (M age  = 10.54 years, SD = 1.58 years) and the other involving a pilot investigation of 32 youth of color from similar socioeconomic backgrounds in Boston (M age  = 9.97 years, SD = 2.46 years)-provide evidence for a link between program participation and a key indicator of positive development; that is, character development. Across the two data sets, quantitative and qualitative evidence suggested the presence of character development among Scoutreach participants. Limitations of both studies are discussed and implications for future longitudinal research are presented. We suggest that future longitudinal research should test the hypothesis that emotional engagement is key to creating the conditions wherein Scoutreach participation is linked to character development.

  9. Improving social competence through character education.

    PubMed

    Cheung, Chau-kiu; Lee, Tak-yan

    2010-08-01

    Character education is supposed to meet early adolescents' need (i.e., eighth and ninth graders) for strengthening social competence. Moreover, adolescents' engagement in character education is integral to their learning from the education. The engagement and deficit in social competence are therefore plausible conditions for the effectiveness of character education in promoting social competence. Based on a quasi-experimental design, this study focuses on the prediction of social competence of 920 ninth graders in secondary schools of Hong Kong, China. To reduce bias from the selection process of the study and the character education program, the study adjusts for the propensity of enrolling in the program throughout the analysis. The results of the analysis show the contribution of the character education program to social competence. Moreover, engagement in the program and prior lower social competence are the adolescent's characteristics that are responsible for the contribution. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Character Development: Putting It into Practice in Admissions and Instruction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sternberg, Robert J.

    2013-01-01

    The most important knowledge and skills a college education should develop in young people are those underlying good character, such as integrity, responsibility, work ethic, intellectual curiosity, mental flexibility, and wisdom. When leaders fail, most frequently it is because of issues of character, not lack of knowledge or intellectual…

  11. Teachers' Perceptions of School Organizational Climate as Predictors of Dosage and Quality of Implementation of a Social-Emotional and Character Development Program.

    PubMed

    Malloy, Margaret; Acock, Alan; DuBois, David L; Vuchinich, Samuel; Silverthorn, Naida; Ji, Peter; Flay, Brian R

    2015-11-01

    Organizational climate has been proposed as a factor that might influence a school's readiness to successfully implement school-wide prevention programs. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of teachers' perceptions of three dimensions of school organizational climate on the dosage and quality of teacher implementation of Positive Action, a social-emotional and character development (SECD) program. The dimensions measured were teachers' perceptions of (a) the school's openness to innovation, (b) the extent to which schools utilize participatory decision-making practices, and (c) the existence of supportive relationships among teachers (teacher-teacher affiliation). Data from 46 teachers in seven schools enrolled in the treatment arm of a longitudinal, cluster-randomized, controlled trial were analyzed. Teacher perceptions of a school's tendency to be innovative was associated with a greater number of lessons taught and self-reported quality of delivery, and teacher-teacher affiliation was associated with a higher use of supplementary activities. The findings suggest that perceptions of a school's organizational climate impact teachers' implementation of SECD programs and have implications for school administrators and technical assistance providers as they work to implement and sustain prevention programs in schools.

  12. Which "Character" Should Sport Develop?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rudd, Andy

    2005-01-01

    For years, strong claims have been made that sport builds character. Despite such claims, a "winning at all cost" mentality can frequently be seen within all of sport. The reason for this paradox may relate to confusion around what it means to demonstrate character. The purpose of this article is to show that there are indeed two distinct types of…

  13. Fostering Character Education in an Urban Early Childhood Setting

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kokoszka, Carla; Smith, Juliette

    2016-01-01

    This article describes the character education program in Donald Stewart School No. 51, in Elizabeth, NJ, a dual-language preschool serving 300 students that first opened its doors in 2004. Over the years this school has been committed to laying the foundation of character development with its preschoolers. Their pillar "Friends Care, Friends…

  14. High School Athletes' Perspectives on Character Development through Sport Participation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Camire, Martin; Trudel, Pierre

    2010-01-01

    Background: Results from empirical research on character development in sport remain mixed concerning the outcomes of sport participation, in part because character is a socially constructed concept that can be interpreted in a wide variety of manners. Furthermore, the majority of research in this field has been conducted employing quantitative…

  15. "It Could Affect You as a Person, Character-Wise": Promoting Character Development and Preventing Sexual Violence at West Point

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arbeit, Miriam R.

    2017-01-01

    The United States Military Academy at West Point develops cadets into "leaders of character" who will become Army officers. This focus on character presents an opportunity for the prevention of sexual violence through an emphasis on military values. Using constructivist grounded theory, this study examined how cadets experience their own…

  16. Tri-Squared Qualitative and Mixed Methods Analysis of Perceptions of the Effectiveness of the Student Athlete Leadership Academy [SALA]: A Character Development and College Preparatory Program for Young African American Men

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hinton, Harvey; Osler, James E.

    2015-01-01

    This paper outlines the major dimensions and overall effectiveness of the Student Athlete Leadership Academy (or "SALA"). SALA is a character development and college preparatory program designed for middle grade student athletes. The focus of this paper is to provide information about year 1 of SALA. At the same time the paper will…

  17. Shaping the Future through Character Education. Colorado State Conference on Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Colorado State Dept. of Education, Denver.

    With the decline in morality and values, character education is gaining considerable momentum. Public opinion polls show growing support for teaching it in schools. Evidence indicates that character education programs change the school culture for the better, allowing students to feel safe to concentrate on learning. In Colorado, character…

  18. Methodological Issues in Measuring the Development of Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Card, Noel A.

    2017-01-01

    In this article I provide an overview of the methodological issues involved in measuring constructs relevant to character development and education. I begin with a nontechnical overview of the 3 fundamental psychometric properties of measurement: reliability, validity, and equivalence. Developing and evaluating measures to ensure evidence of all 3…

  19. Impact of a social-emotional and character development program on school-level indicators of academic achievement, absenteeism, and disciplinary outcomes: A matched-pair, cluster randomized, controlled trial.

    PubMed

    Snyder, Frank; Flay, Brian; Vuchinich, Samuel; Acock, Alan; Washburn, Isaac; Beets, Michael; Li, Kin-Kit

    2010-01-01

    This paper reports the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-based social-emotional and character education program on school-level achievement, absenteeism, and disciplinary outcomes utilizing a matched-pair, cluster randomized, controlled design. The Positive Action Hawai'i trial included 20 racially/ethnically diverse schools (mean enrollment = 544) and was conducted from the 2002-03 through the 2005-06 academic years. Using school-level archival data, analyses comparing change from baseline (2002) to one-year post trial (2007) revealed that intervention schools scored 9.8% better on the TerraNova (2 nd ed.) test for reading and 8.8% on math; 20.7% better in Hawai'i Content and Performance Standards scores for reading and 51.4% better in math; and that intervention schools reported 15.2% lower absenteeism and fewer suspensions (72.6%) and retentions (72.7%). Overall, effect sizes were moderate to large (range 0.5-1.1) for all of the examined outcomes. Sensitivity analyses using permutation models and random-intercept growth curve models substantiated results. The results provide evidence that a comprehensive school-based program, specifically developed to target student behavior and character, can positively influence school-level achievement, attendance, and disciplinary outcomes concurrently.

  20. On the Importance of Coherence in the Study of Character Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Callina, Kristina Schmid; Lerner, Richard M.

    2017-01-01

    Nucci (this issue) gives a compelling conceptualization of the ideas needed to understand character as a multifaceted developmental system. In this article, we focus on the idea of coherence as it applies to understanding character development, education, and assessment. Using ideas from relational developmental systems (RDS) metatheory, we…

  1. Character, Leadership, and the Healthcare Professions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holmes, Elizabeth

    2010-01-01

    The presentation by Elizabeth Holmes, PhD, summarized the integration of character and leadership development in the education of healthcare professionals. Citing the mission, vision, values, graduate attributes, and various examples of current programs and initiatives from both the United States Naval Academy and the University of Botswana, the…

  2. How to Help Yourself. THE Art of Program Development.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carkhuff, Robert R.

    The profusely illustrated booklet suggests ways for developing the personal skills necessary for individual program development for achieving personal goals. With two hypothetical characters, June and Ray, to illustrate the booklet's suggestions, methods of estimating and testing physical, emotional, and intellectual traits necessary for…

  3. Using Social-Emotional and Character Development to Improve Academic Outcomes: A Matched-Pair, Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in Low-Income, Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bavarian, Niloofar; Lewis, Kendra M.; DuBois, David L.; Acock, Alan; Vuchinich, Samuel; Silverthorn, Naida; Snyder, Frank J.; Day, Joseph; Ji, Peter; Flay, Brian R.

    2013-01-01

    Background: School-based social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs can influence not only SECD but also academic-related outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of one SECD program, Positive Action (PA), on educational outcomes among low-income, urban youth. Methods: The longitudinal study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized…

  4. Experimental confirmation of a character-facing bias in literacy development.

    PubMed

    McIntosh, Robert D; Anderson, Eilidh L; Henderson, Rowena M

    2018-06-01

    When learning to write, children often mirror-reverse individual letters. For children learning to use the Latin alphabet, in a left-to-right writing culture, letters that appear to face left (such as J and Z) seem to be more prone to reversal than those that appear to face right (such as B and C). It has been proposed that, because most asymmetrical Latin letters face right, children statistically learn this general regularity and are subsequently biased to write any letter rightward. The evidence for this character-facing bias is circumstantial, however, because letter-facing direction is confounded with other factors that could affect error rates; for instance, J and Z are left-facing, but they are also infrequent. We report the first controlled experimental test of the character-facing bias. We taught 43 Scottish primary schoolchildren (aged 4.8-5.8 years) four artificial, letter-like characters, two of which were left-facing and two of which were right-facing. The characters were novel and so were not subject to prior exposure effects, and alternate groups of children were assigned to identical but mirror-reflected character sets. Children were three times more likely to mirror-write a novel character they had learned in a left-facing format than to mirror-write one they had learned in a right-facing format. This provides the first experimental confirmation of the character-facing bias in literacy development and suggests that implicit knowledge acquired from exposure to written language is readily generalized to novel letter-like forms. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  5. Social-Emotional and Character Development Scale: Development and Initial Validation with Urban Elementary School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ji, Peter; DuBois, David L.; Flay, Brian R.

    2013-01-01

    The Social-Emotional and Character Development Scale (SECDS) is intended as a measure of social-emotional skills and character for elementary school-age children. This study investigated the measure's psychometric properties using data collected over 5 waves for a cohort of students followed from Grades 3 to 5 in 14 urban elementary schools (N…

  6. "Invitations" to Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Milliren, Al; Messer, Mitchell H.

    2009-01-01

    If we are to help children develop character, we have to go beyond offering a character education class once or twice each month. We actually have to validate character when we see it or hear about it happening. Through the use of a new strategy called "focused invitations," counselors and teachers can focus on the 36 core components of character.…

  7. Roles High School Principals Play in Establishing a Successful Character Education Initiative

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Francom, Jacob A.

    2016-01-01

    Principal leadership is crucial to the success of a high school character education initiative. The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory research was to identify the roles that high school principals play in developing, implementing, and sustaining a high functioning character education program. Data were collected through interviews and…

  8. Character Education--A Joint Responsibility

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brannon, Diana

    2008-01-01

    Young children's beliefs about what is right and wrong traditionally have been strongly influenced by their families. However, today children often come to school with problematic behaviors and attitudes. Character education has become a necessity. Character education programs have a positive effect on achievement, classroom behaviors, and…

  9. The Rise of Avatars in Positive Psychology: Enabling Military Cultures in a 3D World for Strengths of Character Development

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2010-03-01

    York.  Piaget , J.  (1977).  The  development  of thought:   Equilibration of  cognitive  structures, trans.  A Rosin.  New York:  Viking Press.  17...Cultures in a 3D World for Strengths of Character Development 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER 6. AUTHOR( S ) 5d. PROJECT...educators believe warrior strengths of character  to know, decide, and act are  cognitively ,  affectively, and socially  developmental  in  nature.  Game

  10. Character Education: Frill or Foundation?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schwartz, Merle J.; Beatty, Alexandra; Dachnowicz, Eileen

    2006-01-01

    Proof of academic performance often serves as the litmus test for maintaining instructional practices and programs. Just as the national focus on academic improvement has gained momentum, so too has another movement calling for character education. Educators find themselves caught in the middle, questioning whether character education is just…

  11. Improving Elementary School Quality through the Use of a Social-Emotional and Character Development Program: A Matched-Pair, Cluster-Randomized, Controlled Trial in Hawai'i

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snyder, Frank J.; Vuchinich, Samuel; Acock, Alan; Washburn, Isaac J.; Flay, Brian R.

    2012-01-01

    Background: School safety and quality affect student learning and success. This study examined the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-wide social-emotional and character education program, Positive Action, on teacher, parent, and student perceptions of school safety and quality utilizing a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled…

  12. The Effects of Athletic Competition on Character Development in College Student Athletes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stoll, Sharon Kay

    2012-01-01

    This article argues that there are inherent problems in athletic competition relating to character development in college student athletes. A review of the research supports the claim that athletic competitions do not build character. The author proposes ways to address this problem and provides personal observations and published research to…

  13. CEP's Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lickona, Tom; Schaps, Eric; Lewis, Catherine

    2007-01-01

    There is no single script for effective character education, but there are some important basic principles. This document presents eleven principles that schools and other groups can use to plan a character education effort and to evaluate available character education programs: (1) Promotes core ethical values and supportive performance values as…

  14. School Culture Before Character Education: A Model for Change.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldsmith-Conley, Elizabeth

    1998-01-01

    Discusses Alfie Kohn's argument that developing caring, thoughtful citizens via character education is preferable to creating the obedient, unreflective workers cultivated by many programs. Suggests focusing not only on classroom culture, but also on school culture, describing a New York City model for developing caring and reflective communities…

  15. Once Upon a Time: A Grimm Approach to Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bryan, Laura

    2005-01-01

    Many school districts have implemented "packaged" programs designed to teach character education. Millions of dollars have been spent on these programs, yet society continues to produce more "characters" than students "with character." This article describes a shift from the "programmatic" mindset to a solution that is not packaged or purchased.…

  16. Physical Education Teachers' Attitudes towards Teaching Character Education and Their Attitudes towards the Character Development of Their Fourth and/or Fifth Grade Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Denaro, Edward Joseph

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of elementary school physical education teachers towards teaching character education related to the variables respect, honesty, fairness and self-discipline and to examine their attitudes towards the character development of their fourth and/or fifth grade students related to the variables…

  17. Another Look at Character Education in Christian Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Algera, Henry F.; Sink, Christopher A.

    2002-01-01

    A review of the literature and meta-analytic research into the effectiveness of character/moral education programs reveals that Christian educators should be wary of implementing such curricula. A history of character education demonstrates how the field has evolved. Problems associated with programming rationale, faulty methodology, and lack of…

  18. Developing wilderness character monitoring: A personal reflection

    Treesearch

    Peter Landres

    2006-01-01

    The 1964 U.S. Wilderness Act has one, clear mandate to the agencies that manage wilderness: preserve the wilderness character of the area. But even though the Wilderness Act went into effect 42 years ago, and all four federal agencies that manage wilderness have policies that direct managers to preserve wilderness character, the agencies can't show whether they...

  19. Implementing Character Education Program through Music and Integrated Activities in Early Childhood Settings in Taiwan

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Angela

    2016-01-01

    This study explores the efficacy of using musical activities to enhance the character aspect of education of preschoolers in a Taiwanese school setting. The Taiwanese educational authority stipulates that character development activities should focus on the core values of caring, respect, courage, honesty, responsibility, and cooperation.…

  20. Character, School Leadership, and the Brain: Learning How To Integrate Knowledge with Behavioral Change.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Calabrese, Raymond L.; Roberts, Brian

    2002-01-01

    Asserts that character is at the core of leadership, and that character development requires behavioral change as well as knowledge acquisition. Discusses how incorporating behavioral change into administrator preparation programs requires faculty to consider recent findings in neuroscience on how the brain learns, and the incorporation of these…

  1. Recognition of handprinted characters for automated cartography A progress report

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Lybanon, M.; Brown, R. M.; Gronmeyer, L. K.

    1980-01-01

    A research program for developing handwritten character recognition techniques is reported. The generation of cartographic/hydrographic manuscripts is overviewed. The performance of hardware/software systems is discussed, along with future research problem areas and planned approaches.

  2. Developing Student Character: Community College Professors Who Share Power

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Humphreys, Connie K.

    2012-01-01

    This phenomenological study examined the definitions, values, and experiences of seven community college professors who have tried to promote student character development by sharing some of their power in the classroom. Power sharing is a participative gesture, and participative teachers can encourage students to become more engaged in their own…

  3. Quantitative computed tomography (QCT) as a radiology reporting tool by using optical character recognition (OCR) and macro program.

    PubMed

    Lee, Young Han; Song, Ho-Taek; Suh, Jin-Suck

    2012-12-01

    The objectives are (1) to introduce a new concept of making a quantitative computed tomography (QCT) reporting system by using optical character recognition (OCR) and macro program and (2) to illustrate the practical usages of the QCT reporting system in radiology reading environment. This reporting system was created as a development tool by using an open-source OCR software and an open-source macro program. The main module was designed for OCR to report QCT images in radiology reading process. The principal processes are as follows: (1) to save a QCT report as a graphic file, (2) to recognize the characters from an image as a text, (3) to extract the T scores from the text, (4) to perform error correction, (5) to reformat the values into QCT radiology reporting template, and (6) to paste the reports into the electronic medical record (EMR) or picture archiving and communicating system (PACS). The accuracy test of OCR was performed on randomly selected QCTs. QCT as a radiology reporting tool successfully acted as OCR of QCT. The diagnosis of normal, osteopenia, or osteoporosis is also determined. Error correction of OCR is done with AutoHotkey-coded module. The results of T scores of femoral neck and lumbar vertebrae had an accuracy of 100 and 95.4 %, respectively. A convenient QCT reporting system could be established by utilizing open-source OCR software and open-source macro program. This method can be easily adapted for other QCT applications and PACS/EMR.

  4. Impact of a Social-Emotional and Character Development Program on School-Level Indicators of Academic Achievement, Absenteeism, and Disciplinary Outcomes: A Matched-Pair, Cluster-Randomized, Controlled Trial

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snyder, Frank; Flay, Brian; Vuchinich, Samuel; Acock, Alan; Washburn, Isaac; Beets, Michael; Li, Kin-Kit

    2010-01-01

    This article reports the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-based social-emotional and character education program on school-level achievement, absenteeism, and disciplinary outcomes utilizing a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design. The "Positive Action" Hawai'i trial included 20 racially/ethnically diverse…

  5. The analysis of scientific communications and students’ character development through guided inquiry learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sarwi, S.; Fauziah, N.; Astuti, B.

    2018-03-01

    This research is setting by the condition of students who have difficulty in ideas delivery, written scientific communication, and still need the development of student character. The objectives of the research are to determine the improvement of concept understanding, to analyze scientific communication skills and to develop the character of the students through guided inquiry learning. The design in this research is quasi experimental control group preposttest, with research subject of two group of grade X Senior High School in Semarang. One group of controller uses non tutorial and treatment group using tutorial in guided inquiry. Based on result of gain test analysis, obtained = 0.71 for treatment and control group = 0.60. The t-test result of mean mastery of concept of quantity and unit using t-test of right side is t count = 2.37 (p=0.003) while t table = 1.67 (α = 5%), which means that the results of the study differed significantly. The results of the students' scientific communication skills analysis showed that the experimental group was higher than the control, with an average of 69% and 63% scientific communication skills. The character values are effective developed through guided inquiry learning. The conclusion of the study is guided inquiry learning tutorial better than guided inquiry non tutorial learning in aspect understanding concept, scientific communication skills; but the character development result is almost the same.

  6. Developing Leaders of Character at the United States Military Academy: A Relational Developmental Systems Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Callina, Kristina Schmid; Ryan, Diane; Murray, Elise D.; Colby, Anne; Damon, William; Matthews, Michael; Lerner, Richard M.

    2017-01-01

    A paucity of literature exists on the processes of character development within diverse contexts. In this article, the authors use the United States Military Academy at West Point (USMA) as a sample case for understanding character development processes within an institution of higher education. The authors present a discussion of relational…

  7. Homosexuality in TV situation comedies: characters and verbal comments.

    PubMed

    Fouts, Gregory; Inch, Rebecca

    2005-01-01

    A content analysis was conducted on 22 television situation comedies in order to determine the incidence of homosexual characters, their demographics (sex, age and race/ethnicity), and whether they verbally comment about sexual orientation. One episode of each program appearing in early October 2000 was video recorded and analyzed for its contents by trained coders. Only 2% of the 125 central characters were homosexual; thus, homosexuality is significantly under-represented in programs that adolescents and young adults watch compared to actual prevalence rates of homosexuality in North America (10-13%). All the homosexual characters were male and in the 20-35-year-old age group; this indicates that homosexual adolescent viewers have no peer role models with whom to identify. Homosexual characters made significantly more comments about sexual orientation than heterosexual characters. This suggests that television writers/producers present sexual orientation as a significant theme in the lives of homosexual characters.

  8. Developing Character in Middle School Students: A Cinematic Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Russell, William B., III; Waters, Stewart

    2014-01-01

    The middle school years are a critical time in the physical, intellectual, and moral growth of young adolescents. This article examines how film can be used to engage students in moral-dilemma discussions to promote critical thinking and character development. The authors argue that the use of film in the classroom can challenge students to expand…

  9. A Missing Piece of the Contemporary Character Education Puzzle: The Individualisation of Moral Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chen, Yi-Lin

    2013-01-01

    The different sorts of virtuous people who display various virtues to a remarkable degree have brought the issue of individualisation of moral character to the forefront. It signals a more personal dimension of character development which is notoriously ignored in the current discourse on character education. The case is made that since in…

  10. Keeping in Character: A Time-Tested Solution.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Benninga, Jaques S.; Wynne, Edward A.

    1998-01-01

    Refutes Alfie Kohn's criticisms of modern character education programs in the February 1997 "Kappan." The basic structure of true "for character" education relies on an approach relevant for students of all ages, has been time-tested over 2,500 years, has broad public support, and has a valid research base. Kohn advocates…

  11. DiscML: an R package for estimating evolutionary rates of discrete characters using maximum likelihood.

    PubMed

    Kim, Tane; Hao, Weilong

    2014-09-27

    The study of discrete characters is crucial for the understanding of evolutionary processes. Even though great advances have been made in the analysis of nucleotide sequences, computer programs for non-DNA discrete characters are often dedicated to specific analyses and lack flexibility. Discrete characters often have different transition rate matrices, variable rates among sites and sometimes contain unobservable states. To obtain the ability to accurately estimate a variety of discrete characters, programs with sophisticated methodologies and flexible settings are desired. DiscML performs maximum likelihood estimation for evolutionary rates of discrete characters on a provided phylogeny with the options that correct for unobservable data, rate variations, and unknown prior root probabilities from the empirical data. It gives users options to customize the instantaneous transition rate matrices, or to choose pre-determined matrices from models such as birth-and-death (BD), birth-death-and-innovation (BDI), equal rates (ER), symmetric (SYM), general time-reversible (GTR) and all rates different (ARD). Moreover, we show application examples of DiscML on gene family data and on intron presence/absence data. DiscML was developed as a unified R program for estimating evolutionary rates of discrete characters with no restriction on the number of character states, and with flexibility to use different transition models. DiscML is ideal for the analyses of binary (1s/0s) patterns, multi-gene families, and multistate discrete morphological characteristics.

  12. Meeting Common Core English Language Arts and English Language Development Standards with Character Education Lesson Plans in Alternative Education Grades 9 through 12

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hoedel, Joseph M.; Lee, Robert E.

    2016-01-01

    This is a case study in which the Character Development and Leadership Program replaced an alternative high school's traditional English language offerings. A triangulated case study used student records, field notes, and interviews of stakeholders to compare the academic year prior to this substitution and the 2 academic years following it. All 3…

  13. Environmental Education Project for Developing Supersphere Characters in Children's Books

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Vasconcelos, G. F.

    2014-12-01

    To raise awareness and provide basic knowledge about the environment, three children's books have been created to explain, in a simplified language, the basic processes of formation of the Earth, the origin of the universe, the planets and the moon, volcanism, rock formation and the appearance of water, the earliest life forms and their evolution and the main elements of Earth. These phenomena are represented through the main characters who are super heroes or designated Superspheres, such as Hydrosphere (water), Lithosphere (rocks), Biosphere (Polite, a stromatolite and Sarite, the mineral dolomite), Atmosphere (air), which are the 4 components of the Earth System, and the Pyrosphere(fire), which supplies the energy to drive the Earth System through volcanic activity. The characters have each developed super powers that evolved over geological time as they are transformed. They are the basic elements of nature and appear in a specific chronological order. With the emergence of ancient life in the seas, the Biosphere begins to use the energy of the sun, through of the photosynthetic activity of stromatolites, one of the friends of the superheroes, to produce the oxygen for the Atmosphere. Over a vast period of time, the evolution of life continues with the formation of the supercontinent Gondwana. With the arrival of man and his interaction with the Earth, the villain appears in the book as the "Homo incorrectus" (incorrect man), who abuses and tries to destroy the super heroes, the "Superspheres". The importance of these characters for the living Earth is emphasized, creating a connection between children and the characters. The aim of the story is to create a greater ecological conscience in the children and showing them that they should be helping to save the "Superspheres", who are in danger and need to be preserved. Projects for primary schools in the State of Rio de Janeiro have been designed and implemented around these characters, focusing on the rescue of

  14. Moral Character and Student Aid

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Flint, Thomas A.

    2012-01-01

    Thirty years after the creation of federal student financial aid programs through the Higher Education Act of 1965, the link between moral character and student financial aid programs is once again influencing the public policy debate. A careful look at the debate, though, shows that the nature of concerns has shifted. In the past, the question…

  15. The Role of Radical Awareness in Chinese-As-A-Second-Language Learners' Chinese Character Reading Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wong, Yu Ka

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the role of radical awareness in Chinese character reading development among young Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners is evaluated in terms of a structural property of the writing system: the distribution of elementary, one-radical (i.e. one-element) simple characters as against majority, multi-radical compound characters.…

  16. Helping Young Children to Develop Character.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crosser, Sandra

    1997-01-01

    Argues that, of the authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative styles of interaction with children, the latter nurtures the emergence of positive character traits in young children. Suggests listening, setting high and reasonable standards, explaining why, negotiating reasonable solutions, offering choices, and valuing ideas and opinions as…

  17. From Malaysia to America: Community-Based Character Education for Children and Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Haslip, Meishi Lim; Haslip, Michael J.

    2013-01-01

    This article shares lessons learned from the implementation of a community-based character education program in Malaysia. The program at Jenjarom Learning Center is directed toward the transformation and empowerment of local children and youth through moral and character education. The stated purpose of the program has been to awaken the…

  18. Teaching Character Education to College Students Using Bildungsromans

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Novianti, Nita

    2017-01-01

    The paper reports a study on the teaching of character education in higher education using English Bildungsroman, "Jane Eyre." The participants were 35 sixth-semester students of English Literature program in an Indonesian state university. Guided by the approach to teaching character education exemplified by Ryan & Bohlin (1999),…

  19. Developing Physics Textbook Based on Cognitive Conflict for Deeper Conceptual Understanding and Better Characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Linuwih, S.; Lurinda, N. W.; Fianti

    2017-04-01

    These study aims are to develop a textbook based on cognitive conflict approachment, to know theproperness of textbook, the legibility of textbook, and also the effect of using the textbook for increasing the conceptual understanding and improving the character of the students. This study was conducted by research and development method employing non-equivalent control group design to test the product. The subjects wereten-grade students of SMA N 1 Gubug in thesecond semester of 2015/2016. The properness test used properness-questionnaire, while the legibility test used themost closet. The data of conceptual understanding was taken from thepretest-postest result and the data of characters was taken from direct observation. By analysing the data, we concluded that the textbook based on cognitive conflict approachment was very proper to use with high legibility. By applied this textbook, students would be helped to get a deeper conceptual understanding and better characters.

  20. Comparison of Correlates of Classroom Behavior Problems in Schools with and without a School-Wide Character Education Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parker, David C.; Nelson, Jennifer S.; Burns, Matthew K.

    2010-01-01

    System-wide practices in schools should diminish the occurrence of children's problem behavior that is deleterious to academic achievement. The current study examined the relationship between variables that affect classroom behavior and observed behavior in schools with and without a theoretically based character education program. Observational…

  1. Character education in perspective of chemistry pre-service teacher

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Merdekawati, Krisna

    2017-12-01

    As one of the pre-service teacher education programs, Chemistry Education Department Islamic University of Indonesia (UII) is committed to providing quality education. It is an education that can produce competent and characteristic chemistry pre-service teacher. The focus of research is to describe the perception of students as a potential teacher of chemistry on character education and achievement of character education. The research instruments include questionnaires and observation sheets. Research data show that students have understood the importance of character education and committed to organizing character education later in schools. Students have understood the ways in which character education can be used. The students stated that Chemistry Education Department has tried to equip students with character education. The observation result shows that students generally have character as a pre-service teacher.

  2. Product development in large furniture companies: a descriptive model with implications for character-marked products

    Treesearch

    Matt Bumgardner; Robert J. Bush; Cynthia D. West

    2001-01-01

    Previous research has shown that substantial yield improvements are possible when character-marks are not removed from hardwood furniture parts. Attempts to promote increased use of character-marked wood in fumiture should be based on an understimn&ing of how design concepts originate and move through the stages of product development. However, very little has...

  3. Face of America Character Education Curriculum.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    World T.E.A.M. Sports, Charlotte, NC.

    This document presents a description of the Face of America Classroom Program, a character education program based on a mission to bridge and build communities through sports. Three language arts lesson plans are provided on three themes: achievement, stereotypes (especially of people with disabilities), and strategies for healthy minds and…

  4. "Kalosara" Revitalization as an Ethno-Pedagogical Media in the Development of Character of Junior High School Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anwar; Suardika, I. Ketut; Mursidin, T.; Suleiman, Abdul Rauf; Syukur, Muhammad

    2018-01-01

    The aims of the research are (1) to identify types of character through "kalosara" revitalization as an ethno-pedagogical media in social sciences (IPS) learning at junior high school (SMP), (2) to develop strategy of "kalosara" revitalization as an ethno-pedagogical media in the development of characters of students, and (3)…

  5. Improving Elementary School Quality Through the Use of a Social-Emotional and Character Development Program: A Matched-Pair, Cluster-Randomized, Controlled Trial in Hawai’i

    PubMed Central

    Snyder, Frank J.; Vuchinich, Samuel; Acock, Alan; Washburn, Isaac J.; Flay, Brian R.

    2012-01-01

    BACKGROUND School safety and quality affect student learning and success. This study examined the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-wide social-emotional and character education program, Positive Action, on teacher, parent, and student perceptions of school safety and quality utilizing a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design. The Positive Action Hawai’i trial included 20 racially/ethnically diverse schools and was conducted from 2002–2003 through 2005–2006. METHODS School-level archival data, collected by the Hawai’i Department of Education, were used to examine program effects at 1-year post-trial. Teacher, parent, and student data were analyzed to examine indicators of school quality such as student safety and well-being, involvement, and satisfaction, as well as overall school quality. Matched-paired t-tests were used for the primary analysis, and sensitivity analyses included permutation tests and random-intercept growth curve models. RESULTS Analyses comparing change from baseline to 1-year post-trial revealed that intervention schools demonstrated significantly improved school quality compared to control schools, with 21%, 13%, and 16% better overall school quality scores as reported by teachers, parents, and students, respectively. Teacher, parent, and student reports on individual school-quality indicators showed improvement in student safety and well-being, involvement, satisfaction, quality student support, focused and sustained action, standards-based learning, professionalism and system capacity, and coordinated team work. Teacher reports also showed an improvement in the responsiveness of the system. CONCLUSIONS School quality was substantially improved, providing evidence that a school-wide social-emotional and character education program can enhance school quality and facilitate whole-school change. PMID:22142170

  6. Improving elementary school quality through the use of a social-emotional and character development program: a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled trial in Hawai'i.

    PubMed

    Snyder, Frank J; Vuchinich, Samuel; Acock, Alan; Washburn, Isaac J; Flay, Brian R

    2012-01-01

    School safety and quality affect student learning and success. This study examined the effects of a comprehensive elementary school-wide social-emotional and character education program, Positive Action, on teacher, parent, and student perceptions of school safety and quality utilizing a matched-pair, cluster-randomized, controlled design. The Positive Action Hawai'i trial included 20 racially/ethnically diverse schools and was conducted from 2002-2003 through 2005-2006. School-level archival data, collected by the Hawai'i Department of Education, were used to examine program effects at 1-year post-trial. Teacher, parent, and student data were analyzed to examine indicators of school quality such as student safety and well-being, involvement, and satisfaction, as well as overall school quality. Matched-paired t-tests were used for the primary analysis, and sensitivity analyses included permutation tests and random-intercept growth curve models. Analyses comparing change from baseline to 1-year post-trial revealed that intervention schools demonstrated significantly improved school quality compared to control schools, with 21%, 13%, and 16% better overall school quality scores as reported by teachers, parents, and students, respectively. Teacher, parent, and student reports on individual school-quality indicators showed improvement in student safety and well-being, involvement, satisfaction, quality student support, focused and sustained action, standards-based learning, professionalism and system capacity, and coordinated team work. Teacher reports also showed an improvement in the responsiveness of the system. School quality was substantially improved, providing evidence that a school-wide social-emotional and character education program can enhance school quality and facilitate whole-school change. © 2011, American School Health Association.

  7. Document Form and Character Recognition using SVM

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Park, Sang-Sung; Shin, Young-Geun; Jung, Won-Kyo; Ahn, Dong-Kyu; Jang, Dong-Sik

    2009-08-01

    Because of development of computer and information communication, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has been developing. There is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) of Pattern recognition technology for EDI. OCR contributed to changing many manual in the past into automation. But for the more perfect database of document, much manual is needed for excluding unnecessary recognition. To resolve this problem, we propose document form based character recognition method in this study. Proposed method is divided into document form recognition part and character recognition part. Especially, in character recognition, change character into binarization by using SVM algorithm and extract more correct feature value.

  8. Developmental Trajectories of Youth Character: A Five-Wave Longitudinal Study of Cub Scouts and Non-Scout Boys.

    PubMed

    Wang, Jun; Ferris, Kaitlyn A; Hershberg, Rachel M; Lerner, Richard M

    2015-12-01

    Youth development programs, such as the Boy Scouts of America, aim to develop positive attributes in youth (e.g., character virtues, prosocial behaviors, and positive civic actions), which are necessary for individuals and societies to flourish. However, few developmental studies have focused on how specific positive attributes develop through participation in programs such as the Boy Scouts of America. As part of the Character and Merit Project, this article examined the developmental trajectories of character and other positive attributes, which are of focal concern of the Boy Scouts of America and the developmental literature. Data were collected from 1398 Scouts (M = 8.59 years, SD = 1.29 years, Range 6.17-11.92 years) and 325 non-Scout boys (M = 9.06 years, SD = 1.43 years, Range 6.20-11.81 years) over five waves of testing across a two-and-half-year period. Latent growth-curve analyses of self-report survey data examined the developmental trajectories of the attributes. Older youth rated themselves lower than younger participants on helpfulness, reverence, thriftiness, and school performance. However, all youth had moderately high self-ratings on all the attributes. Across waves, Scouts' self-ratings increased significantly for cheerfulness, helpfulness, kindness, obedience, trustworthiness, and hopeful future expectations. Non-Scout boys' self-ratings showed no significant change for any attributes except for a significant decrease in religious reverence among non-Scout boys from religious institutions. We discuss implications for positive youth development and for the role of the Boy Scouts of America programming in character development.

  9. Development and initial validation of a short three-dimensional inventory of character strengths.

    PubMed

    Duan, Wenjie; Bu, He

    2017-09-01

    Character strength is described as a positive and organized pattern of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. It serves as a schema that organizes categories of information toward the self, others, and the world, and provides the self-aware knowledge that facilitates the pursuit of goals, values, and ethical principles. Recent research has suggested that three reliable factors emerge from the measures of character strengths: caring, inquisitiveness, and self-control. The goal of this paper is to develop a psychometrically sound short measure of character strength. The questions were addressed in two studies using two independent samples: a cross-cultural (i.e., 518 Asians and 556 Westerners) sample, and a cross-population (i.e., 175 community participants and 171 inpatients) sample in China. Findings from the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis suggested a cross-cultural three-factor model of character strength that could be measured by the Three-dimensional Inventory of Character Strengths (TICS). A multigroup confirmatory factor analysis further indicated that the number of factors and factor loadings was invariant in the medical and community samples. This result indicated that the brief inventory could be applied to a medical context. Internal reliability, content validity, and predictive validity were good, although the predictive validity of the three character strengths for psychological symptoms in the medical sample was more modest than that in the community sample. TICS is expected to be used for screening populations at risk, and a tool to aid mental health professionals in group-based treatment/intervention planning. It also should be noted that this short inventory should be used with caution for individual decision making.

  10. Building Character through Literacy with Children's Literature

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Almerico, Gina M.

    2014-01-01

    Character education is described as curriculum specifically developed to teach children about the quality and traits of good character. One means in which children can learn about good character is through the pages of high quality children's literature. In this study, the author defines the characteristics of an effective character development…

  11. Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lapsley, Daniel; Woodbury, Ryan

    2016-01-01

    In this article the authors accept the common view that moral-character education is immanent to the life of classroom and schools and inevitable even when remanded to the hidden curriculum. Most schools claim to address the moral formation of students, and many educators enter the profession for values-laden reasons. Yet the language of values,…

  12. Landscape Character of Pongkor Mining Ecotourism Area

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kusumoarto, A.; Gunawan, A.; Machfud; Hikmat, A.

    2017-10-01

    Pongkor Mining Ecotourism Area has a diverse landscape character as a potential landscape resources for the development of ecotourism destination. This area is part of the Mount of Botol Resort, Halimun Salak National Park (HSNP). This area also has a fairly high biodiversity. This study aims to identify and analysis the category of landscape character in the Pongkor Mining Ecotourism Area for the development of ecotourism destination. This study used a descriptive approach through field surveys and interviews, was carried out through two steps : 1) identify the landscape character, and 2) analysis of the landscape character. The results showed that in areas set aside for ecotourism destination in Pongkor Mining, landscape character category scattered forests, tailing ponds, river, plain, and the built environment. The Category of landscape character most dominant scattered in the area is forest, here is the river, plain, tailing ponds, the built environment, and plain. The landscape character in a natural environment most preferred for ecotourism activities. The landscape character that spread in the natural environment and the built environment is a potential that must be protected and modified such as elimination of incongruous element, accentuation of natural form, alteration of the natural form, intensification and enhanced visual quality intensively to be developed as a ecotourism destination area.

  13. Believable Characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    El-Nasr, Magy Seif; Bishko, Leslie; Zammitto, Veronica; Nixon, Michael; Vasiliakos, Athanasios V.; Wei, Huaxin

    The interactive entertainment industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. In 1996, the U.S. entertainment software industry reported 2.6 billion in sales revenue, this figure has more than tripled in 2007 yielding 9.5 billion in revenues [1]. In addition, gamers, the target market for interactive entertainment products, are now reaching beyond the traditional 8-34 year old male to include women, Hispanics, and African Americans [2]. This trend has been observed in several markets, including Japan, China, Korea, and India, who has just published their first international AAA title (defined as high quality games with high budget), a 3D third person action game: Ghajini - The Game [3]. The topic of believable characters is becoming a central issue when designing and developing games for today's game industry. While narrative and character were considered secondary to game mechanics, games are currently evolving to integrate characters, narrative, and drama as part of their design. One can see this pattern through the emergence of games like Assassin's Creed (published by Ubisoft 2008), Hotel Dusk (published by Nintendo 2007), and Prince of Persia series (published by Ubisoft), which emphasized character and narrative as part of their design.

  14. Acquisition of Chinese characters: the effects of character properties and individual differences among second language learners

    PubMed Central

    Kuo, Li-Jen; Kim, Tae-Jin; Yang, Xinyuan; Li, Huiwen; Liu, Yan; Wang, Haixia; Hyun Park, Jeong; Li, Ying

    2015-01-01

    In light of the dramatic growth of Chinese learners worldwide and a need for cross-linguistic research on Chinese literacy development, this study drew upon theories of visual complexity effect (Su and Samuels, 2010) and dual-coding processing (Sadoski and Paivio, 2013) and investigated (a) the effects of character properties (i.e., visual complexity and radical presence) on character acquisition and (b) the relationship between individual learner differences in radical awareness and character acquisition. Participants included adolescent English-speaking beginning learners of Chinese in the U.S. Following Kuo et al. (2014), a novel character acquisition task was used to investigate the process of acquiring the meaning of new characters. Results showed that (a) characters with radicals and with less visual complexity were easier to acquire than characters without radicals and with greater visual complexity; and (b) individual differences in radical awareness were associated with the acquisition of all types of characters, but the association was more pronounced with the acquisition of characters with radicals. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings were discussed. PMID:26379562

  15. Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports' Relationship to the Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weston, Alana

    2017-01-01

    Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an intervention-based, character education program that is being implemented in many schools nation-wide. It is important to know the extent to which PBIS reflects the principles of an effective character education program because PBIS is a widely used behavior modification character education…

  16. Development of Quality Assurance System in Culture and Nation Character Education in Primary Education in Indonesia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Susilana, Rudi; Asra

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of national education is to develop skills and build dignified national character and civilization in educating nation life (Act No. 20, 2003). The paper describes a system of quality assurance in culture and character education in primary education. This study employs the six sigma model which consists of the formula DMAIC (Define,…

  17. The Reassuring Role of TV's Continuing Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Piltch, Charles N.

    1979-01-01

    The author analyzes the series form of television program, particularly the qualities and functions of the continuing characters and their relationship to the plot. He discusses the reassuring psychological effects of a TV series on the audience and the implications of a decline in this type of programing. (SJL)

  18. Character Development in Business Education: A Comparison of Coeducational and Single-Sex Environments

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Davis, James H.; Ruhe, John; Lee, Monle; Rajadhyaksha, Ujvala

    2011-01-01

    This study questions the widely held assumption, particularly in the United States, that coeducation is best. Previous research supports the development of single-sex education for both female and male students. This study examines how the learning climate of the coeducation environment seems to affect the character development of female business…

  19. Ready to Implement? How the Out-of-School Time Workforce Can Support Character Development through Social and Emotional Learning: A Review of the Literature and Future Directions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moroney, Deborah A.; Devaney, Elizabeth

    2017-01-01

    This paper reviews the evidence on staff practices and quality programs that foster character development through social and emotional learning. The paper describes the state of the OST workforce, and barriers and opportunities to adding social and emotional learning to their job description. Specifically, the paper provides an overview of the…

  20. Character Education in Print: Content Analysis of Character Education in Introduction to Education Textbooks

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Protz, Babette Marisa

    2013-01-01

    Albert Einstein is credited with saying that the most important component of education is the development of students' character. While debate exists as to the delivery of character education in the public schools, it must be recognized that not all students have a support system outside of the schoolhouse. Consequently, when character…

  1. A Lab of Her Own? Portrayals of Female Characters on Children's Educational Science Programs.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Steinke, Jocelyn; Long, Marilee

    1996-01-01

    Describes a study that examined the portrayals of female characters on four educational science television series for children and discusses those portrayals in the light of other research on television and socialization. Topics include children's perceptions of occupational sex roles; theories of sex-role development; and implications for future…

  2. Modeling Pathways of Character Development across the First Three Decades of Life: An Application of Integrative Data Analysis Techniques to Understanding the Development of Hopeful Future Expectations.

    PubMed

    Callina, Kristina Schmid; Johnson, Sara K; Tirrell, Jonathan M; Batanova, Milena; Weiner, Michelle B; Lerner, Richard M

    2017-06-01

    There were two purposes of the present research: first, to add to scholarship about a key character virtue, hopeful future expectations; and second, to demonstrate a recent innovation in longitudinal methodology that may be especially useful in enhancing the understanding of the developmental course of hopeful future expectations and other character virtues that have been the focus of recent scholarship in youth development. Burgeoning interest in character development has led to a proliferation of short-term, longitudinal studies on character. These data sets are sometimes limited in their ability to model character development trajectories due to low power or relatively brief time spans assessed. However, the integrative data analysis approach allows researchers to pool raw data across studies in order to fit one model to an aggregated data set. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the promises and challenges of this new tool for modeling character development. We used data from four studies evaluating youth character strengths in different settings to fit latent growth curve models of hopeful future expectations from participants aged 7 through 26 years. We describe the analytic strategy for pooling the data and modeling the growth curves. Implications for future research are discussed in regard to the advantages of integrative data analysis. Finally, we discuss issues researchers should consider when applying these techniques in their own work.

  3. The Trouble with Moral Citizens: A Response to "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education" by Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Westheimer, Joel

    2016-01-01

    In "Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education," Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury argue that teacher education licensure and accreditation standards largely ignore matters of values, character, and morality. "The moral-character formation of children," they note, "is the instructional objective that dare not speak…

  4. Cost-Effective CNC Part Program Verification Development for Laboratory Instruction.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chen, Joseph C.; Chang, Ted C.

    2000-01-01

    Describes a computer numerical control program verification system that checks a part program before its execution. The system includes character recognition, word recognition, a fuzzy-nets system, and a tool path viewer. (SK)

  5. Improving the students’ skills in developing geometry learning by building the character of academic atmosphere in Study Program of Elementary School Teacher Universitas Negeri Semarang

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nugraheni, N.; Wahyuningsih

    2018-03-01

    The purposes of this study for knowing how to improve the character of academic atmosphere to improve the ability in designing geometry learning on Study Program of Elementary School TeacherUniversitas Negeri Semarang students. This research is a classroom action research conducted in two cycles and each cycle consists of two meetings. Each cycle consists of planning, execution, observation, and evaluation. The subjects of this study are lecturers of geometry and students who take geometry course. The technique in collecting data is using test and non-test techniques. The data analysis is done in quantitative and qualitative descriptive analysis. The result of research shows that the lecturers’ activity is in good category and student activity is on very good category. While the students’ learning outcomes are in good category. From the field notes, students are able to perform independent and structured tasks with their full responsibility, hard work, and diligence. It shows that the character of academic atmosphere has increased. It is suggested that a set of task bills so that prerequisites have been owned by the students. Structured tasks should be given to see the students’ ability.

  6. Character Education/Formation in Catholic Schools (K-12).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Marine, Robert A.

    Noting that character formation within Catholic education has undergone several changes over the last 10 years, this paper examines character education and character formation as they are currently implemented in Catholic elementary and secondary schools. Section 1 of the paper considers the definition of character, and traces the development of…

  7. Relationships between Implementing Character Education, Student Behavior, and Student Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Skaggs, Gary; Bodenhorn, Nancy

    2006-01-01

    Over a 4-year period, researchers measured several outcomes in 5 school districts initiating or enhancing character education programs. Based on student, teacher, and administrator surveys, there was a noticeable improvement in character-related behavior. In certain districts, suspension and drop-out rates also decreased after the implementation…

  8. Development of real-time motion capture system for 3D on-line games linked with virtual character

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kim, Jong Hyeong; Ryu, Young Kee; Cho, Hyung Suck

    2004-10-01

    Motion tracking method is being issued as essential part of the entertainment, medical, sports, education and industry with the development of 3-D virtual reality. Virtual human character in the digital animation and game application has been controlled by interfacing devices; mouse, joysticks, midi-slider, and so on. Those devices could not enable virtual human character to move smoothly and naturally. Furthermore, high-end human motion capture systems in commercial market are expensive and complicated. In this paper, we proposed a practical and fast motion capturing system consisting of optic sensors, and linked the data with 3-D game character with real time. The prototype experiment setup is successfully applied to a boxing game which requires very fast movement of human character.

  9. Character Education: Christian Education Perspectives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilhelm, Gretchen M.; Firmin, Michael W.

    2008-01-01

    Character is defined broadly by leading authorities, including concepts such as practicing apt behavior and teaching right from wrong. Virtue and moral undertones tend to pervade most experts' use of character, although in secular settings, the notion of ethics is more prominent. Overall, developing in students a desire for the good is how most…

  10. First Steps in Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Patty Smith

    2017-01-01

    For many centuries, there has been theoretical statements asserting faith in character as the main objective in education, but it is only comparatively recently enough has been known about character and the scientific conditions for its development to make an honored place for it in the curricula. Today, it is creeping into curricula under new…

  11. Problem-Based Learning Model Used to Scientific Approach Based Worksheet for Physics to Develop Senior High School Students Characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yulianti, D.

    2017-04-01

    The purpose of this study is to explore the application of Problem Based Learning(PBL) model aided withscientific approach and character integrated physics worksheets (LKS). Another purpose is to investigate the increase in cognitive and psychomotor learning outcomes and to know the character development of students. The method used in this study was the quasi-experiment. The instruments were observation and cognitive test. Worksheets can improve students’ cognitive, psychomotor learning outcomes. Improvements in cognitive learning results of students who have learned using worksheets are higher than students who received learning without worksheets. LKS can also develop the students’ character.

  12. Character Education, New Media, and Political Spectacle

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Winton, Sue

    2010-01-01

    Ontario's new Character Development Initiative is analyzed to determine whether it can be characterized as political spectacle. Examination of official policy texts, media reports, speeches, web pages, webcasts, and events at the Character Development Symposium suggests that the Initiative contains many elements of political spectacle; however,…

  13. Pollen structure and development in Nymphaeales: insights into character evolution in an ancient angiosperm lineage.

    PubMed

    Taylor, Mackenzie L; Cooper, Ranessa L; Schneider, Edward L; Osborn, Jeffrey M

    2015-10-01

    A knowledge of pollen characters in early-diverging angiosperm lineages is essential for understanding pollen evolution and the role of pollen in angiosperm diversification. In this paper, we report and synthesize data on mature pollen and pollen ontogeny from all genera of Nymphaeales within a comparative, phylogenetic context and consider pollen evolution in this early-diverging angiosperm lineage. We describe mature pollen characters for Euryale, Barclaya, and Nymphaea ondinea, taxa for which little to no structural data exist. We studied mature pollen for all nymphaealean genera using light, scanning electron, and transmission electron microscopy. We reviewed published reports of nymphaealean pollen to provide a comprehensive discussion of pollen characters in water lilies. Nymphaeales exhibit diversity in key pollen characters, including dispersal unit size, ornamentation, aperture morphology, and tapetum type. All Nymphaeales pollen are tectate-columellate, exhibiting one of two distinct patterns of infratectal ultrastructure-a thick infratectal space with robust columellae or a thin infratectal space with thin columellae. All genera have pollen with a lamellate endexine that becomes compressed in the proximal, but not distal wall. This endexine ultrastructure supports the operculate hypothesis for aperture origin. Nymphaeaceae pollen exhibit a membranous granular layer, which is a synapomorphy of the family. Variation in pollen characters indicates that significant potential for lability in pollen development was present in Nymphaeales at the time of its divergence from the rest of angiosperms. Structural and ontogenetic data are essential for interpreting pollen characters, such as infratectum and endexine ultrastructure in Nymphaeales. © 2015 Botanical Society of America.

  14. Printed Arabic optical character segmentation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mohammad, Khader; Ayyesh, Muna; Qaroush, Aziz; Tumar, Iyad

    2015-03-01

    A considerable progress in recognition techniques for many non-Arabic characters has been achieved. In contrary, few efforts have been put on the research of Arabic characters. In any Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system the segmentation step is usually the essential stage in which an extensive portion of processing is devoted and a considerable share of recognition errors is attributed. In this research, a novel segmentation approach for machine Arabic printed text with diacritics is proposed. The proposed method reduces computation, errors, gives a clear description for the sub-word and has advantages over using the skeleton approach in which the data and information of the character can be lost. Both of initial evaluation and testing of the proposed method have been developed using MATLAB and shows 98.7% promising results.

  15. Developing Multimedia Supplementary Materials to Support Learning Beginning Level Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Xu, Lisha

    2017-01-01

    Studies investigating beginner Chinese learners' character learning strategies found that learners considered orthographic knowledge the most useful factor (Ke, 1998; Shen, 2005). Orthographic recognition correlates with character identification and production and can be used by advanced learners to solve word identification problems (Everson,…

  16. Healthy characters? An investigation of marketing practices in children's food advertising.

    PubMed

    Castonguay, Jessica; Kunkel, Dale; Wright, Paul; Duff, Caroline

    2013-01-01

    To determine the nutritional quality of foods advertised with familiar children's characters and health-related messages. Children's programming aired on the most popular broadcast and cable channels during 2011 was sampled to form a composite weekday and weekend day. All food advertisements (ads) included in this programming were content analyzed. Five hundred seventy-seven food ads. Familiar characters promoting products were either trade or licensed characters. A product's nutritional quality was determined using the United States Department of Health and Human Services' categorizations, based on the frequency foods should be consumed. Health cues were present when a food was claimed to be healthy, physical activity was depicted, or the product was associated with fruit. Frequencies and chi square analyses were conducted; P < .05. Nearly three quarters (73%) of food ads targeting children use a familiar character. The majority of these ads (72%) promote foods of low nutritional quality, yet 53% employ a health-related message. Familiar characters proliferate in food advertising to children, yet marketers do not adhere to recommendations that characters promote strictly healthy foods. Future research is needed to investigate effects and inform policy decisions in this realm. Copyright © 2013 Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Human Nature and the Development of Character: The Clash of Descriptive and Normative Elements in John Stuart Mill's Educational Theory.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miller, Peter J.; Kim, Ki Su

    1988-01-01

    Discusses John Stuart Mill's belief in the development of character as a solution to social problems and a worthy educational ideal. Concludes that Mill's belief in education's power to perfect human nature through character development could not be realized within the framework of his anthropological views of human kind. (DMM)

  18. Toward a Graded Psycholexical Space Mapping Model: Sublexical and Lexical Representations in Chinese Character Reading Development.

    PubMed

    Tong, Xiuli; McBride, Catherine

    2017-07-01

    Following a review of contemporary models of word-level processing for reading and their limitations, we propose a new hypothetical model of Chinese character reading, namely, the graded lexical space mapping model that characterizes how sublexical radicals and lexical information are involved in Chinese character reading development. The underlying assumption of this model is that Chinese character recognition is a process of competitive mappings of phonology, semantics, and orthography in both lexical and sublexical systems, operating as functions of statistical properties of print input based on the individual's specific level of reading. This model leads to several testable predictions concerning how the quasiregularity and continuity of Chinese-specific radicals are organized in memory for both child and adult readers at different developmental stages of reading.

  19. Games of Character: Team Sports, Games, and Character Development in Victorian Public Schools, 1850-1900

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dishon, Gideon

    2017-01-01

    This article examines the ascendance of team sports as tools of "character building" in British Victorian public schools in the second half of the nineteenth century. The focus of this enquiry is the commonly overlooked pedagogical innovation underlying this process--the utilisation of "organised games" as educational tools.…

  20. School-Based Character Education in the United States

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Brian H.

    2013-01-01

    Character education has been a part of schooling in the United States since the early years of its public education system. Starting with a religious emphasis on moral development, character education eventually transformed into more secular approaches, like the values clarification model, character word-of-the-month approach, performance…

  1. The World T.E.A.M. Sports Face of America Character Education Curriculum Package.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    2002

    The Exceptional Athlete Matters (World T.E.A.M.) Sports (WTS) brings individuals together to undertake unique athletic events throughout the world to encourage, promote, and develop opportunities in sports for people, with and without disabilities. This classroom program on character education provides teachers with lesson plans on three themes…

  2. Teaching with Your Librarian--Great Character!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Meagher, Sandy

    2005-01-01

    Attracting middle grade readers is a true art. When talking to middle grade teachers, they understand that you have to have a hook to catch these students. In this article, the author suggests several books that are perfect for character studies and for encouraging kids to develop characters of their own.

  3. WWC Evidence Review Protocol for Character Education Interventions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    What Works Clearinghouse, 2014

    2014-01-01

    Character education is an inclusive concept regarding all aspects of how families, schools, and related social institutions support the positive character development of children and adults. "Character" in this context refers to the moral and ethical qualities of persons as well as the demonstration of those qualities in their emotional…

  4. Developing indicators to monitor the "outstanding opportunities" quality of wilderness character

    Treesearch

    Peter Landres

    2004-01-01

    Wilderness managers are often faced with difficult and complex tasks. One such task is fulfilling the legal mandate of the 1964 Wilderness Act (Public Law 88-577) to provide opportunities for use and enjoyment of wilderness while protecting and preserving the wilderness character of the area. The ideas of use and enjoyment and wilderness character are expressions of...

  5. Value-Based Interactive Multimedia Development through Integrated Practice for the Formation of Students' Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Komalasari, Kokom; Saripudin, Didin

    2017-01-01

    This study aims to describe the development of value-based interactive multimedia through integrated practice for the formation of students' character. This study uses Research and Development Design at the Department of Social Sciences Education at Indonesia University of Education. Conceptually, the design in question is integration of living…

  6. The depressive character.

    PubMed

    Kahn, E

    1975-01-01

    The depressive character is characterized by perpetual and unsuccessful efforts to maintain self-esteem and to avoid a sense of helplessness. Such individuals suffer from chronic depression which may or may not be masked, but which permeates their character. Although the condition is among the commonest seen in many of our clinics and practices, it remains without a generally accepted diagnostic form. It is suggested that the essential, clinical, dynamic, and structural features of the depressive character are: (1) consistently low self-esteem and a sense of helplessness, dependent object relations and chronic guilt; (2) self-directed aggression and masochism are frequent but not invariable; (3) extensive use of the mechanism of denial is as common as the previously described obsessional defenses seen in patients subject to psychotic depression; (4) often the depressive character suffers from intense oral envy; (5) depressive character traits may help to ward off any of the basic anxieties, namely, object loss, loss of love, castration anxiety, and superego anxiety (guilt) (6) the depressive character may be similar to a number of related disorders, namely, the obsessional character, hysterical characters with a large oral component, and depressive borderline states; (7) sensitivity to loss, sadness, and fragility of self-esteem makes the depressive character especially vulnerable to regression into overt depression; (8) the persistence of oral incorporative mechanisms, ambivalent, dependent object relations, ego versus superego tension with depressive affect, and sensitivity to loss are characteristic of the ego of the depressive character.

  7. Building corporate character. Interview by Nan Stone.

    PubMed

    Hiatt, A

    1992-01-01

    Stride Rite is a good company by any definition: Keds, Sperry Top-Siders, and Stride Rite children's shoes are consumer favorites for their fit, quality, and comfort. Wall Street analysts praise the company's outstanding financial performance. Innovative programs such as the first corporate child-care center and public service scholarships support Stride Rite's reputation as one of the most responsible employers and corporate citizens in the United States. Behind Stride Rite's good performance are the building blocks of corporate character: a legacy of quality and service and a leader committed to keeping that legacy lively. When Stride Rite shipped its first children's shoes in 1919, they came with the company's commitment "to produce an honest quality product in an honest way and deliver it as promised." For Arnold Hiatt, that commitment has been the driving force behind the company's evolution from manufacturing into marketing and product development as well as the guiding principle in its relations with consumers, dealers, suppliers, and employees. But Stride Rite's corporate character is also a reflection of Hiatt himself. In his early 20s, Hiatt fled a management training program "designed to make carnivores" out of its new employees and bought Blue Star Shoes, a small manufacturing company that had gone into Chapter 11. Through experience and "stumbling around," he built Blue Star's sales to $5 million-and got a practical education in management, markets, and human nature that has proved equally useful in running Stride Rite.

  8. Moral character in the workplace.

    PubMed

    Cohen, Taya R; Panter, A T; Turan, Nazli; Morse, Lily; Kim, Yeonjeong

    2014-11-01

    Using two 3-month diary studies and a large cross-sectional survey, we identified distinguishing features of adults with low versus high levels of moral character. Adults with high levels of moral character tend to: consider the needs and interests of others and how their actions affect other people (e.g., they have high levels of Honesty-Humility, empathic concern, guilt proneness); regulate their behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences (e.g., they have high levels of Conscientiousness, self-control, consideration of future consequences); and value being moral (e.g., they have high levels of moral identity-internalization). Cognitive moral development, Emotionality, and social value orientation were found to be relatively undiagnostic of moral character. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that employees with low moral character committed harmful work behaviors more frequently and helpful work behaviors less frequently than did employees with high moral character, according to their own admissions and coworkers' observations. Study 3 revealed that adults with low moral character committed more delinquent behavior and had more lenient attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics than did adults with high moral character. By showing that individual differences have consistent, meaningful effects on employees' behaviors, after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) and basic attributes of the work setting (e.g., enforcement of an ethics code), our results contest situationist perspectives that deemphasize the importance of personality. Moral people can be identified by self-reports in surveys, and these self-reports predict consequential behaviors months after the initial assessment.

  9. Efficacy of Schoolwide Programs to Promote Social and Character Development and Reduce Problem Behavior in Elementary School Children. Report from the Social and Character Development Research Program. NCER 2011-2001

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ruby, Allen; Doolittle, Emily

    2010-01-01

    The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the Division of Violence Prevention in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collaborated to conduct a rigorous impact evaluation of programs aimed at improving students' behavior. For this evaluation, such programs were termed Social…

  10. Applying Adult Learning Theory through a Character Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baskas, Richard S.

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to analyze the behavior of a character, Celie, in a movie, 'The Color Purple," through the lens of two adult learning theorists to determine the relationships the character has with each theory. The development and portrayal of characters in movies can be explained and understood by the analysis of adult learning…

  11. Putting Characters First in a Middle School Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sass-Henke, Amanda

    2012-01-01

    One of the most important aspects of developing a close, personal relationship with literary characters is "relevancy." Readers have to find something to connect with in characters to care about them, and for that connection to take place, stories and their characters have to be relevant in the eyes of an adolescent to the point where they can…

  12. The Content of America's Character: Recovering Civic Virtue.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Eberly, Don E., Ed.

    Addressing the problems of increasing antisocial behavior, declining civility, and decaying morals, this book contains a collection of essays that consider the origins and the development of America's character, the factors that influence it, and the consequences for society of inadequate character development. Essays include the following: "The…

  13. Character Recognition Using Genetically Trained Neural Networks

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Diniz, C.; Stantz, K.M.; Trahan, M.W.

    1998-10-01

    Computationally intelligent recognition of characters and symbols addresses a wide range of applications including foreign language translation and chemical formula identification. The combination of intelligent learning and optimization algorithms with layered neural structures offers powerful techniques for character recognition. These techniques were originally developed by Sandia National Laboratories for pattern and spectral analysis; however, their ability to optimize vast amounts of data make them ideal for character recognition. An adaptation of the Neural Network Designer soflsvare allows the user to create a neural network (NN_) trained by a genetic algorithm (GA) that correctly identifies multiple distinct characters. The initial successfidmore » recognition of standard capital letters can be expanded to include chemical and mathematical symbols and alphabets of foreign languages, especially Arabic and Chinese. The FIN model constructed for this project uses a three layer feed-forward architecture. To facilitate the input of characters and symbols, a graphic user interface (GUI) has been developed to convert the traditional representation of each character or symbol to a bitmap. The 8 x 8 bitmap representations used for these tests are mapped onto the input nodes of the feed-forward neural network (FFNN) in a one-to-one correspondence. The input nodes feed forward into a hidden layer, and the hidden layer feeds into five output nodes correlated to possible character outcomes. During the training period the GA optimizes the weights of the NN until it can successfully recognize distinct characters. Systematic deviations from the base design test the network's range of applicability. Increasing capacity, the number of letters to be recognized, requires a nonlinear increase in the number of hidden layer neurodes. Optimal character recognition performance necessitates a minimum threshold for the number of cases when genetically training the net. And, the

  14. Research on Chinese characters display of airborne MFD based on GL studio

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Zhile; Dong, Junyu; Hu, Wenting; Cui, Yipeng

    2018-04-01

    GL Studio cannot display Chinese characters during developing the airborne MFD, this paper propose a method of establishing a Chinese character font with GB2312 encoding, establish the font table and the display unit of Chinese characters based on GL Studio. Abstract the storage and display data model of Chinese characters, parse the GB encoding of the corresponding Chinese characters that MFD received, find the coordinates of the Chinese characters in the font table, establish the dynamic control model and the dynamic display model of Chinese characters based on the display unit of Chinese characters. In GL Studio and VC ++.NET environment, this model has been successfully applied to develop the airborne MFD in a variety of mission simulators. This method has successfully solved the problem that GL Studio software cannot develop MFD software of Chinese domestic aircraft and can also be used for other professional airborne MFD development tools such as IDATA. It has been proved by experiments that this is a fast effective scalable and reconfigurable method of developing both actual equipment and simulators.

  15. Linking Character Education and Global Understanding through Children's Picture Books

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Helterbran, Valeri R.

    2009-01-01

    Character education has been part of the educational and societal landscape for millennia. Through consensus, school communities teach and model traits that influence the character and moral development of children. Children learn character traits from others--both good and bad--whether that is intended or not. To avoid leaving character education…

  16. Development of an optical character recognition pipeline for handwritten form fields from an electronic health record.

    PubMed

    Rasmussen, Luke V; Peissig, Peggy L; McCarty, Catherine A; Starren, Justin

    2012-06-01

    Although the penetration of electronic health records is increasing rapidly, much of the historical medical record is only available in handwritten notes and forms, which require labor-intensive, human chart abstraction for some clinical research. The few previous studies on automated extraction of data from these handwritten notes have focused on monolithic, custom-developed recognition systems or third-party systems that require proprietary forms. We present an optical character recognition processing pipeline, which leverages the capabilities of existing third-party optical character recognition engines, and provides the flexibility offered by a modular custom-developed system. The system was configured and run on a selected set of form fields extracted from a corpus of handwritten ophthalmology forms. The processing pipeline allowed multiple configurations to be run, with the optimal configuration consisting of the Nuance and LEADTOOLS engines running in parallel with a positive predictive value of 94.6% and a sensitivity of 13.5%. While limitations exist, preliminary experience from this project yielded insights on the generalizability and applicability of integrating multiple, inexpensive general-purpose third-party optical character recognition engines in a modular pipeline.

  17. Development of an optical character recognition pipeline for handwritten form fields from an electronic health record

    PubMed Central

    Peissig, Peggy L; McCarty, Catherine A; Starren, Justin

    2011-01-01

    Background Although the penetration of electronic health records is increasing rapidly, much of the historical medical record is only available in handwritten notes and forms, which require labor-intensive, human chart abstraction for some clinical research. The few previous studies on automated extraction of data from these handwritten notes have focused on monolithic, custom-developed recognition systems or third-party systems that require proprietary forms. Methods We present an optical character recognition processing pipeline, which leverages the capabilities of existing third-party optical character recognition engines, and provides the flexibility offered by a modular custom-developed system. The system was configured and run on a selected set of form fields extracted from a corpus of handwritten ophthalmology forms. Observations The processing pipeline allowed multiple configurations to be run, with the optimal configuration consisting of the Nuance and LEADTOOLS engines running in parallel with a positive predictive value of 94.6% and a sensitivity of 13.5%. Discussion While limitations exist, preliminary experience from this project yielded insights on the generalizability and applicability of integrating multiple, inexpensive general-purpose third-party optical character recognition engines in a modular pipeline. PMID:21890871

  18. Developing Student Character through Disciplinary Curricula: An Analysis of UK QAA Subject Benchmark Statements

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quinlan, Kathleen M.

    2016-01-01

    What aspects of student character are expected to be developed through disciplinary curricula? This paper examines the UK written curriculum through an analysis of the Quality Assurance Agency's subject benchmark statements for the most popular subjects studied in the UK. It explores the language, principles and intended outcomes that suggest…

  19. The use of CORE model by metacognitive skill approach in developing characters junior high school students

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fisher, Dahlia; Yaniawati, Poppy; Kusumah, Yaya Sukjaya

    2017-08-01

    This study aims to analyze the character of students who obtain CORE learning model using metacognitive approach. The method in this study is qualitative research and quantitative research design (Mixed Method Design) with concurrent embedded strategy. The research was conducted on two groups: an experimental group and the control group. An experimental group consists of students who had CORE model learning using metacognitive approach while the control group consists of students taught by conventional learning. The study was conducted the object this research is the seventh grader students in one the public junior high schools in Bandung. Based on this research, it is known that the characters of the students in the CORE model learning through metacognitive approach is: honest, hard work, curious, conscientious, creative and communicative. Overall it can be concluded that CORE model learning is good for developing characters of a junior high school student.

  20. Positive Youth Development in a School-Based Setting: A Study of the Los Angeles Police Academy Magnet School Program. PRGS Dissertation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maloney, Shannon

    2014-01-01

    Positive youth development (PYD) orients youth toward pro-social and forward-looking behavior through programs that emphasize youth empowerment and involvement, focus on skill development and character building, incorporate community collaboration at multiple levels, and include positive adult role models and mentors that interact with youth in…

  1. Integrating Character Education Model With Spiral System In Chemistry Subject

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hartutik; Rusdarti; Sumaryanto; Supartono

    2017-04-01

    Integrating character education is the responsibility of all subject teachers including chemistry teacher. The integration of character education is just administrative requirements so that the character changes are not measurable. The research objective 1) describing the actual conditions giving character education, 2) mapping the character integration of chemistry syllabus with a spiral system, and 3) producing syllabus and guide system integrating character education in chemistry lessons. Of the eighteen value character, each character is mapped to the material chemistry value concepts of class X and repeated the system in class XI and class XII. Spiral system integration means integrating the character values of chemistry subjects in steps from class X to XII repeatedly at different depth levels. Besides developing the syllabus, also made the integration of characters in a learning guide. This research was designed with research and development [3] with the scope of 20 chemistry teachers in Semarang. The focus of the activities is the existence of the current character study, mapping the character values in the syllabus, and assessment of the integration guides of character education. The validity test of Syllabus and Lesson Plans by experts in FGD. The data were taken with questionnaire and interviews, then processed by descriptive analysis. The result shows 1) The factual condition, in general, the teachers designed learning one-time face-to-face with the integration of more than four characters so that behaviour changes and depth of character is poorly controlled, 2) Mapping each character values focused in the syllabus. Meaning, on one or two basic competence in four or five times, face to face, enough integrated with the value of one character. In this way, there are more noticeable changes in students behaviour. Guidance is needed to facilitate the integration of character education for teachers integrating systems. Product syllabus and guidelines

  2. Documentation for the machine-readable character coded version of the SKYMAP catalogue

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Warren, W. H., Jr.

    1981-01-01

    The SKYMAP catalogue is a compilation of astronomical data prepared primarily for purposes of attitude guidance for satellites. In addition to the SKYMAP Master Catalogue data base, a software package of data base management and utility programs is available. The tape version of the SKYMAP Catalogue, as received by the Astronomical Data Center (ADC), contains logical records consisting of a combination of binary and EBCDIC data. Certain character coded data in each record are redundant in that the same data are present in binary form. In order to facilitate wider use of all SKYMAP data by the astronomical community, a formatted (character) version was prepared by eliminating all redundant character data and converting all binary data to character form. The character version of the catalogue is described. The document is intended to fully describe the formatted tape so that users can process the data problems and guess work; it should be distributed with any character version of the catalogue.

  3. Character Education: A Relationship with Building Health

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crider, Robert B.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between the use of character education programming and school health. Measuring and improving school health is a process that supports social, emotional, ethical and civic education. Hoy, Tarter, and Kottkamp define this concept as a healthy school is one in which the institutional,…

  4. Toward a Science of Character Education: Frameworks for Identifying and Implementing Effective Practices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berkowitz, Marvin W.; Bier, Melinda C.; McCauley, Brian

    2017-01-01

    A growing body of research on character education offers the opportunity to derive lessons on effective practice. While there is little focused research on the effectiveness of specific practices, reviews of effective programs have been mined for well over a decade to reach conclusions about "what works in character education." More…

  5. Building Composite Characters on a Postscript Printer.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gothard, James E.

    Procedures enabling the placement of diacritical markings over a character for printing in PostScript fonts on an Apple LaserWriter printer are described. The procedures involve some programming in the PostScript Language and manipulation of Adobe PostScript fonts. It is assumed that Microsoft Word will be used to create the text to be printed.…

  6. Assessing Leaders’ Character. Character and Leadership: A Theoretical Integration of Two Emerging Concepts. Implications for Research and Teaching

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2011-11-01

    Walumbwa, F. O., Avolio, B. J., Gardner, W. L., Wernsing, T. S., & Peterson, S. J. (2008). Authentic leadership : Development and validation of a theory ...AFRL-AFOSR-UK-TR-2011-0053 Assessing Leader’s Character Character and Leadership : A Theoretical Integration... Leadership and Communication Studies Casern Birmensdorf, Switzerland 8903 EOARD GRANT 10-3099 November 2011 Final Report for 14 September

  7. Parish Character.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Duggan, Robert D.

    1999-01-01

    Discusses the role of the Catholic parish in forming the character of its youth, asserting that vibrant communities of faith can form Catholic character and values that will survive any threat from society. Presents a formula for success in this endeavor, which includes: (1) good liturgy; (2) democratic leadership; (3) lifelong religious education…

  8. Character Education in Content Courses: Self-Scoring as a Means for Developing Honesty in Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Djiwandono, Patrisius Istiarto

    2016-01-01

    As character education is gaining currency, some institutions have started to incorporate character education into its instructional practices. However, this is not an easy task. Limited hours of contact and teachers' insufficient know-how of teaching and evaluating students' characters have hampered the efforts. This paper reports a small effort…

  9. Text vectorization based on character recognition and character stroke modeling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fan, Zhigang; Zhou, Bingfeng; Tse, Francis; Mu, Yadong; He, Tao

    2014-03-01

    In this paper, a text vectorization method is proposed using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and character stroke modeling. This is based on the observation that for a particular character, its font glyphs may have different shapes, but often share same stroke structures. Like many other methods, the proposed algorithm contains two procedures, dominant point determination and data fitting. The first one partitions the outlines into segments and second one fits a curve to each segment. In the proposed method, the dominant points are classified as "major" (specifying stroke structures) and "minor" (specifying serif shapes). A set of rules (parameters) are determined offline specifying for each character the number of major and minor dominant points and for each dominant point the detection and fitting parameters (projection directions, boundary conditions and smoothness). For minor points, multiple sets of parameters could be used for different fonts. During operation, OCR is performed and the parameters associated with the recognized character are selected. Both major and minor dominant points are detected as a maximization process as specified by the parameter set. For minor points, an additional step could be performed to test the competing hypothesis and detect degenerated cases.

  10. The Influence of Role-Players on the Character-Development and Character-Building of South African College Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Freeks, Fazel Ebrihiam

    2015-01-01

    The present world is in a moral crisis and it seems as though educational institutions experience both challenges and enormous behavioural problems. Statistics prove that there is a drastic decline in morals, values, standards, ethics, character and behaviour and schools, where colleges and even universities seem to indulge in crisis after crisis.…

  11. Character Education and Media Literacy--Finding Common Ground.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Herrington, Scott D.; Emmans, Cindy C.

    2002-01-01

    Discusses curriculum development in the areas of character education and media literacy. Topics include what character education is and what it attempts to promote within a school setting; moral judgments; moral and ethical values; behavior; decision making; the role of mass media, including media violence; and adding media education to the…

  12. Mapping wilderness character: New tools for new concepts

    Treesearch

    James Tricker

    2012-01-01

    The recent development of an interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character (Landres et al. 2008) allows on-the-ground managers and decision makers to assess whether stewardship actions for an individual wilderness are fulfilling the mandate to "preserve wilderness character." Since nearly all wilderness monitoring data depict spatial features, a recent...

  13. Using social-emotional and character development to improve academic outcomes: a matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled trial in low-income, urban schools

    PubMed Central

    Lewis, Kendra M.; DuBois, David L.; Acock, Alan; Vuchinich, Samuel; Silverthorn, Naida; Snyder, Frank J.; Day, Joseph; Ji, Peter; Flay, Brian R.

    2013-01-01

    BACKGROUND School-based social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs can influence not only SECD, but also academic-related outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of one SECD program, Positive Action (PA), on educational outcomes among low-income, urban youth. METHODS The longitudinal study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled design. Student-reported disaffection with learning and academic grades, and teacher ratings of academic ability and motivation were assessed for a cohort followed from grades 3 to 8. Aggregate school records were used to assess standardized test performance (for entire school, cohort, and demographic subgroups) and absenteeism (entire school). Multilevel growth-curve analyses tested program effects. RESULTS PA significantly improved growth in academic motivation and mitigated disaffection with learning. There was a positive impact of PA on absenteeism and marginally significant impact on math performance of all students. There were favorable program effects on reading for African American boys and cohort students transitioning between grades 7 and 8, and on math for girls and low-income students. CONCLUSIONS A school-based SECD program was found to influence academic outcomes among students living in low-income, urban communities. Future research should examine mechanisms by which changes in SECD influence changes in academic outcomes. PMID:24138347

  14. Using social-emotional and character development to improve academic outcomes: a matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled trial in low-income, urban schools.

    PubMed

    Bavarian, Niloofar; Lewis, Kendra M; Dubois, David L; Acock, Alan; Vuchinich, Samuel; Silverthorn, Naida; Snyder, Frank J; Day, Joseph; Ji, Peter; Flay, Brian R

    2013-11-01

    School-based social-emotional and character development (SECD) programs can influence not only SECD but also academic-related outcomes. This study evaluated the impact of one SECD program, Positive Action (PA), on educational outcomes among low-income, urban youth. The longitudinal study used a matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled design. Student-reported disaffection with learning and academic grades, and teacher ratings of academic ability and motivation were assessed for a cohort followed from grades 3 to 8. Aggregate school records were used to assess standardized test performance (for entire school, cohort, and demographic subgroups) and absenteeism (entire school). Multilevel growth-curve analyses tested program effects. PA significantly improved growth in academic motivation and mitigated disaffection with learning. There was a positive impact of PA on absenteeism and marginally significant impact on math performance of all students. There were favorable program effects on reading for African American boys and cohort students transitioning between grades 7 and 8, and on math for girls and low-income students. A school-based SECD program was found to influence academic outcomes among students living in low-income, urban communities. Future research should examine mechanisms by which changes in SECD influence changes in academic outcomes. © 2013, American School Health Association.

  15. A School of Fish: A Lesson in Character Development.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson, Kaye

    2000-01-01

    Discusses how the book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" (Stephen Covey), can be used in the elementary school to teach character education using an informal approach in a school-wide effort. Relates the seven habits to the book, "Swimmy" (Leo Lioni). Includes a trade books list and the habit(s) each address. (CMK)

  16. The MSFC Program Control Development Program

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    1994-01-01

    It is the policy of the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) that employees be given the opportunity to develop their individual skills and realize their full potential consistent with their selected career path and with the overall Center's needs and objectives. The MSFC Program Control Development Program has been designed to assist individuals who have selected Program Control or Program Analyst Program Control as a career path to achieve their ultimate career goals. Individuals selected to participate in the MSFC Program Control Development Program will be provided with development training in the various Program Control functional areas identified in the NASA Program Control Model. The purpose of the MSFC Program Control Development Program is to develop individual skills in the various Program Control functions by on-the-job and classroom instructional training on the various systems, tools, techniques, and processes utilized in these areas.

  17. Five key players shape institution's ethical character.

    PubMed

    Craig, R P; Middleton, C J; O'Connell, L J

    1986-05-01

    Various individuals or groups play important roles in achieving moral insight and direction in a health care facility. The administration, medical and nursing staffs, the professional theologian, and the bishop all contribute unique perspectives to the complex process of developing an institution's ethical character. An institutional ethics committee's (IEC's) effectiveness depends largely on the administrator's ability to support educational programming in ethics for the entire staff, coordinate ethical reflection throughout the organization, and shape ethically informed policy based on an IEC's practical experience. The medical staff brings its scientific background and practical experience to ethical issues under a committee's consideration, and nurses offer valuable insights based on their close contact with patients and family. The theologian provides resources and background on Catholic tradition as well as information on current theological developments. The IEC also should maintain a relationship with the local bishop whose duty is to articulate the Church's positions in health care ethics. Forthright dialogue among all parties is central to the IEC's task.

  18. Modelling acquired dyslexia: a software tool for developing grapheme-phoneme correspondences.

    PubMed Central

    D'Autrechy, C. L.; Reggia, J. A.; Berndt, R. S.

    1991-01-01

    In extending a computer model of acquired dyslexia, it has become necessary to develop a way to group printed characters in a word so that the character groups essentially have a one-to-one correspondence with the word's phonemes (speech sounds). This requires deriving a set of correspondences (legal character groupings, legal associations of character groups with phonemes, etc.) that yield a single grouping or "segmentation" of characters when applied to any English word. To facilitate and partially automate this task, a segmentation program has been developed that uses an interchangeable set of correspondences. The program segments words according to these correspondences and tabulates their success over large sets of words. The program has been used successfully to segment a 20,000 word corpus, demonstrating that this approach can be used effectively and efficiently. PMID:1807611

  19. Investigations into Character Enhancement.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hartoonian, H. Michael

    2001-01-01

    Presents six different investigations of character enhancement that attempts to answer three questions: (1) who are you; (2) what is your destination; and (3) who is your captain? Intends to build relationships among ideas such as perspective taking, seeing and making connections with the other, and understanding more about ethical development.…

  20. A Critical Analysis of Attribute Development Programs for Army Leaders

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-06-10

    40 Col. Brian Michelon, “Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: The Laissez - Faire Approach,” Military Review (2013...Accessed January 1, 2016. https://hbr.org/2001/12/what-leaders-really-do. Michelon, Brian. “Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: The Laissez - Faire ...Leavenworth, Kansas 2016 Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. Fair use determination or copyright permission has been obtained

  1. Structural model constructing for optical handwritten character recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Khaustov, P. A.; Spitsyn, V. G.; Maksimova, E. I.

    2017-02-01

    The article is devoted to the development of the algorithms for optical handwritten character recognition based on the structural models constructing. The main advantage of these algorithms is the low requirement regarding the number of reference images. The one-pass approach to a thinning of the binary character representation has been proposed. This approach is based on the joint use of Zhang-Suen and Wu-Tsai algorithms. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is confirmed by the results of the experiments. The article includes the detailed description of the structural model constructing algorithm’s steps. The proposed algorithm has been implemented in character processing application and has been approved on MNIST handwriting characters database. Algorithms that could be used in case of limited reference images number were used for the comparison.

  2. C-CAT: a computer software used to analyze and select Chinese characters and character components for psychological research.

    PubMed

    Lo, Ming; Hue, Chih-Wei

    2008-11-01

    The Character-Component Analysis Toolkit (C-CAT) software was designed to assist researchers in constructing experimental materials using traditional Chinese characters. The software package contains two sets of character stocks: one suitable for research using literate adults as subjects and one suitable for research using schoolchildren as subjects. The software can identify linguistic properties, such as the number of strokes contained, the character-component pronunciation regularity, and the arrangement of character components within a character. Moreover, it can compute a character's linguistic frequency, neighborhood size, and phonetic validity with respect to a user-selected character stock. It can also search the selected character stock for similar characters or for character components with user-specified linguistic properties.

  3. A Structural Analysis of Four Religious Programs: The Effect of Program Structure on Ethos.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Davis, David E.

    To determine whether the structure of religious programs helps develop ethos (the image held of a communicator at a given time by a receiver) in terms of character, intelligence, goodwill, and charisma, an analysis was made of four religious programs: "The PTL Club", "The 700 Club", "Jimmy Swaggart," and "The…

  4. Recognizing characters of ancient manuscripts

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Diem, Markus; Sablatnig, Robert

    2010-02-01

    Considering printed Latin text, the main issues of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems are solved. However, for degraded handwritten document images, basic preprocessing steps such as binarization, gain poor results with state-of-the-art methods. In this paper ancient Slavonic manuscripts from the 11th century are investigated. In order to minimize the consequences of false character segmentation, a binarization-free approach based on local descriptors is proposed. Additionally local information allows the recognition of partially visible or washed out characters. The proposed algorithm consists of two steps: character classification and character localization. Initially Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features are extracted which are subsequently classified using Support Vector Machines (SVM). Afterwards, the interest points are clustered according to their spatial information. Thereby, characters are localized and finally recognized based on a weighted voting scheme of pre-classified local descriptors. Preliminary results show that the proposed system can handle highly degraded manuscript images with background clutter (e.g. stains, tears) and faded out characters.

  5. The Effectiveness of Full Day School System for Students’ Character Building

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Benawa, A.; Peter, R.; Makmun, S.

    2018-01-01

    The study aims to put forward that full day school which was delivered in Marsudirini Elementary School in Bogor is effective for students’ character building. The study focused on the implementation of full day school system. The qualitative-based research method applied in the study is characteristic evaluation involving non-participant observation, interview, and documentation analysis. The result of this study concludes that the full day school system is significantly effective in education system for elementary students’ character building. The full day school system embraced the entire relevant processes based on the character building standard. The synergy of comprehensive components in instructional process at full day school has influenced the building of the students’ character effectively and efficiently. The relationship emerged between instructional development process in full day school system and the character building of the students. By developing instructional process through systemic and systematic process in full day school system, the support of stakeholders (leaders, human resources, students, parents’ role) and other components (learning resources, facilities, budget) provides a potent and expeditious contribution for character building among the students eventually.

  6. Integrity and virtue: The forming of good character

    PubMed Central

    Mitchell, Louise A.

    2015-01-01

    Moral character is formed by one's actions. The habits, actions, and emotional responses of the person of good character all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. Because human beings are body/soul unities, actions of the body are actions of the self, that is, human beings are self-possessing, self-governing, and self-determining. In order to be of good character, one must know the good, act in morally good ways, and be disposed and inclined toward the good through the development of virtues. Character and action are intertwined so intimately that one's professional duties, or even what is perceived by others as one's duties, cannot override one's conscience without negatively affecting (and changing) one's character. For the physician to be of good character, it is vital that he or she follow his or her conscience in all things: in private life and also in his or her profession, i.e., in the treatment of patients. Lay summary: Character cannot be separated from the person. To be of good character means that one’s habits, actions, and emotional responses all are united and directed toward the moral and the good. In this, public actions cannot be separated from private actions. Both sets of actions affect one’s character. For example, a physician believes use of contraceptives to be immoral yet prescribes them in the office because he or she feels a duty to provide what the patient asks for, or a pharmacist who believes abortion to be immoral fills prescriptions for the abortifacient RU-486. These public acts affect one’s character even if one’s private belief is the opposite of the action. They leave traces on one’s character. Not only do actions reflect the goodness or badness of one’s character, one’s actions also change one’s character. The more one does an immoral action or recommends an immoral action for others, the more it becomes part of one’s character to be the type of person who condones that immoral action. In order to

  7. Character Recognition Method by Time-Frequency Analyses Using Writing Pressure

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Watanabe, Tatsuhito; Katsura, Seiichiro

    With the development of information and communication technology, personal verification becomes more and more important. In the future ubiquitous society, the development of terminals handling personal information requires the personal verification technology. The signature is one of the personal verification methods; however, the number of characters is limited in the case of the signature and therefore false signature is used easily. Thus, personal identification is difficult from handwriting. This paper proposes a “haptic pen” that extracts the writing pressure, and shows a character recognition method by time-frequency analyses. Although the figures of characters written by different amanuenses are similar, the differences appear in the time-frequency domain. As a result, it is possible to use the proposed character recognition for personal identification more exactly. The experimental results showed the viability of the proposed method.

  8. Mapping wilderness character in Denali National Park and Preserve

    Treesearch

    Rob Burrows; James Tricker; Dan Abbe; Peter Landres; Jon Paynter; David Schirokauer; Philip Hooge

    2016-01-01

    The recent development of an interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character allows on-the-ground managers and decision-makers to assess whether stewardship actions for an individual wilderness are fulfilling the legislative mandate to "preserve wilderness character." By using credible data that are consistently collected, one can assess how wilderness...

  9. Radical Sensitivity Is the Key to Understanding Chinese Character Acquisition in Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tong, Xiuhong; Tong, Xiuli; McBride, Catherine

    2017-01-01

    This study investigated Chinese children's development of sensitivity to positional (orthographic), phonological, and semantic cues of radicals in encoding novel Chinese characters. A newly designed picture-novel character mapping task, along with nonverbal reasoning ability, vocabulary, and Chinese character recognition were administered to 198…

  10. No-Excuses for Character: A Critique of Character Education in No-Excuses Charter Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dishon, Gideon; Goodman, Joan F.

    2017-01-01

    The "no-excuses" model of education has become one of the most prominent educational alternatives for urban youth. Recently, notable no-excuses charter schools have begun a concerted effort to develop students' character strengths, striving to increase their chances of future success. In this article, we situate the no-excuses approach…

  11. Character Apps for Children's Snacks: Effects of Character Awareness on Snack Selection and Consumption Patterns

    PubMed Central

    Cotto, Caroline E.; Calvert, Sandra L.

    2018-01-01

    Abstract Objective: Media characters are used to market snacks that are typically of poor nutritional value, which has been linked to childhood obesity. This study examines whether children's snack selections and consumption patterns are influenced by an app depicting a popular children's media character, as well as the role that children's awareness of the character plays. The results can increase our understanding of how to encourage healthier snack selection and consumption in newer game-based marketing venues, such as apps. Materials and Methods: Four- and 5-year-old children (N = 132) played a bowling game on an iPad with no character or with a character holding either healthier or unhealthy snacks. After app-play, children selected and consumed healthier or unhealthy snacks. Children's awareness of the character was measured by children's verbalizations of the character's name during or after app-play. Results: An ordered logistic regression found no significant effect of treatment conditions compared with the control group. Within treatment conditions, awareness of the character led to selection and consumption of more healthy snacks in the healthier condition (odds ratio β = 10.340, P = 0.008), and of unhealthy snacks in the unhealthy condition (odds ratio β = 0.228, P = 0.033), but children were unaware that the character influenced their decisions. Conclusions: Results suggest that young children will choose and consume healthier, not just unhealthy, products when they are aware that a popular character in an app is associated with the snack, potentially leading to healthier eating patterns. PMID:29297713

  12. Character Apps for Children's Snacks: Effects of Character Awareness on Snack Selection and Consumption Patterns.

    PubMed

    Putnam, Marisa M; Cotto, Caroline E; Calvert, Sandra L

    2018-04-01

    Media characters are used to market snacks that are typically of poor nutritional value, which has been linked to childhood obesity. This study examines whether children's snack selections and consumption patterns are influenced by an app depicting a popular children's media character, as well as the role that children's awareness of the character plays. The results can increase our understanding of how to encourage healthier snack selection and consumption in newer game-based marketing venues, such as apps. Four- and 5-year-old children (N = 132) played a bowling game on an iPad with no character or with a character holding either healthier or unhealthy snacks. After app-play, children selected and consumed healthier or unhealthy snacks. Children's awareness of the character was measured by children's verbalizations of the character's name during or after app-play. An ordered logistic regression found no significant effect of treatment conditions compared with the control group. Within treatment conditions, awareness of the character led to selection and consumption of more healthy snacks in the healthier condition (odds ratio β = 10.340, P = 0.008), and of unhealthy snacks in the unhealthy condition (odds ratio β = 0.228, P = 0.033), but children were unaware that the character influenced their decisions. Results suggest that young children will choose and consume healthier, not just unhealthy, products when they are aware that a popular character in an app is associated with the snack, potentially leading to healthier eating patterns.

  13. Keeping it wild: Mapping wilderness character in the United States

    Treesearch

    Steve Carver; James Tricker; Peter Landres

    2013-01-01

    A GIS-based approach is developed to identify the state of wilderness character in US wilderness areas using Death Valley National Park (DEVA) as a case study. A set of indicators and measures are identified by DEVA staff and used as the basis for developing a flexible and broadly applicable framework to map wilderness character using data inputs selected by park staff...

  14. Computerized literature reference system: use of an optical scanner and optical character recognition software.

    PubMed

    Lossef, S V; Schwartz, L H

    1990-09-01

    A computerized reference system for radiology journal articles was developed by using an IBM-compatible personal computer with a hand-held optical scanner and optical character recognition software. This allows direct entry of scanned text from printed material into word processing or data-base files. Additionally, line diagrams and photographs of radiographs can be incorporated into these files. A text search and retrieval software program enables rapid searching for keywords in scanned documents. The hand scanner and software programs are commercially available, relatively inexpensive, and easily used. This permits construction of a personalized radiology literature file of readily accessible text and images requiring minimal typing or keystroke entry.

  15. Invariant approach to the character classification

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Šariri, Kristina; Demoli, Nazif

    2008-04-01

    Image moments analysis is a very useful tool which allows image description invariant to translation and rotation, scale change and some types of image distortions. The aim of this work was development of simple method for fast and reliable classification of characters by using Hu's and affine moment invariants. Measure of Eucleidean distance was used as a discrimination feature with statistical parameters estimated. The method was tested in classification of Times New Roman font letters as well as sets of the handwritten characters. It is shown that using all Hu's and three affine invariants as discrimination set improves recognition rate by 30%.

  16. Rank-frequency relation for Chinese characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Deng, Weibing; Allahverdyan, Armen E.; Li, Bo; Wang, Qiuping A.

    2014-02-01

    We show that the Zipf's law for Chinese characters perfectly holds for sufficiently short texts (few thousand different characters). The scenario of its validity is similar to the Zipf's law for words in short English texts. For long Chinese texts (or for mixtures of short Chinese texts), rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters display a two-layer, hierarchic structure that combines a Zipfian power-law regime for frequent characters (first layer) with an exponential-like regime for less frequent characters (second layer). For these two layers we provide different (though related) theoretical descriptions that include the range of low-frequency characters (hapax legomena). We suggest that this hierarchic structure of the rank-frequency relation connects to semantic features of Chinese characters (number of different meanings and homographies). The comparative analysis of rank-frequency relations for Chinese characters versus English words illustrates the extent to which the characters play for Chinese writers the same role as the words for those writing within alphabetical systems.

  17. Character complexity and redundancy in writing systems over human history.

    PubMed

    Changizi, Mark A; Shimojo, Shinsuke

    2005-02-07

    A writing system is a visual notation system wherein a repertoire of marks, or strokes, is used to build a repertoire of characters. Are there any commonalities across writing systems concerning the rules governing how strokes combine into characters; commonalities that might help us identify selection pressures on the development of written language? In an effort to answer this question we examined how strokes combine to make characters in more than 100 writing systems over human history, ranging from about 10 to 200 characters,and including numerals, abjads, abugidas, alphabets and syllabaries from five major taxa: Ancient Near-Eastern, European, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian. We discovered underlying similarities in two fundamental respects. (i) The number of strokes per characters is approximately three, independent of the number of characters in the writing system; numeral systems are the exception, having on average only two strokes per character. (ii) Characters are ca. 50% redundant, independent of writing system size; intuitively, this means that acharacter's identity can be determined even when half of its strokes are removed. Because writing systems are under selective pressure to have characters that are easy for the visual system to recognize and for the motor system to write, these fundamental commonalities may be a fingerprint of mechanisms underlying the visuo-motor system.

  18. Digital Citizenship Means Character Education for the Digital Age

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ohler, Jason

    2011-01-01

    The reality of students' cyber lives has thrust upon educators a new approach: creating character education programs tuned to digital youth that are both proactive and aggressive. Taking this approach will help integrate students' digital activities within the context of the communities in which they live, both local and digital. The digital age…

  19. Font generation of personal handwritten Chinese characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lin, Jeng-Wei; Wang, Chih-Yin; Ting, Chao-Lung; Chang, Ray-I.

    2014-01-01

    Today, digital multimedia messages have drawn more and more attention due to the great achievement of computer and network techniques. Nevertheless, text is still the most popular media for people to communicate with others. Many fonts have been developed so that product designers can choose unique fonts to demonstrate their idea gracefully. It is commonly believed that handwritings can reflect one's personality, emotion, feeling, education level, and so on. This is especially true in Chinese calligraphy. However, it is not easy for ordinary users to customize a font of their personal handwritings. In this study, we performed a process reengineering in font generation. We present a new method to create font in a batch mode. Rather than to create glyphs of characters one by one according to their codepoints, people create glyphs incrementally in an on-demand manner. A Java Implementation is developed to read a document image of user handwritten Chinese characters, and make a vector font of these handwritten Chinese characters. Preliminary experiment result shows that the proposed method can help ordinary users create their personal handwritten fonts easily and quickly.

  20. Computational Design of Animated Mechanical Characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Coros, Stelian; Thomaszewski, Bernhard; DRZ Team Team

    2014-03-01

    A factor key to the appeal of modern CG movies and video-games is that the virtual worlds they portray place no bounds on what can be imagined. Rapid manufacturing devices hold the promise of bringing this type of freedom to our own world, by enabling the fabrication of physical objects whose appearance, deformation behaviors and motions can be precisely specified. In order to unleash the full potential of this technology however, computational design methods that create digital content suitable for fabrication need to be developed. In recent work, we presented a computational design system that allows casual users to create animated mechanical characters. Given an articulated character as input, the user designs the animated character by sketching motion curves indicating how they should move. For each motion curve, our framework creates an optimized mechanism that reproduces it as closely as possible. The resulting mechanisms are attached to the character and then connected to each other using gear trains, which are created in a semi-automated fashion. The mechanical assemblies generated with our system can be driven with a single input driver, such as a hand-operated crank or an electric motor, and they can be fabricated using rapid prototyping devices.

  1. Automatic Identification of Character Types from Film Dialogs

    PubMed Central

    Skowron, Marcin; Trapp, Martin; Payr, Sabine; Trappl, Robert

    2016-01-01

    ABSTRACT We study the detection of character types from fictional dialog texts such as screenplays. As approaches based on the analysis of utterances’ linguistic properties are not sufficient to identify all fictional character types, we develop an integrative approach that complements linguistic analysis with interactive and communication characteristics, and show that it can improve the identification performance. The interactive characteristics of fictional characters are captured by the descriptive analysis of semantic graphs weighted by linguistic markers of expressivity and social role. For this approach, we introduce a new data set of action movie character types with their corresponding sequences of dialogs. The evaluation results demonstrate that the integrated approach outperforms baseline approaches on the presented data set. Comparative in-depth analysis of a single screenplay leads on to the discussion of possible limitations of this approach and to directions for future research. PMID:29118463

  2. Teaching Adaptability of Object-Oriented Programming Language Curriculum

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zhu, Xiao-dong

    2012-01-01

    The evolution of object-oriented programming languages includes update of their own versions, update of development environments, and reform of new languages upon old languages. In this paper, the evolution analysis of object-oriented programming languages is presented in term of the characters and development. The notion of adaptive teaching upon…

  3. Can Youth Sport Build Character?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shields, David Light; Bredemeier, Brenda Light; Power, F. Clark

    2001-01-01

    Participation and competition in some sports are associated with lower stages of moral reasoning. Coaches can foster moral development by starting with the right mental model, holding benchmark meetings about team values, setting goals for physical and character skills, making time for guided discussion sessions, building community, modeling…

  4. Character Issues: Reality Character Problems and Solutions through Education in Indonesia

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Saidek, Abdul Rahim; Islami, Raisul; Abdoludin

    2016-01-01

    Weak character education raises the problem of corruption, a fight between students, free sex, drugs and rape/abortion indicate that the issue of character education of the nation must be improved and the concern of all parties, the nation's leaders, law enforcement officers, educators, religious leaders, groups and other etc. There are two…

  5. Handwritten character recognition using background analysis

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tascini, Guido; Puliti, Paolo; Zingaretti, Primo

    1993-04-01

    The paper describes a low-cost handwritten character recognizer. It is constituted by three modules: the `acquisition' module, the `binarization' module, and the `core' module. The core module can be logically partitioned into six steps: character dilation, character circumscription, region and `profile' analysis, `cut' analysis, decision tree descent, and result validation. Firstly, it reduces the resolution of the binarized regions and detects the minimum rectangle (MR) which encloses the character; the MR partitions the background into regions that surround the character or are enclosed by it, and allows it to define features as `profiles' and `cuts;' a `profile' is the set of vertical or horizontal minimum distances between a side of the MR and the character itself; a `cut' is a vertical or horizontal image segment delimited by the MR. Then, the core module classifies the character by descending along the decision tree on the basis of the analysis of regions around the character, in particular of the `profiles' and `cuts,' and without using context information. Finally, it recognizes the character or reactivates the core module by analyzing validation test results. The recognizer is largely insensible to character discontinuity and is able to detect Arabic numerals and English alphabet capital letters. The recognition rate of a 32 X 32 pixel character is of about 97% after the first iteration, and of over 98% after the second iteration.

  6. Character in Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carr, David

    2007-01-01

    Qualities of personal character would appear to play a significant role in the professional conduct of teachers. It is often said that we remember teachers as much for the kinds of people they were than for anything they may have taught us, and some kinds of professional expertise may best be understood as qualities of character. After (roughly)…

  7. The Complexity of Character: An Ability-Based Model for Higher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Graham, Sandra E.; Diez, Mary E.

    2015-01-01

    Character development in higher education is a complex process. This process has often been delegated to a single course on ethics or courses on religion. The authors of this article pose an alternative higher educational process whereby character development is rooted in a series of abilities that are contextualized throughout the entire…

  8. Digital Citizenship Means Character Education for the Digital Age

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ohler, Jason

    2012-01-01

    The reality of students' cyber lives has thrust upon educators a new approach: creating character education programs tuned to digital youth that are proactive and aggressive. This will help integrate students' digital activities within the context of the communities in which they live, both local and digital. The digital age beckons a new era of…

  9. The genetic and environmental structure of the character sub-scales of the temperament and character inventory in adolescence.

    PubMed

    Lester, Nigel; Garcia, Danilo; Lundström, Sebastian; Brändström, Sven; Råstam, Maria; Kerekes, Nóra; Nilsson, Thomas; Cloninger, C Robert; Anckarsäter, Henrik

    2016-01-01

    The character higher order scales (self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence) in the temperament and character inventory are important general measures of health and well-being [Mens Sana Monograph 11:16-24 (2013)]. Recent research has found suggestive evidence of common environmental influence on the development of these character traits during adolescence. The present article expands earlier research by focusing on the internal consistency and the etiology of traits measured by the lower order sub-scales of the character traits in adolescence. The twin modeling analysis of 423 monozygotic pairs and 408 same sex dizygotic pairs estimated additive genetics (A), common environmental (C), and non-shared environmental (E) influences on twin resemblance. All twins were part of the on-going longitudinal Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden (CATSS). The twin modeling analysis suggested a common environmental contribution for two out of five self-directedness sub-scales (0.14 and 0.23), for three out of five cooperativeness sub-scales (0.07-0.17), and for all three self-transcendence sub-scales (0.10-0.12). The genetic structure at the level of the character lower order sub-scales in adolescents shows that the proportion of the shared environmental component varies in the trait of self-directedness and in the trait of cooperativeness, while it is relatively stable across the components of self-transcendence. The presence of this unique shared environmental effect in adolescence has implications for understanding the relative importance of interventions and treatment strategies aimed at promoting overall maturation of character, mental health, and well-being during this period of the life span.

  10. Character Education by Design: A Blueprint for Successful District and School Initiatives

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maryland State Department of Education, 2007

    2007-01-01

    Designed for district- and school-level character education committees, "Character Education by Design: A Blueprint for Successful District and School Initiatives" is a how-to guide for developing an effective character education initiative, one that will not only enhance the climate of the school and social behavior of the students, but…

  11. Character complexity and redundancy in writing systems over human history

    PubMed Central

    Changizi, Mark A.; Shimojo, Shinsuke

    2005-01-01

    A writing system is a visual notation system wherein a repertoire of marks, or strokes, is used to build a repertoire of characters. Are there any commonalities across writing systems concerning the rules governing how strokes combine into characters; commonalities that might help us identify selection pressures on the development of written language? In an effort to answer this question we examined how strokes combine to make characters in more than 100 writing systems over human history, ranging from about 10 to 200 characters, and including numerals, abjads, abugidas, alphabets and syllabaries from five major taxa: Ancient Near-Eastern, European, Middle Eastern, South Asian, Southeast Asian. We discovered underlying similarities in two fundamental respects.The number of strokes per characters is approximately three, independent of the number of characters in the writing system; numeral systems are the exception, having on average only two strokes per character.Characters are ca. 50% redundant, independent of writing system size; intuitively, this means that a character’s identity can be determined even when half of its strokes are removed.Because writing systems are under selective pressure to have characters that are easy for the visual system to recognize and for the motor system to write, these fundamental commonalities may be a fingerprint of mechanisms underlying the visuo–motor system. PMID:15705551

  12. Handprinted Forms and Characters

    National Institute of Standards and Technology Data Gateway

    NIST Handprinted Forms and Characters (Web, free access)   NIST Special Database 19 contains NIST's entire corpus of training materials for handprinted document and character recognition. It supersedes NIST Special Databases 3 and 7.

  13. A Few Funny Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zingher, Gary

    2002-01-01

    Describes funny characters in children's books and films, including humorous children, adults, and animal characters. Considers younger children and middle grade and older children and suggests library media center activities for various age groups. (LRW)

  14. Research on Russian National Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Na, Zhuo

    2008-01-01

    The special geographical location Russia lies in creates the unique character of the Russian nation. Based on the dual nature of the Russian national character, the Russian geographical environment and the analysis of its social structure, this text tries to explore the reasons of the dual nature of Russian national character.

  15. Character: A Multifaceted Developmental System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nucci, Larry

    2017-01-01

    Character is a developmental system embedded within the self-system. This Relational Developmental Systems (RDS) view is in juxtaposition with virtue theory and accounts of character in terms of moral identity. The character system includes 4 components 3 of which: basic moral cognition (as described within domain theory); other regarding; and…

  16. Bring Character Education into Classroom

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Agboola, Alex; Tsai, Kaun Chen

    2012-01-01

    Character education is a growing discipline with the deliberate attempt to optimize students' ethical behavior. The outcome of character education has always been encouraging, solidly, and continually preparing the leaders of tomorrow. The promotion of character education should not just a leap service but has an action plan for practice. In order…

  17. Characters as Guides to Meaning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roser, Nancy; Martinez, Miriam; Fuhrken, Charles; McDonnold, Kathleen

    2007-01-01

    Characters in children's books can help to guide readers through stories, contributing to deepened understandings of plot and themes. The authors discuss why characters become vivid and lasting in readers' minds, the ways in which students are often asked to think about characters in classroom literature study, and how students' understanding of…

  18. Visual capability to receive character information. Part I: How many characters can we recognize at a glance?

    PubMed

    Fukuda, T

    1992-01-01

    A study was made on the capability to receive character information and the factors restricting it. The study showed that the capability indicated by the memory span was limited by the average number of characters for words that are made up of individual characters, and calculated in terms of information quantity, there was no difference among the individual characters. The differences in memory span, depending on the size of the pattern presented, was negligible. The difference in the way characters were arranged produced the difference in memory span saturation. This phenomenon is explained by the nature of the lateral interference effect working among the adjacent characters.

  19. Character order processing in Chinese reading.

    PubMed

    Gu, Junjuan; Li, Xingshan; Liversedge, Simon P

    2015-02-01

    We explored how character order information is encoded in isolated word processing or Chinese sentence reading in 2 experiments using a masked priming paradigm and a gaze-contingent display-change paradigm. The results showed that response latencies in the lexical decision task and reading times on the target word region were longer in the unrelated condition (the prime or the preview was unrelated with the target word) than the transposed-character condition (the prime or the preview was a transposition of the 2 characters of the target word), which were respectively longer than in the identity condition (the prime or preview was identical to the target word). These results show that character order is encoded at an early stage of processing in Chinese reading, but character position encoding was not strict. We also found that character order encoding was similar for single-morpheme and multiple-morpheme words, suggesting that morphemic status does not affect character order encoding. The current results represent an early contribution to our understanding of character order encoding during Chinese reading.

  20. An Historical Analysis of Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Watz, Michael

    2011-01-01

    What is termed "character education" in today's world has been called many things throughout the history of education in this country. Character education has been both a formal and informal part of schools. Much of character education in the United States can be closely tied in its roots to the education of character in Europe, which…

  1. The many lives of experiments: Wilhelm Johannsen, selection, hybridization, and the complex relations of genes and characters.

    PubMed

    Meunier, Robert

    2016-04-01

    In addition to his experiments on selection in pure lines, Wilhelm Johannsen (1857-1927) performed less well-known hybridisation experiments with beans. This article describes these experiments and discusses Johannsen's motivations and interpretations, in the context of developments in early genetics. I will show that Johannsen first presented the hybridisation experiments as an additional control for his selection experiments. The latter were dedicated to investigating heredity with respect to debates concerning the significance of natural selection of continuous variation for evolution. In the course of the establishment of a Mendelian research program after 1900, the study of heredity gained increasing independence from questions of evolution, and focused more on the modes and mechanisms of heredity. Further to their role as control experiments, Johannsen also saw his hybridisation experiments as contributing to the Mendelian program, by extending the scope of the principles of Mendelian inheritance to quantitative characters. Towards the end of the first decade of genetics, Johannsen revisited his experiments to illustrate the many-many relationship between genes and characters, at a time when that relationship appeared increasingly complex, and the unit-character concept, accordingly, became inadequate. For the philosophy of science, the example shows that experiments can have multiple roles in a research programme, and can be interpreted in the light of questions other than those that motivated the experiments in the first place.

  2. Ensuring Good Character and Civic Education: Connecting through Service Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shumer, Robert; Lam, Carolina; Laabs, Bonnie

    2012-01-01

    Character and citizenship education are part of the vision of many countries, including Singapore. Ensuring they are implemented in academic environments, service learning has been shown to be a natural bridge between the two. Research has shown that service learning, when done well, produces outcomes related to character development and…

  3. Computer-Mediated Materials for Chinese Character Learning.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsu, Hui-Mei; Gao, Liwei

    2002-01-01

    Reviews four sets of computer-mediated materials for Chinese character learning. These include the following: Write Chinese, Chinese Characters Primer, Animated Chinese Characters, and USC Chinese Character Page. (Author/VWL)

  4. Understanding Agency and Educating Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roth, Klas

    2011-01-01

    How can we understand human agency, and what does it mean to educate character? In this essay Klas Roth develops a Kantian notion, one that suggests we render ourselves efficacious and autonomous in education and elsewhere. This requires, among other things, that we are successful in bringing about the intended result through our actions and the…

  5. Hidden Markov models for character recognition.

    PubMed

    Vlontzos, J A; Kung, S Y

    1992-01-01

    A hierarchical system for character recognition with hidden Markov model knowledge sources which solve both the context sensitivity problem and the character instantiation problem is presented. The system achieves 97-99% accuracy using a two-level architecture and has been implemented using a systolic array, thus permitting real-time (1 ms per character) multifont and multisize printed character recognition as well as handwriting recognition.

  6. Group discriminatory power of handwritten characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tomai, Catalin I.; Kshirsagar, Devika M.; Srihari, Sargur N.

    2003-12-01

    Using handwritten characters we address two questions (i) what is the group identification performance of different alphabets (upper and lower case) and (ii) what are the best characters for the verification task (same writer/different writer discrimination) knowing demographic information about the writer such as ethnicity, age or sex. The Bhattacharya distance is used to rank different characters by their group discriminatory power and the k-nn classifier to measure the individual performance of characters for group identification. Given the tasks of identifying the correct gender/age/ethnicity or handedness, the accumulated performance of characters varies between 65% and 85%.

  7. Sampling diverse characters improves phylogenies: Craniodental and postcranial characters of vertebrates often imply different trees.

    PubMed

    Mounce, Ross C P; Sansom, Robert; Wills, Matthew A

    2016-03-01

    Morphological cladograms of vertebrates are often inferred from greater numbers of characters describing the skull and teeth than from postcranial characters. This is either because the skull is believed to yield characters with a stronger phylogenetic signal (i.e., contain less homoplasy), because morphological variation therein is more readily atomized, or because craniodental material is more widely available (particularly in the palaeontological case). An analysis of 85 vertebrate datasets published between 2000 and 2013 confirms that craniodental characters are significantly more numerous than postcranial characters, but finds no evidence that levels of homoplasy differ in the two partitions. However, a new partition test, based on tree-to-tree distances (as measured by the Robinson Foulds metric) rather than tree length, reveals that relationships inferred from the partitions are significantly different about one time in three, much more often than expected. Such differences may reflect divergent selective pressures in different body regions, resulting in different localized patterns of homoplasy. Most systematists attempt to sample characters broadly across body regions, but this is not always possible. We conclude that trees inferred largely from either craniodental or postcranial characters in isolation may differ significantly from those that would result from a more holistic approach. We urge the latter. © 2016 The Author(s). Evolution © 2016 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

  8. The case for character displacement in plants

    PubMed Central

    Beans, Carolyn M

    2014-01-01

    The evidence for character displacement as a widespread response to competition is now building. This progress is largely the result of the establishment of rigorous criteria for demonstrating character displacement in the animal literature. There are, however, relatively few well-supported examples of character displacement in plants. This review explores the potential for character displacement in plants by addressing the following questions: (1) Why aren't examples of character displacement in plants more common? (2) What are the requirements for character displacement to occur and how do plant populations meet those requirements? (3) What are the criteria for testing the pattern and process of character displacement and what methods can and have been used to address these criteria in the plant literature? (4) What are some additional approaches for studying character displacement in plants? While more research is needed, the few plant systems in which character displacement hypotheses have been rigorously tested suggest that character displacement may play a role in shaping plant communities. Plants are especially amenable to character displacement studies because of the experimental ease with which they can be used in common gardens, selection analyses, and breeding designs. A deeper investigation of character displacement in plants is critical for a more complete understanding of the ecological and evolutionary processes that permit the coexistence of plant species. PMID:24683467

  9. Integrating Teacher Behaviors with Character Strengths and Virtues for Faculty Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McGovern, Thomas V.; Miller, Samantha Leigh

    2008-01-01

    We describe a model for new and senior faculty members, integrating a behavioral approach to enhancing teaching skills with research from the field of positive psychology on virtues and character strengths. The Teacher Behaviors Checklist (Keeley, Smith, & Buskist, 2006) identifies target behaviors amenable to modification, derived from…

  10. Leading Schools of Excellence in Academics, Character, and Social-Emotional Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bencivenga, Anthony S.; Elias, Maurice J.

    2003-01-01

    In the 21st century, students' character, social-emotional skills, and academic competencies will define school excellence. This article describes characteristics of visionary leadership for such schools based on settings already characterized by strengths in "EQ + IQ = Best Leadership Practices for Caring and Successful Schools." Core beliefs…

  11. Longitudinal Associations of Explosive and Adventurous Temperament Profiles With Character Development: The Modifying Effects of Social Support and Attachment.

    PubMed

    Saarinen, Aino I L; Rosenström, Tom H; Hakulinen, Christian A; Cloninger, Claude Robert; Hintsanen, Mirka H M; Pulkki-Råback, Laura M; Lehtimäki, Terho; Raitakari, Olli T; Keltikangas-Järvinen, Liisa

    The aim of this study was to examine (a) whether adventurous and explosive temperament profiles (presumed precursors of antisocial and borderline personality) are associated with character traits over a 15-year follow-up and (b) whether social support and attachment security modify the relationship between temperament profiles and character development. 2,028 subjects of the Young Finns study completed the Temperament and Character Inventory, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and the Relationship Questionnaire at 3 assessment points between 1997 and 2012. Both explosive and adventurous temperament profiles seemed to predispose individuals to have less mature personalities; that is, these profiles were consistently associated with lower cooperativeness (P < .001), and explosive temperament also with lower self-directedness (P < .001), over the entire follow-up period. These relationships did not vary significantly at the individual level and were sustained after controlling for age, gender, and socioeconomic status. However, the presence of high social support and secure attachment was found to decrease the likelihood that explosive temperament would lead to an immature adulthood character (P < .001). In contrast, persons with the adventurous temperament were likely to have a more mature character under low social support and an immature one under high experienced social support (P < .05). Individuals with the explosive temperament benefit from high social support and secure attachment. From the point of view of the therapy process, this knowledge might be of importance. In contrast, individuals with the adventurous temperament were able to direct their behavior better in social environments that were not likely to support their basic temperaments. © Copyright 2018 Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc.

  12. Among-character rate variation distributions in phylogenetic analysis of discrete morphological characters.

    PubMed

    Harrison, Luke B; Larsson, Hans C E

    2015-03-01

    Likelihood-based methods are commonplace in phylogenetic systematics. Although much effort has been directed toward likelihood-based models for molecular data, comparatively less work has addressed models for discrete morphological character (DMC) data. Among-character rate variation (ACRV) may confound phylogenetic analysis, but there have been few analyses of the magnitude and distribution of rate heterogeneity among DMCs. Using 76 data sets covering a range of plants, invertebrate, and vertebrate animals, we used a modified version of MrBayes to test equal, gamma-distributed and lognormally distributed models of ACRV, integrating across phylogenetic uncertainty using Bayesian model selection. We found that in approximately 80% of data sets, unequal-rates models outperformed equal-rates models, especially among larger data sets. Moreover, although most data sets were equivocal, more data sets favored the lognormal rate distribution relative to the gamma rate distribution, lending some support for more complex character correlations than in molecular data. Parsimony estimation of the underlying rate distributions in several data sets suggests that the lognormal distribution is preferred when there are many slowly evolving characters and fewer quickly evolving characters. The commonly adopted four rate category discrete approximation used for molecular data was found to be sufficient to approximate a gamma rate distribution with discrete characters. However, among the two data sets tested that favored a lognormal rate distribution, the continuous distribution was better approximated with at least eight discrete rate categories. Although the effect of rate model on the estimation of topology was difficult to assess across all data sets, it appeared relatively minor between the unequal-rates models for the one data set examined carefully. As in molecular analyses, we argue that researchers should test and adopt the most appropriate model of rate variation for the

  13. Positive Character Traits of Special Education Staff: Commonalities and Applications

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Korn, Maggie A.; Woodard, Cooper R.; Tucker, Chelsea A.

    2016-01-01

    The goal of the present study was to identify the positive character traits of staff working with a special education population and further understand how staff apply these traits in their work. Twenty-eight staff from a school/treatment program for students with autism and related developmental disorders completed the VIA Inventory of Strengths…

  14. Character Reversal in Children: The Prominent Role of Writing Direction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fischer, Jean-Paul

    2017-01-01

    Recent research has established that 5- to 6-year-old typically developing children in a left-right writing culture spontaneously reverse left-oriented characters (e.g., they write a [reversed J] instead of J) when they write single characters. Thus, children seem to implicitly apply a right-writing rule (RWR: see Fischer & Koch, 2016a). In…

  15. Talking about a black man: the influence of defendant and character witness race on jurors' use of character evidence.

    PubMed

    Maeder, Evelyn M; Hunt, Jennifer S

    2011-01-01

    To determine whether anti-Black bias influences mock jurors' use of character evidence (i.e., information about a defendant's personality), this study manipulated the race (Black, White) of the defendant and character witness and the type of character evidence presented in a fictitious criminal trial. Two hundred six predominantly White participants read a trial transcript, then made verdicts and trial judgments. Results confirm previous findings that positive character evidence has a limited impact on jurors' judgments, but negative character evidence is misused to evaluate the defendant's guilt. However, participants were more influenced by character evidence that was inconsistent with racial stereotypes. Specifically, positive character evidence had a stronger effect for Black defendants, whereas negative rebuttal evidence had a stronger influence for White defendants. The race of the character witness did not affect judgments. Thus, defendant race may provide a framework that influences how mock jurors process character evidence. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  16. Teaching Global Issues in an Undergraduate Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zapalska, Alina M.; Wingrove-Haugland, Erik; LaMonica, Christopher; Rivero, Elizabeth

    2013-01-01

    In preparing cadets to be officers, the U.S. Coast Guard Academy (CGA) is committed to developing "the whole person." CGA has increasingly developed program-specific ways to achieve educational goals and learning outcomes. While character development and ethical education have long been important learning outcomes, today's CGA curriculum…

  17. High fidelity simulations of infrared imagery with animated characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Näsström, F.; Persson, A.; Bergström, D.; Berggren, J.; Hedström, J.; Allvar, J.; Karlsson, M.

    2012-06-01

    High fidelity simulations of IR signatures and imagery tend to be slow and do not have effective support for animation of characters. Simplified rendering methods based on computer graphics methods can be used to overcome these limitations. This paper presents a method to combine these tools and produce simulated high fidelity thermal IR data of animated people in terrain. Infrared signatures for human characters have been calculated using RadThermIR. To handle multiple character models, these calculations use a simplified material model for the anatomy and clothing. Weather and temperature conditions match the IR-texture used in the terrain model. The calculated signatures are applied to the animated 3D characters that, together with the terrain model, are used to produce high fidelity IR imagery of people or crowds. For high level animation control and crowd simulations, HLAS (High Level Animation System) has been developed. There are tools available to create and visualize skeleton based animations, but tools that allow control of the animated characters on a higher level, e.g. for crowd simulation, are usually expensive and closed source. We need the flexibility of HLAS to add animation into an HLA enabled sensor system simulation framework.

  18. Development of Chinese Handwriting Skills among Kindergarten Children: Copying of the Composition in Chinese Characters and Name Writing

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tse, Linda F. L.; Siu, Andrew M. H.; Li-Tsang, Cecilia W. P.

    2017-01-01

    Although copying and name writing skills are regarded as the indicators of handwriting development in alphabetic writing systems, there is limited information on logographs such as Chinese. Chinese characters are not only simply a combination of strokes as letters in English, but also place a great demand on visuospatial ability to maintain good…

  19. Character Education in School Settings

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wright, Hanford D.; And Others

    1973-01-01

    Describes how various teachers in public and parochial schools have used CRP (Character Research Project Curriculum) materials to insert positive character training into their particular class situations. (DS)

  20. The Character to Seek Justice: Showing Fairness to Diverse Visions of Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Glanzer, Perry L.

    1998-01-01

    Alfie Kohn's article in the February 1997 "Kappan," which questioned the world views informing character education, was disappointing. His criticisms of habit formation were misdirected, and he failed to reconcile the various world views held by parents and children. Character, like other human endeavors, requires vigorous training in…

  1. Degraded character recognition based on gradient pattern

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Babu, D. R. Ramesh; Ravishankar, M.; Kumar, Manish; Wadera, Kevin; Raj, Aakash

    2010-02-01

    Degraded character recognition is a challenging problem in the field of Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The performance of an optical character recognition depends upon printed quality of the input documents. Many OCRs have been designed which correctly identifies the fine printed documents. But, very few reported work has been found on the recognition of the degraded documents. The efficiency of the OCRs system decreases if the input image is degraded. In this paper, a novel approach based on gradient pattern for recognizing degraded printed character is proposed. The approach makes use of gradient pattern of an individual character for recognition. Experiments were conducted on character image that is either digitally written or a degraded character extracted from historical documents and the results are found to be satisfactory.

  2. reCAPTCHA: human-based character recognition via Web security measures.

    PubMed

    von Ahn, Luis; Maurer, Benjamin; McMillen, Colin; Abraham, David; Blum, Manuel

    2008-09-12

    CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are widespread security measures on the World Wide Web that prevent automated programs from abusing online services. They do so by asking humans to perform a task that computers cannot yet perform, such as deciphering distorted characters. Our research explored whether such human effort can be channeled into a useful purpose: helping to digitize old printed material by asking users to decipher scanned words from books that computerized optical character recognition failed to recognize. We showed that this method can transcribe text with a word accuracy exceeding 99%, matching the guarantee of professional human transcribers. Our apparatus is deployed in more than 40,000 Web sites and has transcribed over 440 million words.

  3. Optical character recognition of handwritten Arabic using hidden Markov models

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Aulama, Mohannad M.; Natsheh, Asem M.; Abandah, Gheith A.; Olama, Mohammed M.

    2011-04-01

    The problem of optical character recognition (OCR) of handwritten Arabic has not received a satisfactory solution yet. In this paper, an Arabic OCR algorithm is developed based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) combined with the Viterbi algorithm, which results in an improved and more robust recognition of characters at the sub-word level. Integrating the HMMs represents another step of the overall OCR trends being currently researched in the literature. The proposed approach exploits the structure of characters in the Arabic language in addition to their extracted features to achieve improved recognition rates. Useful statistical information of the Arabic language is initially extracted and then used to estimate the probabilistic parameters of the mathematical HMM. A new custom implementation of the HMM is developed in this study, where the transition matrix is built based on the collected large corpus, and the emission matrix is built based on the results obtained via the extracted character features. The recognition process is triggered using the Viterbi algorithm which employs the most probable sequence of sub-words. The model was implemented to recognize the sub-word unit of Arabic text raising the recognition rate from being linked to the worst recognition rate for any character to the overall structure of the Arabic language. Numerical results show that there is a potentially large recognition improvement by using the proposed algorithms.

  4. Optical character recognition of handwritten Arabic using hidden Markov models

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Aulama, Mohannad M.; Natsheh, Asem M.; Abandah, Gheith A.

    2011-01-01

    The problem of optical character recognition (OCR) of handwritten Arabic has not received a satisfactory solution yet. In this paper, an Arabic OCR algorithm is developed based on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) combined with the Viterbi algorithm, which results in an improved and more robust recognition of characters at the sub-word level. Integrating the HMMs represents another step of the overall OCR trends being currently researched in the literature. The proposed approach exploits the structure of characters in the Arabic language in addition to their extracted features to achieve improved recognition rates. Useful statistical information of the Arabic language ismore » initially extracted and then used to estimate the probabilistic parameters of the mathematical HMM. A new custom implementation of the HMM is developed in this study, where the transition matrix is built based on the collected large corpus, and the emission matrix is built based on the results obtained via the extracted character features. The recognition process is triggered using the Viterbi algorithm which employs the most probable sequence of sub-words. The model was implemented to recognize the sub-word unit of Arabic text raising the recognition rate from being linked to the worst recognition rate for any character to the overall structure of the Arabic language. Numerical results show that there is a potentially large recognition improvement by using the proposed algorithms.« less

  5. The Influence of Brand Equity Characters on Children's Food Preferences and Choices.

    PubMed

    McGale, Lauren Sophie; Halford, Jason Christian Grovenor; Harrold, Joanne Alison; Boyland, Emma Jane

    2016-10-01

    To assess the influence of brand equity characters displayed on food packaging on children's food preferences and choices, 2 studies were conducted. Brand equity characters are developed specifically to represent a particular brand or product. Despite existing literature suggesting that promotional characters influence children's food choices, to date, no research has assessed the influence of brand equity characters specifically. We recruited 209 children 4-8 years of age from schools and childcare centers in the UK. In a mixed-measures design, the children were asked to rate their taste preferences and preferred snack choice for 3 matched food pairs, presented either with or without a brand equity character displayed on packaging. Study 1 addressed congruent food-character associations and study 2 addressed incongruent associations. Participants were also asked to rate their recognition and liking of characters used. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests and χ(2) analyses were used where appropriate. Children were significantly more likely to show a preference for foods with a brand equity character displayed on the packaging compared with a matched food without a brand equity character, for both congruent and incongruent food-character associations. The presence of a brand equity character also significantly influenced the children's within-pair preferences, within-pair choices, and overall snack choice (congruent associations only). Displaying brand equity characters promotes unhealthy food choices in children. The findings are consistent with those of studies exploring other types of promotional characters. In the context of a childhood obesity epidemic, the use of brand equity characters in the promotion of foods high in fat, salt, and sugar to children should be restricted. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Differences in the selection response of serially repeated color pattern characters: standing variation, development, and evolution.

    PubMed

    Allen, Cerisse E; Beldade, Patrícia; Zwaan, Bas J; Brakefield, Paul M

    2008-03-26

    There is spectacular morphological diversity in nature but lineages typically display a limited range of phenotypes. Because developmental processes generate the phenotypic variation that fuels natural selection, they are a likely source of evolutionary biases, facilitating some changes and limiting others. Although shifts in developmental regulation are associated with morphological differences between taxa, it is unclear how underlying mechanisms affect the rate and direction of evolutionary change within populations under selection. Here we focus on two ecologically relevant features of butterfly wing color patterns, eyespot size and color composition, which are similarly and strongly correlated across the serially repeated eyespots. Though these two characters show similar patterns of standing variation and covariation within a population, they differ in key features of their underlying development. We targeted pairs of eyespots with artificial selection for coordinated (concerted selection) versus independent (antagonistic selection) change in their color composition and size and compared evolutionary responses of the two color pattern characters. The two characters respond to selection in strikingly different ways despite initially similar patterns of variation in all directions present in the starting population. Size (determined by local properties of a diffusing inductive signal) evolves flexibly in all selected directions. However, color composition (determined by a tissue-level response to the signal concentration gradient) evolves only in the direction of coordinated change. There was no independent evolutionary change in the color composition of two eyespots in response to antagonistic selection. Moreover, these differences in the directions of short-term evolutionary change in eyespot size and color composition within a single species are consistent with the observed wing pattern diversity in the genus. Both characters respond rapidly to selection for

  7. A Study of the Effectiveness of a Character Education Program to Prevent Bullying in Fourth and Seventh Grade

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shapiro, Deborah J.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to assess whether bullying behaviors were impacted by the character education curriculum "Character Counts!" in fourth and seventh grade students. More specifically, over time are the perceptions that the students had of bullying behaviors impacted and is there a difference between the perceptions that boys…

  8. Essays on Character & Opportunity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Center on Children and Families at Brookings, 2014

    2014-01-01

    These essays provide richer set of writings on the philosophical, empirical and practical issues raised by a focus on character, and in particular its relationship to questions of opportunity. Each one is an intellectual pemmican: sharp and to the point. Two scholars draw attention to the gendered nature of character formation (Segal and Lexmond);…

  9. Developing program theory for purveyor programs

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background Frequently, social interventions produce less for the intended beneficiaries than was initially planned. One possible reason is that ideas embodied in interventions are not self-executing and require careful and systematic translation to put into practice. The capacity of implementers to deliver interventions is thus paramount. Purveyor organizations provide external support to implementers to develop that capacity and to encourage high-fidelity implementation behavior. Literature on the theory underlying this type of program is not plentiful. Research shows that detailed, explicit, and agreed-upon program theory contributes to and encourages high-fidelity implementation behavior. The process of developing and depicting program theory is flexible and leaves the researcher with what might be seen as an overwhelming number of options. Methods This study was designed to develop and depict the program theory underlying the support services delivered by a South African purveyor. The purveyor supports seventeen local organizations in delivering a peer education program to young people as an HIV/AIDS prevention intervention. Purposive sampling was employed to identify and select study participants. An iterative process that involved site visits, a desktop review of program documentation, one-on-one unstructured interviews, and a subsequent verification process, was used to develop a comprehensive program logic model. Results The study resulted in a formalized logic model of how the specific purveyor is supposed to function; that model was accepted by all study participants. Conclusion The study serves as an example of how program theory of a ‘real life’ program can be developed and depicted. It highlights the strengths and weakness of this evaluation approach, and provides direction and recommendations for future research on programs that employ the purveyor method to disseminate interventions. PMID:23421855

  10. Character Interviews Help Bring Literature to Life.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Swindall, Vickie; Cantrell, R. Jeffrey

    1999-01-01

    Describes "Character Interviews," a class activity that guides children, especially reluctant readers, to the meaning of a story through a thoughtful understanding of character as they consider a character's emotions and motives, to respond to a question as that character would. Describes the interview process. Offers sample interviews…

  11. Cyberethics: Envisioning Character Education in Cyberspace

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Whittier, David B.

    2013-01-01

    This article presents theory and research forming the framework of a graduate course in cyberethics education. The course content includes theory and research on the psychology of the Internet, moral development, and character education. Discussion includes application of these constructs to issues such as empathy, privacy, and other issues as…

  12. The Effect of Realistic Appearance of Virtual Characters in Immersive Environments - Does the Character's Personality Play a Role?

    PubMed

    Zibrek, Katja; Kokkinara, Elena; Mcdonnell, Rachel

    2018-04-01

    Virtual characters that appear almost photo-realistic have been shown to induce negative responses from viewers in traditional media, such as film and video games. This effect, described as the uncanny valley, is the reason why realism is often avoided when the aim is to create an appealing virtual character. In Virtual Reality, there have been few attempts to investigate this phenomenon and the implications of rendering virtual characters with high levels of realism on user enjoyment. In this paper, we conducted a large-scale experiment on over one thousand members of the public in order to gather information on how virtual characters are perceived in interactive virtual reality games. We were particularly interested in whether different render styles (realistic, cartoon, etc.) would directly influence appeal, or if a character's personality was the most important indicator of appeal. We used a number of perceptual metrics such as subjective ratings, proximity, and attribution bias in order to test our hypothesis. Our main result shows that affinity towards virtual characters is a complex interaction between the character's appearance and personality, and that realism is in fact a positive choice for virtual characters in virtual reality.

  13. Complex root networks of Chinese characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Po-Han; Chen, Jia-Ling; Wang, Po-Cheng; Chi, Ting-Ting; Xiao, Zhi-Ren; Jhang, Zih-Jian; Yeh, Yeong-Nan; Chen, Yih-Yuh; Hu, Chin-Kun

    There are several sets of Chinese characters still available today, including Oracle Bone Inscriptions (OBI) in Shang Dynasty, Chu characters (CC) used in Chu of Warring State Period, Small Seal Script in dictionary Shuowen Jiezi (SJ) in Eastern Han Dynasty, and Kangxi Dictionary (KD) in Qing Dynasty. Such as Chinese characters were all constructed via combinations of meaningful patterns, called roots. Our studies for the complex networks of all roots indicate that the roots of the characters in OBI, CC, SJ and KD have characteristics of small world networks and scale-free networks.

  14. Integrating cultural resources and wilderness character

    Treesearch

    Jill Cowley; Peter Landres; Melissa Memory; Doug Scott; Adrienne Lindholm

    2012-01-01

    Cultural resources are an integral part of wilderness and wilderness character, and all wilderness areas have a human history. This article develops a foundation for wilderness and cultural resource staffs to continue communicating with one another in order to make better decisions for wilderness stewardship. Following a discussion of relevant legislative history, we...

  15. Constructing Stylish Characters on Computer Graphics Systems.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goldman, Gary S.

    1980-01-01

    Computer graphics systems typically produce a single, machine-like character font. At most, these systems enable the user to (1) alter the aspect ratio (height-to-width ratio) of the characters, (2) specify a transformation matrix to slant the characters, and (3) define a virtual pen table to change the lineweight of the plotted characters.…

  16. A Study of Character among Collegiate Athletes

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heupel, Jill D.

    2017-01-01

    The idea that sport builds character has been around for a long time. However, sports may not build the type of character once thought. Character of athletes was defined based on differing views held by sport scholars, coaches, athletes, and sport enthusiast. Sport scholars tend to view character of athletes from a moral perspective. Coaches,…

  17. The Development of Character Education Model Based on Strengthening Social Capital for Students of State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sumarni, Sri M.; Dardiri, Achmad; Zuchdi, Darmiyati

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of the study is to find out the concept of character education model that is appropriate for students to build character of students of UIN Sunan Kalijaga and also to find out the teaching materials design of character education based on social capital to build character of students of UIN Sunan Kalijaga. This research is motivated by…

  18. Adaptation of Individual and Team Character in Sport Questionnaire to Turkish

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Görgüt, Ilyas; Tutkun, Erkut

    2017-01-01

    The aim of this study was to make validity and reliability of Turkish form of the individual and team character in sport questionnaire (ITCSQ) which was developed by Davidson et al., (2000). Scale was designed to measure outcomes related with character in the sport environment. 438 participants were voluntarily included into the study in two…

  19. Identification of Matra Region and Overlapping Characters for OCR of Printed Bengali Scripts

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Goswami, Subhra Sundar

    One of the important reasons for poor recognition rate in optical character recognition (OCR) system is the error in character segmentation. In case of Bangla scripts, the errors occur due to several reasons, which include incorrect detection of matra (headline), over-segmentation and under-segmentation. We have proposed a robust method for detecting the headline region. Existence of overlapping characters (in under-segmented parts) in scanned printed documents is a major problem in designing an effective character segmentation procedure for OCR systems. In this paper, a predictive algorithm is developed for effectively identifying overlapping characters and then selecting the cut-borders for segmentation. Our method can be successfully used in achieving high recognition result.

  20. Unequal Picture. Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American Characters on Television.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Steenland, Sally

    Based on a study which monitored over 150 episodes of television programs on a random basis, this report addresses the following questions: (1) How visible are Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American characters on entertainment television? On what types of shows do they appear? (2) What is the state of race relations on television? Do…

  1. The conformal characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bourget, Antoine; Troost, Jan

    2018-04-01

    We revisit the study of the multiplets of the conformal algebra in any dimension. The theory of highest weight representations is reviewed in the context of the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand category of modules. The Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials code the relation between the Verma modules and the irreducible modules in the category and are the key to the characters of the conformal multiplets (whether finite dimensional, infinite dimensional, unitary or non-unitary). We discuss the representation theory and review in full generality which representations are unitarizable. The mathematical theory that allows for both the general treatment of characters and the full analysis of unitarity is made accessible. A good understanding of the mathematics of conformal multiplets renders the treatment of all highest weight representations in any dimension uniform, and provides an overarching comprehension of case-by-case results. Unitary highest weight representations and their characters are classified and computed in terms of data associated to cosets of the Weyl group of the conformal algebra. An executive summary is provided, as well as look-up tables up to and including rank four.

  2. Kannada character recognition system using neural network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kumar, Suresh D. S.; Kamalapuram, Srinivasa K.; Kumar, Ajay B. R.

    2013-03-01

    Handwriting recognition has been one of the active and challenging research areas in the field of pattern recognition. It has numerous applications which include, reading aid for blind, bank cheques and conversion of any hand written document into structural text form. As there is no sufficient number of works on Indian language character recognition especially Kannada script among 15 major scripts in India. In this paper an attempt is made to recognize handwritten Kannada characters using Feed Forward neural networks. A handwritten Kannada character is resized into 20x30 Pixel. The resized character is used for training the neural network. Once the training process is completed the same character is given as input to the neural network with different set of neurons in hidden layer and their recognition accuracy rate for different Kannada characters has been calculated and compared. The results show that the proposed system yields good recognition accuracy rates comparable to that of other handwritten character recognition systems.

  3. [Development and evaluation of an e-learning program for mothers of premature infants].

    PubMed

    Lee, Nae-Young; Kim, Young-Hae

    2008-02-01

    It has been attempted to support mother of premature infants by providing information of premature infant care using e-learning because premature infants need continuous care from birth to after discharge. The e-Learning Program for mother of premature was developed with Xpert, Namo web editor, Adobe Photoshop, and PowerPoint and applied for 4 weeks from 4 to 30 September 2006. 1) We found that the contents of information which premature infants' need when being in the hospital and after discharge were the definition of a premature infant, orientation of NICU, care of premature infants, care of premature infants' common diseases, the connection of healthcare resources, exchange of information, and the management of rearing stress. 2) The program content consisted of cause of premature birth, comparison to full-term baby, physiology character, orientation of NICU, common health problems, follow up care, infection control, feeding, normal development physically and mentally, weaning method, and vaccination. Considering the results, this program for mother of premature is a useful means to provide premature-care information to mothers. This information can be readily accessible and can be varied and complex enough to be able to help mothers to the information and assistance they require.

  4. Argyres-Douglas theories, chiral algebras and wild Hitchin characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fredrickson, Laura; Pei, Du; Yan, Wenbin; Ye, Ke

    2018-01-01

    We use Coulomb branch indices of Argyres-Douglas theories on S 1 × L( k, 1) to quantize moduli spaces M_H of wild/irregular Hitchin systems. In particular, we obtain formulae for the "wild Hitchin characters" — the graded dimensions of the Hilbert spaces from quantization — for four infinite families of M_H , giving access to many interesting geometric and topological data of these moduli spaces. We observe that the wild Hitchin characters can always be written as a sum over fixed points in M_H under the U(1) Hitchin action, and a limit of them can be identified with matrix elements of the modular transform ST k S in certain two-dimensional chiral algebras. Although naturally fitting into the geometric Langlands program, the appearance of chiral algebras, which was known previously to be associated with Schur operators but not Coulomb branch operators, is somewhat surprising.

  5. Computer Program To Transliterate Into Arabic

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Stephan, E.

    1986-01-01

    Conceptual program for TRS-80, Model 12 (or equivalent) computer transliterates from English letters of computer keyboard to Arabic characters in output of associated printer. Program automatically changes character sequence from left-to-right of English to right-to-left of Arabic.

  6. Post processing for offline Chinese handwritten character string recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, YanWei; Ding, XiaoQing; Liu, ChangSong

    2012-01-01

    Offline Chinese handwritten character string recognition is one of the most important research fields in pattern recognition. Due to the free writing style, large variability in character shapes and different geometric characteristics, Chinese handwritten character string recognition is a challenging problem to deal with. However, among the current methods over-segmentation and merging method which integrates geometric information, character recognition information and contextual information, shows a promising result. It is found experimentally that a large part of errors are segmentation error and mainly occur around non-Chinese characters. In a Chinese character string, there are not only wide characters namely Chinese characters, but also narrow characters like digits and letters of the alphabet. The segmentation error is mainly caused by uniform geometric model imposed on all segmented candidate characters. To solve this problem, post processing is employed to improve recognition accuracy of narrow characters. On one hand, multi-geometric models are established for wide characters and narrow characters respectively. Under multi-geometric models narrow characters are not prone to be merged. On the other hand, top rank recognition results of candidate paths are integrated to boost final recognition of narrow characters. The post processing method is investigated on two datasets, in total 1405 handwritten address strings. The wide character recognition accuracy has been improved lightly and narrow character recognition accuracy has been increased up by 10.41% and 10.03% respectively. It indicates that the post processing method is effective to improve recognition accuracy of narrow characters.

  7. Research in Practice: Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lasley, Thomas J.; And Others

    1996-01-01

    Three articles explore character education from different perspectives: "Teaching Students to See Beyond Themselves" (Lasley, Biddle); "An Effective Character Education Model for a Diverse Student Population" (Cline, Necochea); and "Teaching as Modeling: The Impact of Teacher Behaviors upon Student Character…

  8. Low-Budget, Cost-Effective OCR: Optical Character Recognition for MS-DOS Micros.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Perez, Ernest

    1990-01-01

    Discusses optical character recognition (OCR) for use with MS-DOS microcomputers. Cost effectiveness is considered, three types of software approaches to character recognition are explained, hardware and operation requirements are described, possible library applications are discussed, future OCR developments are suggested, and a list of OCR…

  9. Validity of the growth model of the 'computerized visual perception assessment tool for Chinese characters structures'.

    PubMed

    Wu, Huey-Min; Li, Cheng-Hsaun; Kuo, Bor-Chen; Yang, Yu-Mao; Lin, Chin-Kai; Wan, Wei-Hsiang

    2017-08-01

    Morphological awareness is the foundation for the important developmental skills involved with vocabulary, as well as understanding the meaning of words, orthographic knowledge, reading, and writing. Visual perception of space and radicals in two-dimensional positions of Chinese characters' morphology is very important in identifying Chinese characters. The important predictive variables of special and visual perception in Chinese characters identification were investigated in the growth model in this research. The assessment tool is the "Computerized Visual Perception Assessment Tool for Chinese Characters Structures" developed by this study. There are two constructs, basic stroke and character structure. In the basic stroke, there are three subtests of one, two, and more than three strokes. In the character structure, there are three subtests of single-component character, horizontal-compound character, and vertical-compound character. This study used purposive sampling. In the first year, 551 children 4-6 years old participated in the study and were monitored for one year. In the second year, 388 children remained in the study and the successful follow-up rate was 70.4%. This study used a two-wave cross-lagged panel design to validate the growth model of the basic stroke and the character structure. There was significant correlation of the basic stroke and the character structure at different time points. The abilities in the basic stroke and in the character structure steadily developed over time for preschool children. Children's knowledge of the basic stroke effectively predicted their knowledge of the basic stroke and the character structure. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  10. Design and User Evaluation of a Mobile Application to Teach Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rosell-Aguilar, Fernando; Qian, Kan

    2015-01-01

    This paper presents both the pedagogical design principles and the challenges faced during the development of a mobile app, Chinese Characters First Steps, to support recognising, learning and practising writing Chinese characters at beginners' level, including the difficult balance between pedagogy and technical affordances. We also present the…

  11. Quantitative trait loci associated with phenological development, low temperature tolerance, grain quality, and agronomic characters in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Plants must respond to environmental cues and schedule their development in order to react to periods of abiotic stress and commit fully to growth and reproduction under favorable conditions. This study was initiated to identify SNP markers for characters expressed from the seedling stage to plant m...

  12. Temperament and character personality dimensions in patients with dental anxiety.

    PubMed

    Bergdahl, Maud; Bergdahl, Jan

    2003-04-01

    The aim of the present study was to investigate character and temperament dimensions of personality in six men and 31 women (aged 20-57 yr) with severe dental anxiety, and to evaluate whether these dimensions were associated with the level of dental anxiety. The Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) were used. High ratings in novelty seeking and female gender predicted high DAS scores. Compared with controls, the patients scored significantly higher on the temperament dimension, novelty seeking. For character dimensions, the patients scored lower on cooperativeness and higher on self-transcendence than controls. Our results indicated that patients with dental anxiety are neurotic extravert (i.e. novelty seekers who experience brief dissociative periods and magical thinking). Furthermore, the combination of the inherited temperament dimension novelty seeking and the social learned character dimension cooperativeness and self-transcendence seem to form a vulnerable personality to develop dental anxiety.

  13. Character Formation and Service: A Millennial Student's Experience

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Okumu, Jacob O.

    2012-01-01

    The author, a millennial college student, describes how his international service experiences positively influenced his social and moral development. He suggests ways educators may inspire students to develop core character values. He also argues that promoting these core values has been a primary purpose of the academy in the United States since…

  14. The implementation of assessment model based on character building to improve students’ discipline and achievement

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Rusijono; Khotimah, K.

    2018-01-01

    The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of implementing the assessment model based on character building to improve discipline and student’s achievement. Assessment model based on character building includes three components, which are the behaviour of students, the efforts, and student’s achievement. This assessment model based on the character building is implemented in science philosophy and educational assessment courses, in Graduate Program of Educational Technology Department, Educational Faculty, Universitas Negeri Surabaya. This research used control group pre-test and post-test design. Data collection method used in this research were observation and test. The observation was used to collect the data about the disciplines of the student in the instructional process, while the test was used to collect the data about student’s achievement. Moreover, the study applied t-test to the analysis of data. The result of this research showed that assessment model based on character building improved discipline and student’s achievement.

  15. Construct(ion) and Context: A Response to Methodological Issues in Studying Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deutsch, Nancy L.

    2017-01-01

    In this article, I respond to Noel Card's "Methodological Issues in Measuring the Development of Character." I focus on the ways in which social scientific knowledge represents human constructions of the world and the implications of this stance for the measurement of character. Further, I consider how context influences those…

  16. The development and discussion of computerized visual perception assessment tool for Chinese characters structures - Concurrent estimation of the overall ability and the domain ability in item response theory approach.

    PubMed

    Wu, Huey-Min; Lin, Chin-Kai; Yang, Yu-Mao; Kuo, Bor-Chen

    2014-11-12

    Visual perception is the fundamental skill required for a child to recognize words, and to read and write. There was no visual perception assessment tool developed for preschool children based on Chinese characters in Taiwan. The purposes were to develop the computerized visual perception assessment tool for Chinese Characters Structures and to explore the psychometrical characteristic of assessment tool. This study adopted purposive sampling. The study evaluated 551 kindergarten-age children (293 boys, 258 girls) ranging from 46 to 81 months of age. The test instrument used in this study consisted of three subtests and 58 items, including tests of basic strokes, single-component characters, and compound characters. Based on the results of model fit analysis, the higher-order item response theory was used to estimate the performance in visual perception, basic strokes, single-component characters, and compound characters simultaneously. Analyses of variance were used to detect significant difference in age groups and gender groups. The difficulty of identifying items in a visual perception test ranged from -2 to 1. The visual perception ability of 4- to 6-year-old children ranged from -1.66 to 2.19. Gender did not have significant effects on performance. However, there were significant differences among the different age groups. The performance of 6-year-olds was better than that of 5-year-olds, which was better than that of 4-year-olds. This study obtained detailed diagnostic scores by using a higher-order item response theory model to understand the visual perception of basic strokes, single-component characters, and compound characters. Further statistical analysis showed that, for basic strokes and compound characters, girls performed better than did boys; there also were differences within each age group. For single-component characters, there was no difference in performance between boys and girls. However, again the performance of 6-year-olds was better than

  17. A Cast of Characters in the Solar Neighborhood

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Henry, Todd J.; Dieterich, S. B.; Jao, W.; Riedel, A. R.; Subasavage, J. P.; Winters, J. G.; RECONS

    2012-05-01

    What in the stars is going on? Since 1999, the RECONS (REsearch Consortium On Nearby Stars, www.recons.org) team has been using the CTIO 0.9m to carry out a large astrometry/photometry program. We are measuring VRI photometry for more than 2000 stars, parallaxes for more than 600 stars, and making long-duration positional measurements of more than 100 stars to reveal hidden companions. Careful observations of so many stars occasionally yields bizarre results. Here we unveil a cast of characters who are the oddest of the odd --- twins who seem to have been born at different times, a baby star on the Sun's doorstep, and dark companions that lurk in the shadows unseen. Unraveling these puzzling stellar systems promises not only challenges, but perhaps new astrophysical insight to stellar formation and evolution. As Hamlet would say, understanding these systems "tis a consummation devoutly to be wished," but these characters certainly do give us pause in the meantime. This effort is supported by the NSF through grant AST-0908402 and via observations made possible by the SMARTS Consortium.

  18. Postprocessing for character recognition using pattern features and linguistic information

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yoshikawa, Takatoshi; Okamoto, Masayosi; Horii, Hiroshi

    1993-04-01

    We propose a new method of post-processing for character recognition using pattern features and linguistic information. This method corrects errors in the recognition of handwritten Japanese sentences containing Kanji characters. This post-process method is characterized by having two types of character recognition. Improving the accuracy of the character recognition rate of Japanese characters is made difficult by the large number of characters, and the existence of characters with similar patterns. Therefore, it is not practical for a character recognition system to recognize all characters in detail. First, this post-processing method generates a candidate character table by recognizing the simplest features of characters. Then, it selects words corresponding to the character from the candidate character table by referring to a word and grammar dictionary before selecting suitable words. If the correct character is included in the candidate character table, this process can correct an error, however, if the character is not included, it cannot correct an error. Therefore, if this method can presume a character does not exist in a candidate character table by using linguistic information (word and grammar dictionary). It then can verify a presumed character by character recognition using complex features. When this method is applied to an online character recognition system, the accuracy of character recognition improves 93.5% to 94.7%. This proved to be the case when it was used for the editorials of a Japanese newspaper (Asahi Shinbun).

  19. An Examination of the Thought and Action of Higher Education Institution Presidents toward the Optimal Development of Students' Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dietrich, Julie L.

    2017-01-01

    Historically, American higher education aimed to serve a public good, to include attending to students' character development and addressing the myriad needs of society (Yanikoski, 2004). This purpose was fundamental to the educational thought of ancient Greek philosophers, upon which much of higher education rests today. Two themes clearly…

  20. Color pattern evolution in Vanessa butterflies (Nymphalidae: Nymphalini): non-eyespot characters.

    PubMed

    Abbasi, Roohollah; Marcus, Jeffrey M

    2015-01-01

    A phylogenetic approach was used to study color pattern evolution in Vanessa butterflies. Twenty-four color pattern elements from the Nymphalid ground plan were identified on the dorsal and ventral surfaces of the fore- and hind wings. Eyespot characters were excluded and will be examined elsewhere. The evolution of each character was traced over a Bayesian phylogeny of Vanessa reconstructed from 7750 DNA base pairs from 10 genes. Generally, the correspondence between character states on the same surface of the two wings is stronger on the ventral side compared to the dorsal side. The evolution of character states on both sides of a wing correspond with each other in most extant species, but the correspondence between dorsal and ventral character states is much stronger in the forewing than in the hindwing. The dorsal hindwing of many species of Vanessa is covered with an extended Basal Symmetry System and the Discalis I pattern element is highly variable between species, making this wing surface dissimilar to the other wing surfaces. The Basal Symmetry System and Discalis I may contribute to behavioral thermoregulation in Vanessa. Overall, interspecific directional character state evolution of non-eyespot color patterns is relatively rare in Vanessa, with a majority of color pattern elements showing non-variable, non-directional, or ambiguous character state evolution. The ease with which the development of color patterns can be modified, including character state reversals, has likely made important contributions to the production of color pattern diversity in Vanessa and other butterfly groups. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  1. Emphasizing the only character: emphasis, attention and contrast.

    PubMed

    Chen, Lijing; Yang, Yufang

    2015-03-01

    In conversations, pragmatic information such as emphasis is important for identifying the speaker's/writer's intention. The present research examines the cognitive processes involved in emphasis processing. Participants read short discourses that introduced one or two character(s), with the character being emphasized or non-emphasized in subsequent texts. Eye movements showed that: (1) early processing of the emphasized word was facilitated, which may have been due to increased attention allocation, whereas (2) late integration of the emphasized character was inhibited when the discourse involved only this character. These results indicate that it is necessary to include other characters as contrastive characters to facilitate the integration of an emphasized character, and support the existence of a relationship between Emphasis and Contrast computation. Taken together, our findings indicate that both attention allocation and contrast computation are involved in emphasis processing, and support the incremental nature of sentence processing and the importance of contrast in discourse comprehension. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. [Landscape character assessment framework in rural area: A case study in Qiaokou, Chang-sha, China].

    PubMed

    Zhang, Qian; Liu, Wen-ping; Yu, Zhen-rong

    2015-05-01

    Based on the concept and methods of landscape character assessment (LCA) in England, this paper applied a complete process of landscape character assessment with a case study in Qiaokou Town, which is located in a typical southern paddy fields area in Changsha City. We drew the landscape character map of Qiaokou Town through desk classification and field survey, identified and compared the key characters of each character area, and proposed suggestions on the improvement and stewardship of landscape characters. The results showed that Qiaokou could be divided into 2 landscape character types and 7 landscape character areas with the main differences in cropland and vegetation pattern as well as aesthetic characters. The case study indicated that LCA could be a critical tool to identify the characteristics in rural area, and provide helpful guidance to protect, restore and maintain the unique culture and characters of rural landscape, which is useful for targeted rural landscape development. In the future, we suggested that the assessment on the effects of landscape construction measures on the ecosystem services should be incorporated in LCA research as well.

  3. Optical character recognition based on nonredundant correlation measurements.

    PubMed

    Braunecker, B; Hauck, R; Lohmann, A W

    1979-08-15

    The essence of character recognition is a comparison between the unknown character and a set of reference patterns. Usually, these reference patterns are all possible characters themselves, the whole alphabet in the case of letter characters. Obviously, N analog measurements are highly redundant, since only K = log(2)N binary decisions are enough to identify one out of N characters. Therefore, we devised K reference patterns accordingly. These patterns, called principal components, are found by digital image processing, but used in an optical analog computer. We will explain the concept of principal components, and we will describe experiments with several optical character recognition systems, based on this concept.

  4. Character Matters: Using Newspapers To Teach Character. Strategies for Teachers, Activities for Parents. Newspaper in Education Resource Guide.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeRoche, Edward F.; Sullivan, Betty L.; Garrett, Sherrye Dee

    One side of character education is to create schools and communities that are caring, civil, and challenging (both academically and behaviorally). The other side is to develop young citizens who are smart, decent, and responsible. This booklet illustrates how to use newspaper content at school and at home to teach eight specific values: respect,…

  5. Socioscientific Issues as a Vehicle for Promoting Character and Values for Global Citizens

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lee, Hyunju; Yoo, Jungsook; Choi, Kyunghee; Kim, Sung-Won; Krajcik, Joseph; Herman, Benjamin C.; Zeidler, Dana L.

    2013-08-01

    Our guiding presupposition in this study was that socioscientific issues (SSI) instruction, given the humanistic features that comprise this type of instruction, could play a role as a vehicle for cultivating character and values as global citizens. Our main objective was to observe how and to what extent SSI instruction might contribute to this. In order to achieve this aim, we implemented a SSI program on genetic modification technology for 132 ninth-grade students over 3-4 weeks and identified its educational effects using a mixed method approach. Data sources included student responses to questionnaire items that measure the students' character and values, records of student discussions, and semi-structured interviews with the students and their teachers. Results indicated that the students became more sensitive to moral and ethical aspects of scientific and technological development and compassionate to diverse people who are either alienated by the benefits of advanced technology or who are vulnerable to the dangers of its unintended effects. In addition, the students felt more responsible for the future resolution of the genetic SSI. However, the students struggled to demonstrate willingness and efficacy to participate within broader communities that entailed action toward SSI resolution.

  6. On a Character Education Inventory.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Etzioni, Amatai

    1998-01-01

    The father of the communitarian movement presents a Character Education Inventory that gives specific guidance on how to build character education into a school setting. Schools must continually take inventory of their own actions to ensure that what they are doing matches what they are instructing children to do. The inventory should include…

  7. Exploring Good Character and Citizenship in England

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arthur, James; Harrison, Tom

    2012-01-01

    Citizenship, character and the virtues that constitute both are increasingly concerns of public policy in the UK. This article understands character to encompass the morally valuable, reason-response and education part of personality, and understands virtues as states of character concerned with praiseworthy feelings and conduct in specific…

  8. Character Counts: Don't Leave Home without It!

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Education Digest: Essential Readings Condensed for Quick Review, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Orrs Elementary School in Griffin-Spalding County, Georgia, was selected as a 2010 National School of Character by the Character Education Partnership (CEP) and was honored at the National Forum of Character Education awards ceremony in San Francisco, California. According to Principal Dexter Martin, character education is more than a phrase or a…

  9. Character Analysis: Up Close and Personal.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McDonough, Carla J.

    1995-01-01

    Describes a class activity which gives students practice in character analysis based on characters' dialog in plays. Offers a version of this activity as applied to Caryl Churchill's play "Top Girls." (SR)

  10. Defining the Molecular Character of the Developing and Adult Kidney Podocyte

    PubMed Central

    Brunskill, Eric W.; Georgas, Kylie; Rumballe, Bree; Little, Melissa H.; Potter, S. Steven

    2011-01-01

    Background The podocyte is a remarkable cell type, which encases the capillaries of the kidney glomerulus. Although mesodermal in origin it sends out axonal like projections that wrap around the capillaries. These extend yet finer projections, the foot processes, which interdigitate, leaving between them the slit diaphragms, through which the glomerular filtrate must pass. The podocytes are a subject of keen interest because of their key roles in kidney development and disease. Methodology/Principal Findings In this report we identified and characterized a novel transgenic mouse line, MafB-GFP, which specifically marked the kidney podocytes from a very early stage of development. These mice were then used to facilitate the fluorescent activated cell sorting based purification of podocytes from embryos at E13.5 and E15.5, as well as adults. Microarrays were then used to globally define the gene expression states of podocytes at these different developmental stages. A remarkable picture emerged, identifying the multiple sets of genes that establish the neuronal, muscle, and phagocytic properties of podocytes. The complete combinatorial code of transcription factors that create the podocyte was characterized, and the global lists of growth factors and receptors they express were defined. Conclusions/Significance The complete molecular character of the in vivo podocyte is established for the first time. The active molecular functions and biological processes further define their unique combination of features. The results provide a resource atlas of gene expression patterns of developing and adult podocytes that will help to guide further research of these incredible cells. PMID:21931791

  11. Staff Development Program Evaluation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ashur, Nina E.; And Others

    An evaluation of the staff development program at College of the Canyons (California) was conducted in 1991 to provide information applicable to program improvement. Questionnaires were distributed to all faculty, classified staff, and flexible calendar program committee and staff development advisory committee members, resulting in response rates…

  12. Counseling Faculty Development Program.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Santa Rita, Emilio

    Designed for use as a development activity for counselors at Bronx Community College in New York, this program provides discussion materials, questionnaires, and worksheets from the college's Counseling Faculty Development Program. A brief introduction indicates that the program encompasses three components, empowering counselors in the teaching…

  13. Character recognition using a neural network model with fuzzy representation

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Tavakoli, Nassrin; Seniw, David

    1992-01-01

    The degree to which digital images are recognized correctly by computerized algorithms is highly dependent upon the representation and the classification processes. Fuzzy techniques play an important role in both processes. In this paper, the role of fuzzy representation and classification on the recognition of digital characters is investigated. An experimental Neural Network model with application to character recognition was developed. Through a set of experiments, the effect of fuzzy representation on the recognition accuracy of this model is presented.

  14. Moral Development and Sportsmanship in Physical Education and Sport

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pennington, Colin G.

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to explore to what degree the subject of sportsmanship, morality and character development is addressed in physical education (PE) and youth sport. It also presents the effect of formal education programs designed to address the issue of character in sport, and lays out recommendations for current PE practitioners…

  15. "The First Tee: Building Character Education." Hearing before the Committee on Education and the Workforce. House of Representatives, One Hundred Sixth Congress, Second Session (June 25, 2002).

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Congress of the U.S., Washington, DC. House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

    This publication covers the U.S. House of Representatives June 25, 2002, hearing on building character education through the "First Tee" program in U.S. public schools. The First Tee is a youth character-building organization with programs located throughout the country. It provides young people of all backgrounds the opportunity to…

  16. Rapid Naming Speed and Chinese Character Recognition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Liao, Chen-Huei; Georgiou, George K.; Parrila, Rauno

    2008-01-01

    We examined the relationship between rapid naming speed (RAN) and Chinese character recognition accuracy and fluency. Sixty-three grade 2 and 54 grade 4 Taiwanese children were administered four RAN tasks (colors, digits, Zhu-Yin-Fu-Hao, characters), and two character recognition tasks. RAN tasks accounted for more reading variance in grade 4 than…

  17. Role of natural and cultural features in residents' perceptions of rural character

    Treesearch

    Dori Pynnonen; Dennis Propst; Christine Vogt; Maureen McDonough

    2006-01-01

    Rural landscapes are rapidly changing as more families migrate in from cities and suburbs, yet there have been few systematic attempts to have residents describe exactly what rural character means to them. As part of a USDA Forest Service research program examining landscape change (Potts et al. 2004), this study focused on the landscape and residents of six...

  18. Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement

    PubMed Central

    Wagner, Lisa; Ruch, Willibald

    2015-01-01

    Character strengths have been found to be substantially related to children’s and adolescents’ well-being. Initial evidence suggests that they also matter for school success (e.g., Weber and Ruch, 2012). The present set of two studies aimed at replicating and extending these findings in two different age groups, primary school students (N = 179; mean age = 11.6 years) and secondary school students (N = 199; mean age = 14.4 years). The students completed the VIA-Youth (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth), a self-report measure of the 24 character strengths in the VIA classification. Their teachers rated the students’ positive behavior in the classroom. Additionally, school achievement was assessed: For the primary school students (Study 1), teachers rated the students’ overall school achievement and for the secondary school students (Study 2), we used their grades as a measure of school achievement. We found that several character strengths were associated with both positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Across both samples, school achievement was correlated with love of learning, perseverance, zest, gratitude, hope, and perspective. The strongest correlations with positive classroom behavior were found for perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, social intelligence, and hope. For both samples, there were indirect effects of some of the character strengths on school achievement through teacher-rated positive classroom behavior. The converging findings from the two samples support the notion that character strengths contribute to positive classroom behavior, which in turn enhances school achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and for school interventions based on character strengths. PMID:26029144

  19. Good character at school: positive classroom behavior mediates the link between character strengths and school achievement.

    PubMed

    Wagner, Lisa; Ruch, Willibald

    2015-01-01

    Character strengths have been found to be substantially related to children's and adolescents' well-being. Initial evidence suggests that they also matter for school success (e.g., Weber and Ruch, 2012). The present set of two studies aimed at replicating and extending these findings in two different age groups, primary school students (N = 179; mean age = 11.6 years) and secondary school students (N = 199; mean age = 14.4 years). The students completed the VIA-Youth (Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth), a self-report measure of the 24 character strengths in the VIA classification. Their teachers rated the students' positive behavior in the classroom. Additionally, school achievement was assessed: For the primary school students (Study 1), teachers rated the students' overall school achievement and for the secondary school students (Study 2), we used their grades as a measure of school achievement. We found that several character strengths were associated with both positive classroom behavior and school achievement. Across both samples, school achievement was correlated with love of learning, perseverance, zest, gratitude, hope, and perspective. The strongest correlations with positive classroom behavior were found for perseverance, self-regulation, prudence, social intelligence, and hope. For both samples, there were indirect effects of some of the character strengths on school achievement through teacher-rated positive classroom behavior. The converging findings from the two samples support the notion that character strengths contribute to positive classroom behavior, which in turn enhances school achievement. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and for school interventions based on character strengths.

  20. On the information content of discrete phylogenetic characters.

    PubMed

    Bordewich, Magnus; Deutschmann, Ina Maria; Fischer, Mareike; Kasbohm, Elisa; Semple, Charles; Steel, Mike

    2017-12-16

    Phylogenetic inference aims to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of different species based on genetic (or other) data. Discrete characters are a particular type of data, which contain information on how the species should be grouped together. However, it has long been known that some characters contain more information than others. For instance, a character that assigns the same state to each species groups all of them together and so provides no insight into the relationships of the species considered. At the other extreme, a character that assigns a different state to each species also conveys no phylogenetic signal. In this manuscript, we study a natural combinatorial measure of the information content of an individual character and analyse properties of characters that provide the maximum phylogenetic information, particularly, the number of states such a character uses and how the different states have to be distributed among the species or taxa of the phylogenetic tree.

  1. Teaching Character Strengths: Persee the Perseverant Puppy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baruch-Feldman, Caren

    2017-01-01

    Developing character strengths such as kindness and perseverance are just as crucial as academics for today's learners. This article describes how the author and the classroom teacher worked one-on-one with a third grade class to teach such attributes. Approximately once a month the classroom teacher and the author taught lessons on kindness,…

  2. Portrayals of character smoking and drinking in Argentine-, Mexican- and US-produced films.

    PubMed

    Kollath-Cattano, Christy; Abad-Vivero, Erika N; Mejia, Raul; Perez-Hernandez, Rosaura; Sargent, James D; Thrasher, James F

    2016-09-01

    The aim of this study was to assess film character portrayals of tobacco and alcohol use in US and nationally-produced films that were popular in Argentina and Mexico from 2004-2012. We performed a content analysis of these films (n=82 Argentine, 91 Mexican, and 908 US films, respectively). Chi-squares and t-tests were used to compare characteristics of characters who smoked or drank by country of movie production. Then data from all countries were pooled, and generalized estimating equation (GEE) models were used to determine independent correlates of character smoking or drinking. There were 480 major characters for Argentine-, 364 for Mexican-, and 4962 for US-produced films. Smoking prevalence among movie characters was similar to population smoking prevalence in Mexico (21%) and Argentina (26%), but about half in the US (11%), where movie product placements are restricted. Movie smoking declined over the period in all three countries. Movie alcohol prevalence was 40-50% across all countries and did not change with time. Demographic predictors of character smoking included: being male, 18 and older, having negative character valence. Movie smoking was not associated with lower SES. Predictors of character drinking included: being age 18 and older and positive character valence. Smoking and drinking predicted each other, illicit drug use, and higher scores for other risk behaviors. This suggests that policy development in Mexico and Argentina may be necessary to reduce the amount of character tobacco and alcohol use in films. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. The proximate unit in Chinese handwritten character production

    PubMed Central

    Chen, Jenn-Yeu; Cherng, Rong-Ju

    2013-01-01

    In spoken word production, a proximate unit is the first phonological unit at the sublexical level that is selectable for production (O'Seaghdha et al., 2010). The present study investigated whether the proximate unit in Chinese handwritten character production is the stroke, the radical, or something in between. A written version of the form preparation task was adopted. Chinese participants learned sets of two-character words, later were cued with the first character of each word, and had to write down the second character (the target). Response times were measured from the onset of a cue character to the onset of a written response. In Experiment 1, the target characters within a block shared (homogeneous) or did not share (heterogeneous) the first stroke. In Experiment 2, the first two strokes were shared in the homogeneous blocks. Response times in the homogeneous blocks and in the heterogeneous blocks were comparable in both experiments (Experiment 1: 687 vs. 684 ms, Experiment 2: 717 vs. 716). In Experiment 3 and 4, the target characters within a block shared or did not share the first radical. Response times in the homogeneous blocks were significantly faster than those in the heterogeneous blocks (Experiment 3: 685 vs. 704, Experiment 4: 594 vs. 650). In Experiment 5 and 6, the shared component was a Gestalt-like form that is more than a stroke, constitutes a portion of the target character, can be a stand-alone character itself, can be a radical of another character but is not a radical of the target character (e.g., ± in , , , ; called a logographeme). Response times in the homogeneous blocks were significantly faster than those in the heterogeneous blocks (Experiment 5: 576 vs. 625, Experiment 6: 586 vs. 620). These results suggest a model of Chinese handwritten character production in which the stroke is not a functional unit, the radical plays the role of a morpheme, and the logographeme is the proximate unit. PMID:23950752

  4. The Psychobiological Theory of Temperament and Character: Comment on Farmer and Goldberg (2008)

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cloninger, C. Robert

    2008-01-01

    The revised Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-R) is the third stage of development of a widely used multiscale personality inventory that began with the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) and then the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). The author describes the third stage of the psychobiological theory of temperament and…

  5. Public domain optical character recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Garris, Michael D.; Blue, James L.; Candela, Gerald T.; Dimmick, Darrin L.; Geist, Jon C.; Grother, Patrick J.; Janet, Stanley A.; Wilson, Charles L.

    1995-03-01

    A public domain document processing system has been developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The system is a standard reference form-based handprint recognition system for evaluating optical character recognition (OCR), and it is intended to provide a baseline of performance on an open application. The system's source code, training data, performance assessment tools, and type of forms processed are all publicly available. The system recognizes the handprint entered on handwriting sample forms like the ones distributed with NIST Special Database 1. From these forms, the system reads hand-printed numeric fields, upper and lowercase alphabetic fields, and unconstrained text paragraphs comprised of words from a limited-size dictionary. The modular design of the system makes it useful for component evaluation and comparison, training and testing set validation, and multiple system voting schemes. The system contains a number of significant contributions to OCR technology, including an optimized probabilistic neural network (PNN) classifier that operates a factor of 20 times faster than traditional software implementations of the algorithm. The source code for the recognition system is written in C and is organized into 11 libraries. In all, there are approximately 19,000 lines of code supporting more than 550 subroutines. Source code is provided for form registration, form removal, field isolation, field segmentation, character normalization, feature extraction, character classification, and dictionary-based postprocessing. The recognition system has been successfully compiled and tested on a host of UNIX workstations. This paper gives an overview of the recognition system's software architecture, including descriptions of the various system components along with timing and accuracy statistics.

  6. Onomatopoeia characters extraction from comic images using constrained Delaunay triangulation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Xiangping; Shoji, Kenji; Mori, Hiroshi; Toyama, Fubito

    2014-02-01

    A method for extracting onomatopoeia characters from comic images was developed based on stroke width feature of characters, since they nearly have a constant stroke width in a number of cases. An image was segmented with a constrained Delaunay triangulation. Connected component grouping was performed based on the triangles generated by the constrained Delaunay triangulation. Stroke width calculation of the connected components was conducted based on the altitude of the triangles generated with the constrained Delaunay triangulation. The experimental results proved the effectiveness of the proposed method.

  7. Reconciling Forms of Asian Humility with Assessment Practices and Character Education Programs in North America

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stickney, Jeff

    2010-01-01

    When assessing North American students' oral participation in classes, should all students be subject to the same evaluation criteria or should teachers make reasonable allowances for Asian students practicing humility? How do we weigh the promotion of "courage" through character education initiatives with traditional Asian dispositions?…

  8. Educator's Guide to Program Development in Natural Resources: Program Development Summary.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yoder, Jon; Maine, Neal

    2001-01-01

    Distinguishes between natural resource programs and natural resource projects and provides a project planning outline. Addresses critical elements and concerns in the development of natural resource programs. (DDR)

  9. Family and School Influences on Youths' Behavioral and Academic Outcomes: Cross-Level Interactions between Parental Monitoring and Character Development Curriculum.

    PubMed

    Top, Namik; Liew, Jeffrey; Luo, Wen

    2017-01-01

    The authors examined the joint (interactive) roles of the Second Step curriculum (a validated social-emotional learning and bullying prevention program; Committee for Children, Seattle, WA) and parenting practices on students' behavioral and academic outcomes in Grades 5-8. Participants were 763 parents and their children from 22 schools (8 control and 14 treatment). A 2-level random coefficient model was conducted to assess the effect of parental monitoring on school outcomes, as well as the interaction between character development curriculum and parental monitoring. Results indicated that parental monitoring was a significant predictor of school behaviors and school grades. Furthermore, the Second Step curriculum moderated the relationship between parental monitoring and problem behaviors, prosocial behaviors, and grades at school. Specifically, in schools without the Second Step curriculum parental monitoring predicted higher school grades but had no impact on students' school behaviors. By contrast, in schools with the Second Step curriculum, parental monitoring predicted fewer problem behaviors as well as more prosocial behaviors. The study results highlight the joint influences of the family and the school in children's behavioral and academic trajectories. Results have implications for education and intervention, including improving the school climate, student behaviors, and learning or achievement.

  10. Exercise, character strengths, well-being, and learning climate in the prediction of performance over a 6-month period at a call center.

    PubMed

    Moradi, Saleh; Nima, Ali A; Rapp Ricciardi, Max; Archer, Trevor; Garcia, Danilo

    2014-01-01

    Performance monitoring might have an adverse influence on call center agents' well-being. We investigate how performance, over a 6-month period, is related to agents' perceptions of their learning climate, character strengths, well-being (subjective and psychological), and physical activity. Agents (N = 135) self-reported perception of the learning climate (Learning Climate Questionnaire), character strengths (Values In Action Inventory Short Version), well-being (Positive Affect, Negative Affect Schedule, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scales Short Version), and how often/intensively they engaged in physical activity. Performance, "time on the phone," was monitored for 6 consecutive months by the same system handling the calls. Performance was positively related to having opportunities to develop, the character strengths clusters of Wisdom and Knowledge (e.g., curiosity for learning, perspective) and Temperance (e.g., having self-control, being prudent, humble, and modest), and exercise frequency. Performance was negatively related to the sense of autonomy and responsibility, contentedness, the character strengths clusters of Humanity and Love (e.g., helping others, cooperation) and Justice (e.g., affiliation, fairness, leadership), positive affect, life satisfaction and exercise Intensity. Call centers may need to create opportunities to develop to increase agents' performance and focus on individual differences in the recruitment and selection of agents to prevent future shortcomings or worker dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, performance measurement in call centers may need to include other aspects that are more attuned with different character strengths. After all, allowing individuals to put their strengths at work should empower the individual and at the end the organization itself. Finally, physical activity enhancement programs might offer considerable positive work outcomes.

  11. Exercise, character strengths, well-being, and learning climate in the prediction of performance over a 6-month period at a call center

    PubMed Central

    Moradi, Saleh; Nima, Ali A.; Rapp Ricciardi, Max; Archer, Trevor; Garcia, Danilo

    2014-01-01

    Background: Performance monitoring might have an adverse influence on call center agents' well-being. We investigate how performance, over a 6-month period, is related to agents' perceptions of their learning climate, character strengths, well-being (subjective and psychological), and physical activity. Method: Agents (N = 135) self-reported perception of the learning climate (Learning Climate Questionnaire), character strengths (Values In Action Inventory Short Version), well-being (Positive Affect, Negative Affect Schedule, Satisfaction With Life Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scales Short Version), and how often/intensively they engaged in physical activity. Performance, “time on the phone,” was monitored for 6 consecutive months by the same system handling the calls. Results: Performance was positively related to having opportunities to develop, the character strengths clusters of Wisdom and Knowledge (e.g., curiosity for learning, perspective) and Temperance (e.g., having self-control, being prudent, humble, and modest), and exercise frequency. Performance was negatively related to the sense of autonomy and responsibility, contentedness, the character strengths clusters of Humanity and Love (e.g., helping others, cooperation) and Justice (e.g., affiliation, fairness, leadership), positive affect, life satisfaction and exercise Intensity. Conclusion: Call centers may need to create opportunities to develop to increase agents' performance and focus on individual differences in the recruitment and selection of agents to prevent future shortcomings or worker dissatisfaction. Nevertheless, performance measurement in call centers may need to include other aspects that are more attuned with different character strengths. After all, allowing individuals to put their strengths at work should empower the individual and at the end the organization itself. Finally, physical activity enhancement programs might offer considerable positive work outcomes. PMID:25002853

  12. Recognition of Telugu characters using neural networks.

    PubMed

    Sukhaswami, M B; Seetharamulu, P; Pujari, A K

    1995-09-01

    The aim of the present work is to recognize printed and handwritten Telugu characters using artificial neural networks (ANNs). Earlier work on recognition of Telugu characters has been done using conventional pattern recognition techniques. We make an initial attempt here of using neural networks for recognition with the aim of improving upon earlier methods which do not perform effectively in the presence of noise and distortion in the characters. The Hopfield model of neural network working as an associative memory is chosen for recognition purposes initially. Due to limitation in the capacity of the Hopfield neural network, we propose a new scheme named here as the Multiple Neural Network Associative Memory (MNNAM). The limitation in storage capacity has been overcome by combining multiple neural networks which work in parallel. It is also demonstrated that the Hopfield network is suitable for recognizing noisy printed characters as well as handwritten characters written by different "hands" in a variety of styles. Detailed experiments have been carried out using several learning strategies and results are reported. It is shown here that satisfactory recognition is possible using the proposed strategy. A detailed preprocessing scheme of the Telugu characters from digitized documents is also described.

  13. A Developmental Study of Chinese Children's Word and Character Reading.

    PubMed

    Li, Tong; Wang, Ying; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine

    2017-02-01

    To investigate the relationship between Chinese children's character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children, younger children's character reading was more likely to rely on the word that the character appeared in as a component; younger children made more errors in confusing the correct character with words related to it. Younger children's greater rate of meaning-related errors also underscored the role of the word in their character learning. This study confirmed the important role of words in children's character learning, and provided evidence for a developmental pattern of character and word reading in Chinese.

  14. Aristotelian versus Virtue Ethical Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Curren, Randall

    2016-01-01

    This article examines some central aspects of Kristján Kristjánsson's book, "Aristotelian Character Education," beginning with the claim that contemporary virtue ethics provides methodological, ontological, epistemological, and moral foundations for Aristotelian character education. It considers three different formulations of what…

  15. A Review of Virtual Character's Emotion Model

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Liu, Zhen

    2008-11-01

    Emotional virtual characters are essential to digital entertainment, an emotion is related to virtual environment and a virtual character's inner variables, emotion model of virtual character is a hot topic in many fields, domain knowledge is very important for modeling emotion, and the current research of emotion expression in the world was also summarized, and some new research directions of emotion model are presented.

  16. Simple and efficient method for region of interest value extraction from picture archiving and communication system viewer with optical character recognition software and macro program.

    PubMed

    Lee, Young Han; Park, Eun Hae; Suh, Jin-Suck

    2015-01-01

    The objectives are: 1) to introduce a simple and efficient method for extracting region of interest (ROI) values from a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) viewer using optical character recognition (OCR) software and a macro program, and 2) to evaluate the accuracy of this method with a PACS workstation. This module was designed to extract the ROI values on the images of the PACS, and created as a development tool by using open-source OCR software and an open-source macro program. The principal processes are as follows: (1) capture a region of the ROI values as a graphic file for OCR, (2) recognize the text from the captured image by OCR software, (3) perform error-correction, (4) extract the values including area, average, standard deviation, max, and min values from the text, (5) reformat the values into temporary strings with tabs, and (6) paste the temporary strings into the spreadsheet. This principal process was repeated for the number of ROIs. The accuracy of this module was evaluated on 1040 recognitions from 280 randomly selected ROIs of the magnetic resonance images. The input times of ROIs were compared between conventional manual method and this extraction module-assisted input method. The module for extracting ROI values operated successfully using the OCR and macro programs. The values of the area, average, standard deviation, maximum, and minimum could be recognized and error-corrected with AutoHotkey-coded module. The average input times using the conventional method and the proposed module-assisted method were 34.97 seconds and 7.87 seconds, respectively. A simple and efficient method for ROI value extraction was developed with open-source OCR and a macro program. Accurate inputs of various numbers from ROIs can be extracted with this module. The proposed module could be applied to the next generation of PACS or existing PACS that have not yet been upgraded. Copyright © 2015 AUR. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. The influence of media characters on children's food choices.

    PubMed

    Kotler, Jennifer A; Schiffman, Jennifer M; Hanson, Katherine G

    2012-01-01

    Two experiments were conducted to assess the role of media characters in influencing children's food choices; the first focused on children's self-reported preference, whereas the second focused on actual choice. The results of the experiments suggest that popular characters can make a difference in encouraging children to select one food over another. In the first experiment, children were more likely to indicate a preference for one food over another when one was associated with characters that they liked and with whom they were familiar. This effect was particularly strong when a sugary or salty snack branded by a favored character was competing with a healthier option branded by an unknown character or no character. Alternatively, when children were asked to choose between a healthy food and a sugary or salty snack, branding of the healthy food with a favored character did not significantly change appeal of that healthy snack. However, when foods within the same category (i.e., 2 vegetables, 2 fruits, or 2 grains) were asked to compete against each other, character branding strongly influenced children's food choice. Findings from the second experiment suggest that children are more willing to try more pieces of a healthy food if a favored character, in comparison with an unknown character, is promoting that food.

  18. Developing Character and Values for Global Citizens: Analysis of Pre-Service Science Teachers' Moral Reasoning on Socioscientific Issues

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lee, Hyunju; Chang, Hyunsook; Choi, Kyunghee; Kim, Sung-Won; Zeidler, Dana L.

    2012-01-01

    Character and values are the essential driving forces that serve as general guides or points of reference for individuals to support decision-making and to act responsibly about global socioscientific issues (SSIs). Based on this assumption, we investigated to what extent pre-service science teachers (PSTs) of South Korea possess character and…

  19. Character feature integration of Chinese calligraphy and font

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Shi, Cao; Xiao, Jianguo; Jia, Wenhua; Xu, Canhui

    2013-01-01

    A framework is proposed in this paper to effectively generate a new hybrid character type by means of integrating local contour feature of Chinese calligraphy with structural feature of font in computer system. To explore traditional art manifestation of calligraphy, multi-directional spatial filter is applied for local contour feature extraction. Then the contour of character image is divided into sub-images. The sub-images in the identical position from various characters are estimated by Gaussian distribution. According to its probability distribution, the dilation operator and erosion operator are designed to adjust the boundary of font image. And then new Chinese character images are generated which possess both contour feature of artistical calligraphy and elaborate structural feature of font. Experimental results demonstrate the new characters are visually acceptable, and the proposed framework is an effective and efficient strategy to automatically generate the new hybrid character of calligraphy and font.

  20. 75 FR 64615 - National Character Counts Week, 2010

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2010-10-20

    ... fellow Americans has shaped our Nation's development and will continue to cast our future. As parents and educators, community leaders and mentors, we share the responsibility for instilling in our children this... we must instill in our children and grandchildren. The strength and character of our country have...

  1. Analysis of landscape character for visual resource management

    Treesearch

    Paul F. Anderson

    1979-01-01

    Description, classification and delineation of visual landscape character are initial steps in developing visual resource management plans. Landscape characteristics identified as key factors in visual landscape analysis include land cover/land use and landform. Landscape types, which are combinations of landform and surface features, were delineated for management...

  2. 47 CFR 10.430 - Character limit.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... 47 Telecommunication 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Character limit. 10.430 Section 10.430 Telecommunication FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION GENERAL COMMERCIAL MOBILE ALERT SYSTEM Alert Message Requirements § 10.430 Character limit. A CMAS Alert Message processed by a Participating CMS Provider must not...

  3. Character & Cane

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sartorius, Tara Cady

    2009-01-01

    They say first impressions can be deceiving. The difficulty of getting to know someone increases when that person is mostly fictional. Whatever the author writes is all readers can know. Whatever they read about the character is all they have to go on. Now take it another step back, and imagine a portrait drawing, painting or print of that…

  4. The psychobiological theory of temperament and character: comment on Farmer and Goldberg (2008).

    PubMed

    Cloninger, C Robert

    2008-09-01

    The revised Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-R) is the third stage of development of a widely used multiscale personality inventory that began with the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) and then the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). The author describes the third stage of the psychobiological theory of temperament and character; empirical tests of its predictions from genetics, neurobiology, psychosocial development, and clinical studies; and empirical findings that stimulated incremental changes in theory and test construction. Linear factor analysis is an inadequate method for evaluating the nonlinear and dynamical nature of the intrapsychic processes that influence human personality. Traits derived by factor analysis under the doubtful assumption of linearity are actually heterogeneous composites of rational and emotional processes that differ fundamentally in their underlying brain processes. The predictions of the psychobiological theory are strongly validated by extensive data from genetics, neurobiology, longitudinal studies of development, and clinical assessment. The distinction between temperament and character allows the TCI and TCI-R to outperform other popular personality inventories in distinguishing individuals with personality disorders from others and in describing the developmental path to well-being in terms of dynamical processes within the individual that are useful for both research and clinical practice. (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved.

  5. Identification Of Minangkabau Landscape Characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Asrina, M.; Gunawan, A.; Aris, Munandar

    2017-10-01

    Minangkabau is one of cultures in indonesia which occupies landscape intact. Landscape of Minangkabau have a very close relationship with the culture of the people. Uniqueness of Minangkabau culture and landscape forming an inseparable characterunity. The landscape is necessarily identified to know the inherent landscape characters. The objective of this study was to identify the character of the Minangkabau landscape characterizes its uniqueness. The study was conducted by using descriptive method comprised literature review and field observasion. Observed the landscape characters comprised two main features, they were major and minor features. Indetification of the features was conducted in two original areas (darek) of the Minangkabau traditional society. The research results showed that major features or natural features of the landscape were predominantly landform, landcover, and hidrology. All luhak (districts) of Minangkabau showed similar main features such as hill, canyon, lake, valley, and forest. The existence of natural features such as hills, canyon and valleys characterizes the nature of minangkabau landscape. Minor features formed by Minangkabau cultural society were agricultural land and settlement. Rumah gadang (big house) is one of famous minor features characterizes the Minangkabau culture. In addition, several historical artefacts of building and others structure may strengthen uniqueness of the Minangkabau landscape character, such as The royal palace, inscription, and tunnels.

  6. Mindfulness-oriented meditation improves self-related character scales in healthy individuals.

    PubMed

    Campanella, Fabio; Crescentini, Cristiano; Urgesi, Cosimo; Fabbro, Franco

    2014-07-01

    Previous studies have shown that mindfulness meditation may improve well-being in healthy individuals and be effective in the treatment of mental and neurological disorders. Here, we investigated the effects of an 8-week mindfulness-mediation program on the personality profiles of three groups of healthy individuals with no previous experience with meditation as compared to a control group not enrolled in any training. Personality profiles were obtained through the Temperament and Character Inventory (Cloninger et al., 1993). In the experimental groups, significant increments after the training were obtained in all the three character scales describing the levels of self maturity at the intrapersonal (Self-Directedness), interpersonal (Cooperativeness), and transpersonal (Self-Transcendence) levels. No changes were found in the control group. Strikingly, these effects were significant only in those groups who were engaged in consistent daily meditation practice but not in the group who attended the meditation training but were less consistent in home practice. Since higher scores in the character scales are associated to a lower risk of personality disorder, we propose that the increase of self maturity after the training may be an important mechanism for the effectiveness of mindfulness-oriented meditation in psychotherapeutic contexts. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. The SCARLET development program

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Allen, D.M.; Piszczor, M.F. Jr.

    1995-12-31

    The paper describes the SCARLET program that has developed an exciting new type of spacecraft solar array. The program includes design, fabrication, testing, and integration to the Comet satellite and has been accomplished in a half year time period. Background of the program, an overview of satellite integration benefits and concerns for concentrator arrays, and a summary of the program development process and rationale arc included. The history making first SCARLET array will be flown on the Comet spacecraft which will be launched on a Conestoga launch vehicle from Wallops Island in July 1995.

  8. Computer-Generated, Three-Dimensional Character Animation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Van Baerle, Susan Lynn

    This master's thesis begins by discussing the differences between 3-D computer animation of solid three-dimensional, or monolithic, objects, and the animation of characters, i.e., collections of movable parts with soft pliable surfaces. Principles from two-dimensional character animation that can be transferred to three-dimensional character…

  9. Improving Social Competence through Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cheung, Chau-kiu; Lee, Tak-yan

    2010-01-01

    Character education is supposed to meet early adolescents' need (i.e., eighth and ninth graders) for strengthening social competence. Moreover, adolescents' engagement in character education is integral to their learning from the education. The engagement and deficit in social competence are therefore plausible conditions for the effectiveness of…

  10. Virtue and Character in Higher Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carr, David

    2017-01-01

    Despite much recent concern with the possibilities of moral character education in elementary schooling and professional training, the university and higher educational prospects of such education have only lately received much attention. This paper begins by considering--and largely endorsing--the general case for character education in contexts…

  11. The dark cube: dark and light character profiles.

    PubMed

    Garcia, Danilo; Rosenberg, Patricia

    2016-01-01

    Background. Research addressing distinctions and similarities between people's malevolent character traits (i.e., the Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has detected inconsistent linear associations to temperament traits. Additionally, these dark traits seem to have a common core expressed as uncooperativeness. Hence, some researchers suggest that the dark traits are best represented as one global construct (i.e., the unification argument) rather than as ternary construct (i.e., the uniqueness argument). We put forward the dark cube (cf. Cloninger's character cube) comprising eight dark profiles that can be used to compare individuals who differ in one dark character trait while holding the other two constant. Our aim was to investigate in which circumstances individuals who are high in each one of the dark character traits differ in Cloninger's "light" character traits: self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. We also investigated if people's dark character profiles were associated to their light character profiles. Method. A total of 997 participants recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) responded to the Short Dark Triad and the Short Character Inventory. Participants were allocated to eight different dark profiles and eight light profiles based on their scores in each of the traits and any possible combination of high and low scores. We used three-way interaction regression analyses and t-tests to investigate differences in light character traits between individuals with different dark profiles. As a second step, we compared the individuals' dark profile with her/his character profile using an exact cell-wise analysis conducted in the ROPstat software (http://www.ropstat.com). Results. Individuals who expressed high levels of Machiavellianism and those who expressed high levels of psychopathy also expressed low self-directedness and low cooperativeness. Individuals with high levels of narcissism, in contrast

  12. The Potential Role of Schools and Teachers in the Character Development of Young People in England: Perspectives from Pupils and Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    See, Beng Huat; Arthur, James

    2011-01-01

    This paper considers the potential role of schools and teachers in the character development of pupils aged 10-19. It is based largely on the views of 5207 pupils in England, drawn from 25 state schools, including five primaries. Data include document contents, interviews and surveys with pupils and their teachers. Pupil accounts suggest that…

  13. How familiar characters influence children's judgments about information and products.

    PubMed

    Danovitch, Judith H; Mills, Candice M

    2014-12-01

    Children are exposed to advertisements and products that incorporate familiar characters, such as Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder, virtually from birth. How does the presence of these characters influence children's judgments about information and products? Three experiments (N=125) explored how 4-year-olds evaluate messages from familiar characters and how their trust in a familiar character's testimony relates to their product preferences. Children endorsed objective and subjective claims made by a familiar character more often than those made by a perceptually similar but unfamiliar character even in situations where they had evidence that the familiar character was unreliable. Children also preferred low-quality products bearing a familiar character's image over high-quality products without a character image up to 74% of the time (whereas control groups preferred the low-quality products less than 6% of the time when they did not include a character image). These findings suggest that young children are powerfully influenced by familiar characters encountered in the media, leaving them vulnerable to advertising messages and clouding their judgments about products. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Incorporating Character Education into the Early Childhood Degree Program: The Need, and One Department's Response

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Priest, Cheryl

    2007-01-01

    Several major goals of early childhood professionals are to help children learn to work with others, care for others, verbalize feelings, support friends, show kindness and exhibit other character skills and traits. When these life skills are lacking, it affects the ways in which children interact with one another and form relationships with peers…

  15. The Effects of Single and Dual Coded Multimedia Instructional Methods on Chinese Character Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wang, Ling

    2013-01-01

    Learning Chinese characters is a difficult task for adult English native speakers due to the significant differences between the Chinese and English writing system. The visuospatial properties of Chinese characters have inspired the development of instructional methods using both verbal and visual information based on the Dual Coding Theory. This…

  16. "They may be pixels, but they're MY pixels:" developing a metric of character attachment in role-playing video games.

    PubMed

    Lewis, Melissa L; Weber, René; Bowman, Nicholas David

    2008-08-01

    This paper proposes a new and reliable metric for measuring character attachment (CA), the connection felt by a video game player toward a video game character. Results of construct validity analyses indicate that the proposed CA scale has a significant relationship with self-esteem, addiction, game enjoyment, and time spent playing games; all of these relationships are predicted by theory. Additionally, CA levels for role-playing games differ significantly from CA levels of other character-driven games.

  17. The optimization of headmaster's role in actualizing character education at vocational private high school

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wahyono, Irawan; Widodo, Joko; Sumaryanto, Totok

    2018-03-01

    Nowadays many parties strive for intensity increase and character education implementation quality in formal education institutions. Those demands are based on the developed social phenomena which is the juvenile delinquency, such as mass brawl and other moral decadence cases. Character education can be given in school, but it requires cooperation of all school residents to realize. One of which is headmaster's role for character education in school. The problem of this research is about how headmaster optimizes his role in realizing character education in school. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze headmaster's optimization role to realize character education in vocational high school (SMK). This research uses qualitative descriptive. Data are collected by interview and documentation then analyzed by using data triangulation. The result of this research shows that headmaster must do his role as an educator, manager, administrator, supervisor, leader, entrepreneur and climate creator. By maximizing his role, character education can be started and will be very useful for students after they graduate and continue to work.

  18. Temperament, character and anxiety sensitivity in panic disorder: a high-risk study.

    PubMed

    Perna, Giampaolo; di Pasquale, Danila; Grassi, Massimiliano; Vanni, Giovanna; Bellodi, Laura; Caldirola, Daniela

    2012-01-01

    Adult patients with panic disorder (PD) show high levels of harm avoidance and anxiety sensitivity. Peculiar temperament profiles and high anxiety sensitivity have been proposed as developmental risk factors for PD in adult age. Since familial-genetic influences play a role both in PD and in anxiety sensitivity and temperament profiles, this study aims to investigate the possible association between family history of PD and peculiar temperament-character profiles or high anxiety sensitivity in offspring of patients with PD. Thirty-four children of patients with PD with/without agoraphobia and 30 children of healthy subjects were compared. Temperament and character dimensions and anxiety sensitivity levels of children were obtained by the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory and the Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index. Children of patients with PD and children of healthy subjects differed neither in temperament and character dimensions nor in anxiety sensitivity levels. Our results show that family history of PD is not associated with peculiar temperament and character profiles or high anxiety sensitivity in children, suggesting that these factors may not be early expressions of familial vulnerability to PD. Since the sample is small and the study has a cross-sectional design, longitudinal studies in larger samples are warranted to confirm these findings and to clarify the role of anxiety sensitivity and temperament-character dimensions in the development of PD. Copyright © 2012 S. Karger AG, Basel.

  19. First Course in Japanese: Character Workbook.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Niwa, Tamako

    This character workbook is an introduction to Japanese writing designed to be used in conjunction with Parts One and Two of this introductory course in Japanese. All the "hiragana", several "katakana", and 88 Japanese characters are introduced in this text. The workbook, consisting of 30 lessons, is divided into three parts.…

  20. Do Rural Schools Need Character Education?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reynolds, Janice Carner

    Studies suggest that the challenge of violence in public schools can be met through character education, whether by providing a school culture in which core values are practiced or some form of moral training (indoctrination). To assess the need for character education in rural schools, small-school superintendents and board members in central…

  1. AN OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION RESEARCH AND DEMONSTRATION PROJECT.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    1968

    RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF PROTOTYPE LIBRARY SYSTEMS WHICH UTILIZE OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION INPUT HAS CENTERED AROUND OPTICAL PAGE READERS AND DOCUMENT READERS. THE STATE-OF-THE-ART OF BOTH THESE OPTICAL SCANNERS IS SUCH THAT BOTH ARE ACCEPTABLE FOR LIBRARY INPUT PREPARATION. A DEMONSTRATION PROJECT UTILIZING THE TWO TYPES OF READERS, SINCE…

  2. Physical Education Teachers' Views about Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tutkun, Erkut; Görgüt, Ilyas; Erdemir, Ibrahim

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to find out the views of teachers of physical education about how they define character education, whether they think national education curriculum and the curriculum of private schools are suitable for character education and whether they think character education can be applied in physical education lessons. Case…

  3. SP-100 program developments

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Schnyer, A. D.; Sholtis, J. A., Jr.; Wahlquist, E. J.; Verga, R. L.; Wiley, R. L.

    1985-01-01

    An update is provided on the status of the Sp-100 Space Reactor Power Program. The historical background that led to the program is reviewed and the overall program objectives and development approach are discussed. The results of the mission studies identify applications for which space nuclear power is desirable and even essential. Results of a series of technology feasibility experiments are expected to significantly improve the earlier technology data base for engineering development. The conclusion is reached that a nuclear reactor space power system can be developed by the early 1990s to meet emerging mission performance requirements.

  4. Genetic diversity in soybean genotypes using phenotypic characters and enzymatic markers.

    PubMed

    Zambiazzi, E V; Bruzi, A T; Sales, A P; Borges, I M M; Guilherme, S R; Zuffo, A M; Lima, J G; Ribeiro, F O; Mendes, A E S; Godinho, S H M; Carvalho, M L M

    2017-09-21

    The objective of this study was to evaluate the genetic diversity of soybean cultivars by adopting phenotypic traits and enzymatic markers, the relative contribution of agronomic traits to diversity, as well as diversity between the level of technology used in soybean cultivars and genetic breeding programs in which cultivars were inserted. The experiments were conducted on the field at the Center for Scientific and Technological Development in crop-livestock production and the Electrophoresis Laboratory of Lavras Federal University. The agronomic traits adopted were grain yield, plant height, first legume insertion, plant lodging, the mass of one thousand seeds, and days for complete maturation, in which the Euclidean distance, grouped by Tocher and UPGMA criteria, was obtained. After electrophorese gels for enzymatic systems, dehydrogenase alcohol, esterase, superoxide dismutase, and peroxidase were performed. The genetic similarity estimative was also obtained between genotypes by the Jaccard coefficient with subsequent grouping by the UPGMA method. The formation of two groups was shown using phenotypic characters in the genetic diversity study and individually discriminating the cultivar 97R73 RR. The character with the greatest contribution to the genetic divergence was grain yield with contribution higher than 90.0%. To obtain six different groups, individually discriminating the cultivars CG 8166 RR, FPS Jupiter RR, and BRS MG 780 RR, enzymatic markers were used. Cultivars carrying the RR technology presented more divergence than conventional cultivars and IPRO cultivars.

  5. Character strengths, social anxiety, and physiological stress reactivity.

    PubMed

    Li, Tingting; Duan, Wenjie; Guo, Pengfei

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the effects of character strengths on the physiological reactivity to social anxiety induced by the Trier Social Stress Task were reported. On the basis of their scores in the Chinese Virtues Questionnaire, 30 college students were assigned to either high- ( n  = 15) or low-character-strength ( n  = 15) groups. Their psychological stress and physiological data across three laboratory stages (namely, baseline, stress exposure, and post-stress) were collected. Results indicated that individuals with high character strengths exhibited rapid cardiovascular recovery from baseline to post-stress even if high- and low-character-strength groups showed similar patterns of cardiovascular arousal in response to the stress at baseline and stress exposure. These results prove that character strengths are stress-defense factors that allow for psychological and physiological adaptation to stress.

  6. Cultivating characters (moral value) through internalization strategy in science classroom

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ibrahim, M.; Abadi

    2018-01-01

    It is still in a crucial debate that characters play an important learning outcome to be realized by design. So far, most people think that characters were reached as nurturance effect with the assumption that students who are knowledgeable and skillful will have good characters automatically. Lately, obtained evidence that this assumption is not true. Characters should be taught deliberately or by design. This study was designed to culture elementary school students’ characters through science classroom. The teaching-learning process was conducted to facilitate and bridge the students from the known (concrete images: Science phenomena) to the unknown (abstract ideas: characters: care, and tolerance. Characters were observed five weeks before and after the intervention. Data were analyzed from observation of 24 students in internalization strategy-based courses. Qualitative and quantitative data suggested that the internalization strategy that use of science phenomena to represent abstract ideas (characters) in science classroom positively cultivating characters.

  7. Development of moral character in the People's Republic of China: Some implications for educators

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hu, Xiaolu; Korllos, Thomas S.

    1995-01-01

    This paper presents data gathered from a sample of mainland Chinese university students to test some assumptions about social control theory. According to theory dating back to Durkheim, the most important mechanism for exerting social control in a population is the process of development of moral character. While political socialization is the dominant influence in the People's Republic of China, the family, the media, and particularly the educational system are used to play important roles in the creation of model members of that society. Findings from questions on morality, modernity and the influence of schooling indicate the formation of strong moral views and the apparent absorption of state values. While the limitations of the data do not permit wider generalization, the results suggest the success of the state in transferring central values to at the least the younger age group.

  8. A Knowledge-based Multimedia System to Support the Teaching and Learning of Chinese Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ki, W.; And Others

    A current project is underway to develop a multimedia system that would support the teaching and learning of Chinese characters, as well as provide a platform for conducting research into the cognitive aspects of Chinese language acquisition. Although the number of commonly used Chinese characters amounts to thousands, there are many structural…

  9. Character and Local Wisdom-Based Instructional Model of Bahasa Indonesia in Vocational High Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anggraini, Purwati; Kusniarti, Tuti

    2017-01-01

    This research aimed at establishing a character and local wisdom-based instructional model of Bahasa Indonesia. The learning model based on local wisdom literature is very important to prepared, because this model can enrich the knowledge and develop the character of students. Meanwhile, the textbook can broaden the student teachers about the…

  10. Prediction of natural disasters basing of chrono-and-information field characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Sapunov, Valentin

    2013-04-01

    Living organisms are able to predict some future events particular catastrophic incidents. This is adaptive characters producing by evolution. The more energy produces incident the more possibility to predict one. Wild animals escaped natural hazards including tsunami (e.g. extremal tsunami in Asia December 2004). Living animals are able to predict strong phenomena of obscure nature. For example majority of animals escaped Tungus catastrophe taking place in Siberia at 1908. Wild animals are able to predict nuclear weapon experiences. The obscure characters are not typical for human, but they are fixed under probability 15%. Such were summarized by L.Vasiliev (1961). Effective theory describing such a characters is absent till now. N.Kozyrev (1991) suggested existence of unknown physical field (but gravitation and electro magnetic). The field was named "time" or "chrono". Some characters of the field appeared to be object of physical experiment. Kozyrev suggested specific role of the field for function of living organisms. Transition of biological information throw space (telepathy) and time (proscopy) may be based on characters of such a field. Hence physical chrono-and-information field is under consideration. Animals are more familiar with such a field than human. Evolutionary process experienced with possibility of extremal development of contact with such a field using highest primates. This mode of evolution appeared to stay obscure producing probable species "Wildman" (Bigfoot). Specific adaptive fitches suggest impossibility to study of such a species by usual ecological approaches. The perspective way for study of mysterious phenomena of physic is researches of this field characters.

  11. Development of an Interactive Computer Program to Produce Body Description Data

    DTIC Science & Technology

    1983-07-01

    arbitrary and has varied over the time that the CVS Program and the ATB Model have been in existence. Program GOOD produces data describing an upper torso...N NN NfU NJ JANNJ NN N5~SA NJN N a~mn ain itn ft atK 0 ,0 9a fK C ca I n k0 rC 91 01 tol s 6, -Inb v v P w Dvf 4oa 0 0 0 IS t. faa 0 o In - v - allT...NAMES/ SUSTYP(4),-SEGLAB(1 5)*J.JTLA9C¶14),PLTSY4!(29), 014NIN(-1 :31 )PTTLEPUNlITS( 3,-1:1) REAL MEAN(C:lp2:3)p STDEVCO:lp2: 3) CHARACTER SU83TYP*20

  12. Character combinations, convergence and diversification in ectoparasitic arthropods.

    PubMed

    Poulin, Robert

    2009-08-01

    Different lineages of organisms diversify over time at different rates, in part as a consequence of the characteristics of the species in these lineages. Certain suites of traits possessed by species within a clade may determine rates of diversification, with some particular combinations of characters acting synergistically to either limit or promote diversification; the most successful combinations may also emerge repeatedly in different clades via convergent evolution. Here, the association between species characters and diversification is investigated amongst 21 independent lineages of arthropods ectoparasitic on vertebrate hosts. Using nine characters (each with two to four states) that capture general life history strategy, transmission mode and host-parasite interaction, each lineage was described by the set of character states it possesses. The results show, firstly, that most possible pair-wise combinations of character states have been adopted at least once, sometimes several times independently by different lineages; thus, ectoparasitic arthropods have explored most of the life history character space available to them. Secondly, lineages possessing commonly observed combinations of character states are not necessarily the ones that have experienced the highest rates of diversification (measured as a clade's species-per-genus ratio). Thirdly, some specific traits are associated with higher rates of diversification. Using more than one host per generation, laying eggs away from the host and intermediate levels of fecundity are features that appear to have promoted diversification. These findings indicate that particular species characters may be evolutionary drivers of diversity, whose effects could also apply in other taxa.

  13. The dark cube: dark and light character profiles

    PubMed Central

    2016-01-01

    Background. Research addressing distinctions and similarities between people’s malevolent character traits (i.e., the Dark Triad: Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy) has detected inconsistent linear associations to temperament traits. Additionally, these dark traits seem to have a common core expressed as uncooperativeness. Hence, some researchers suggest that the dark traits are best represented as one global construct (i.e., the unification argument) rather than as ternary construct (i.e., the uniqueness argument). We put forward the dark cube (cf. Cloninger’s character cube) comprising eight dark profiles that can be used to compare individuals who differ in one dark character trait while holding the other two constant. Our aim was to investigate in which circumstances individuals who are high in each one of the dark character traits differ in Cloninger’s “light” character traits: self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. We also investigated if people’s dark character profiles were associated to their light character profiles. Method. A total of 997 participants recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) responded to the Short Dark Triad and the Short Character Inventory. Participants were allocated to eight different dark profiles and eight light profiles based on their scores in each of the traits and any possible combination of high and low scores. We used three-way interaction regression analyses and t-tests to investigate differences in light character traits between individuals with different dark profiles. As a second step, we compared the individuals’ dark profile with her/his character profile using an exact cell-wise analysis conducted in the ROPstat software (http://www.ropstat.com). Results. Individuals who expressed high levels of Machiavellianism and those who expressed high levels of psychopathy also expressed low self-directedness and low cooperativeness. Individuals with high levels of

  14. Skipping of Chinese characters does not rely on word-based processing.

    PubMed

    Lin, Nan; Angele, Bernhard; Hua, Huimin; Shen, Wei; Zhou, Junyi; Li, Xingshan

    2018-02-01

    Previous eye-movement studies have indicated that people tend to skip extremely high-frequency words in sentence reading, such as "the" in English and "/de" in Chinese. Two alternative hypotheses have been proposed to explain how this frequent skipping happens in Chinese reading: one assumes that skipping happens when the preview has been fully identified at the word level (word-based skipping); the other assumes that skipping happens whenever the preview character is easy to identify regardless of whether lexical processing has been completed or not (character-based skipping). Using the gaze-contingent display change paradigm, we examined the two hypotheses by substituting the preview of the third character of a four-character Chinese word with the high-frequency Chinese character "/de", which should disrupt the ongoing word-level processing. The character-based skipping hypothesis predicts that this manipulation will enhance the skipping probability of the target character (i.e., the third character of the target word), because the character "/de" has much higher character frequency than the original character. The word-based skipping hypothesis instead predicts a reduction of the skipping probability of the target character because the presence of the character "/de" is lexically infelicitous at word level. The results supported the character-based skipping hypothesis, indicating that in Chinese reading the decision of skipping a character can be made before integrating it into a word.

  15. Iterative cross section sequence graph for handwritten character segmentation.

    PubMed

    Dawoud, Amer

    2007-08-01

    The iterative cross section sequence graph (ICSSG) is an algorithm for handwritten character segmentation. It expands the cross section sequence graph concept by applying it iteratively at equally spaced thresholds. The iterative thresholding reduces the effect of information loss associated with image binarization. ICSSG preserves the characters' skeletal structure by preventing the interference of pixels that causes flooding of adjacent characters' segments. Improving the structural quality of the characters' skeleton facilitates better feature extraction and classification, which improves the overall performance of optical character recognition (OCR). Experimental results showed significant improvements in OCR recognition rates compared to other well-established segmentation algorithms.

  16. Head capsule characters in the Hymenoptera and their phylogenetic implications

    PubMed Central

    Vilhelmsen, Lars

    2011-01-01

    Abstract The head capsule of a taxon sample of three outgroup and 86 ingroup taxa is examined for characters of possible phylogenetic significance within Hymenoptera. 21 morphological characters are illustrated and scored, and their character evolution explored by mapping them onto a phylogeny recently produced from a large morphological data set. Many of the characters are informative and display unambiguous changes. Most of the character support demonstrated is supportive at the superfamily or family level. In contrast, only few characters corroborate deeper nodes in the phylogeny of Hymenoptera. PMID:22259288

  17. Character strengths, social anxiety, and physiological stress reactivity

    PubMed Central

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the effects of character strengths on the physiological reactivity to social anxiety induced by the Trier Social Stress Task were reported. On the basis of their scores in the Chinese Virtues Questionnaire, 30 college students were assigned to either high- (n = 15) or low-character-strength (n = 15) groups. Their psychological stress and physiological data across three laboratory stages (namely, baseline, stress exposure, and post-stress) were collected. Results indicated that individuals with high character strengths exhibited rapid cardiovascular recovery from baseline to post-stress even if high- and low-character-strength groups showed similar patterns of cardiovascular arousal in response to the stress at baseline and stress exposure. These results prove that character strengths are stress-defense factors that allow for psychological and physiological adaptation to stress. PMID:28584721

  18. Representations of deaf characters in children's picture books.

    PubMed

    Golos, Debbie B; Moses, Annie M

    2011-01-01

    Picture books can influence how children perceive people of different backgrounds, including people with disabilities whose cultures differ from their own. Researchers have examined the portrayal of multicultural characters with disabilities in children's literature. However, few have specifically considered the portrayal of deaf characters, despite increased inclusion of deaf characters in children's literature over the past two decades. The present study analyzed the portrayal of deaf characters in picture books for children ages 4-8 years. A content analysis of 20 children's picture books was conducted in which the books were analyzed for messages linked to pathological and cultural categories. Results indicated that these books did not portray Deaf characters from a cultural perspective but, rather, highlighted aspects of deafness as a medical condition, one that requires fixing and that perpetuates stereotypes of deafness as a disability.

  19. Influence of a Character-Based App on Children's Learning of Nutritional Information: Should Apps Be Served with a Side of Media Characters?

    PubMed

    Putnam, Marisa M; Richmond, Elana M; Brunick, Kaitlin L; Wright, Charlotte A; Calvert, Sandra L

    2018-04-01

    Childhood obesity is a health issue in the United States, associated with marketing practices in which media characters are often used to sell unhealthy products. This study examined exposure to a socially contingent touch-screen gaming app, which replied immediately, reliably, and accurately to children's actions. Children's recall of nutritional content and their liking of the character were assessed. Four- and five-year-old children (N = 114) received no-exposure, single-exposure, or repeated-exposure to a character-based iPad app rewarding healthy and penalizing unhealthy behaviors. Children reported how much they liked the character and recalled healthy and unhealthy items from the app. An ordinary least squares regression was conducted on how much children liked the character by condition. Poisson regressions were conducted on the number of items recalled by condition alone, and in an interacted model of treatment condition by liking the character. Children liked the character more in the repeated app-exposure condition than in the control group (P = 0.018). Children in the repeated and single app-exposure conditions recalled more healthy (P < 0.001) and unhealthy (P < 0.001) items than the control group. Within treatment conditions, liking the character increased recall of healthy items in the single app-exposure compared to the repeated app-exposure condition (P = 0.005). Results revealed that repeated exposure increased children's learning of nutritional information and liking of the character. The results contribute to our understanding of how to deliver effective nutrition information to young children in a new venue, a gaming app.

  20. Temperament and character effects on late adolescents' well-being and emotional-behavioural difficulties.

    PubMed

    Crescentini, Cristiano; Garzitto, Marco; Paschetto, Andrea; Brambilla, Paolo; Fabbro, Franco

    2018-01-01

    Research on adults points to personality as a crucial determinant of well-being. The present study investigates the question of personality's relation to well-being and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence. We assessed the role of temperament and character (Temperament and Character Inventory, TCI-125), on psychological well-being (PWB; Psychological Well-Being scales), subjective well-being (SWB; Positive and Negative Affect, PA and NA, respectively), and psychosocial adjustment (emotional-behavioural problems measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for Adolescents, SDQ-A), in 72 Italian late adolescents (aged 17.5 ± 0.75). Multiple regressions were conducted to predict PWB, SWB, and SDQ-A scores using TCI-125 scales as predictors. Character maturity, and in particular Self-Directedness, had a widespread protective effect on well-being and psychosocial adjustment, while different strengths and emotional-behavioural difficulties were associated to specific temperamental and character traits. For example, Harm-Avoidance and Novelty-Seeking positively predicted internalized and externalized problems, respectively. The present results suggest the usefulness of continuing to evaluate temperament and, in particular, character dimensions in investigations focused on adolescents' well-being and psychosocial functioning, especially in the contexts of potential interventions aimed at enhancing development of adolescents' character dimensions at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal levels.

  1. Temperament and character effects on late adolescents’ well-being and emotional-behavioural difficulties

    PubMed Central

    Garzitto, Marco; Paschetto, Andrea; Brambilla, Paolo; Fabbro, Franco

    2018-01-01

    Background Research on adults points to personality as a crucial determinant of well-being. The present study investigates the question of personality’s relation to well-being and psychosocial adjustment in adolescence. Methods We assessed the role of temperament and character (Temperament and Character Inventory, TCI-125), on psychological well-being (PWB; Psychological Well-Being scales), subjective well-being (SWB; Positive and Negative Affect, PA and NA, respectively), and psychosocial adjustment (emotional-behavioural problems measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for Adolescents, SDQ-A), in 72 Italian late adolescents (aged 17.5 ± 0.75). Multiple regressions were conducted to predict PWB, SWB, and SDQ-A scores using TCI-125 scales as predictors. Results Character maturity, and in particular Self-Directedness, had a widespread protective effect on well-being and psychosocial adjustment, while different strengths and emotional-behavioural difficulties were associated to specific temperamental and character traits. For example, Harm-Avoidance and Novelty-Seeking positively predicted internalized and externalized problems, respectively. Discussion The present results suggest the usefulness of continuing to evaluate temperament and, in particular, character dimensions in investigations focused on adolescents’ well-being and psychosocial functioning, especially in the contexts of potential interventions aimed at enhancing development of adolescents’ character dimensions at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal levels. PMID:29607254

  2. Progress report: chemical character of surface waters in the Devils Lake Basin, North Dakota

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Swenson, Herbert A.

    1950-01-01

    Devils Lake in northeastern North Dakota was at one time the most popular summer resort in the state. With decline in lake level the lake has become a shallow body pf vary saline water, which scenic value and recreational appeal completely destroyed. Under the Missouri River development program, it is proposed to restore the lake level to an altitude of 1,425 feet by diversion of Missouri River water. The chemical character of the water in Devils Lake and in other surface bodies in Devils Lake Basin is determined from the analyses of 95 samples. The physical and chemical properties of lake bed deposits are also shown. Lake water in the basin vary considerable in both concentration and composition, ranging from fresh bicarbonate waters of 300 parts per million dissolved solids to sulfate waters of over 100,000 parts per million of soluble salts. Twenty-four samples indicates the chemical character of water in the Red River of the North and its tributaries. The probable concentration of dissolved solids in water of Devils Lake at altitude 1,425 feet has been estimated as ranging from 3,000 to 7,600 parts per million. Final concentration will largely depend upon the percentage of deposited salts reentering solution and the quality of the inflow water. The possible effects of lake effluents on downstream developments, with particular reference to sanitation and pollution problems, are also discussed in this report.

  3. A thermogenic secondary sexual character in male sea lamprey

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Chung-Davidson, Yu-Wen; Priess, M. Cody; Yeh, Chu-Yin; Brant, Cory O.; Johnson, Nicholas S.; Li, Ke; Nanlohy, Kaben G.; Bryan, Mara B.; Brown, C. Titus; Choi, Jongeun; Li, Weiming

    2013-01-01

    Secondary sexual characters in animals are exaggerated ornaments or weapons for intrasexual competition. Unexpectedly, we found that a male secondary sexual character in sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus ) is a thermogenic adipose tissue that instantly increases its heat production during sexual encounters. This secondary sexual character, developed in front of the anterior dorsal fin of mature males, is a swollen dorsal ridge known as the ‘rope’ tissue. It contains nerve bundles, multivacuolar adipocytes and interstitial cells packed with small lipid droplets and mitochondria with dense and highly organized cristae. The fatty acid composition of the rope tissue is rich in unsaturated fatty acids. The cytochrome c oxidase activity is high but the ATP concentration is very low in the mitochondria of the rope tissue compared with those of the gill and muscle tissues. The rope tissue temperature immediately rose up to 0.3°C when the male encountered a conspecific. Mature males generated more heat in the rope and muscle tissues when presented with a mature female than when presented with a male (paired t-test, P-3 more heat than the muscle in 10 min. Transcriptome analyses revealed that genes involved in fat cell differentiation are upregulated whereas those involved in oxidative-phosphorylation-coupled ATP synthesis are downregulated in the rope tissue compared with the gill and muscle tissues. Sexually mature male sea lamprey possess the only known thermogenic secondary sexual character that shows differential heat generation toward individual conspecifics.

  4. Program Development and External Assessment.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Minnis, D. L.

    Although the development of new models is essential to the improvement of teacher preparation programs, the California system of accreditation of teacher education programs seems to hinder innovative program development and evaluation. External assessment in California is based on a discrepancy model which works best when applied to static…

  5. The Inaccuracy of National Character Stereotypes

    PubMed Central

    McCrae, Robert R.; Chan, Wayne; Jussim, Lee; De Fruyt, Filip; Löckenhoff, Corinna E.; De Bolle, Marleen; Costa, Paul T.; Hřebíčková, Martina; Graf, Sylvie; Realo, Anu; Allik, Jüri; Nakazato, Katsuharu; Shimonaka, Yoshiko; Yik, Michelle; Ficková, Emília; Brunner-Sciarra, Marina; Reátigui, Norma; de Figueora, Nora Leibovich; Schmidt, Vanina; Ahn, Chang-kyu; Ahn, Hyun-nie; Aguilar-Vafaie, Maria E.; Siuta, Jerzy; Szmigielska, Barbara; Cain, Thomas R.; Crawford, Jarret T.; Mastor, Khairul Anwar; Rolland, Jean-Pierre; Nansubuga, Florence; Miramontez, Daniel R.; Benet-Martínez, Veronica; Rossier, Jérôme; Bratko, Denis; Marušić, Iris; Halberstadt, Jamin; Yamaguchi, Mami; Knežević, Goran; Purić, Danka; Martin, Thomas A.; Gheorghiu, Mirona; Smith, Peter B.; Barbaranelli, Claudio; Wang, Lei; Shakespeare-Finch, Jane; Lima, Margarida P.; Klinkosz, Waldemar; Sekowski, Andrzej; Alcalay, Lidia; Simonetti, Franco; Avdeyeva, Tatyana V.; Pramila, V. S.; Terracciano, Antonio

    2013-01-01

    Consensual stereotypes of some groups are relatively accurate, whereas others are not. Previous work suggesting that national character stereotypes are inaccurate has been criticized on several grounds. In this article we (a) provide arguments for the validity of assessed national mean trait levels as criteria for evaluating stereotype accuracy; and (b) report new data on national character in 26 cultures from descriptions (N=3,323) of the typical male or female adolescent, adult, or old person in each. The average ratings were internally consistent and converged with independent stereotypes of the typical culture member, but were weakly related to objective assessments of personality. We argue that this conclusion is consistent with the broader literature on the inaccuracy of national character stereotypes. PMID:24187394

  6. Influence of a Character-Based App on Children's Learning of Nutritional Information: Should Apps Be Served with a Side of Media Characters?

    PubMed Central

    Richmond, Elana M.; Brunick, Kaitlin L.; Wright, Charlotte A.; Calvert, Sandra L.

    2018-01-01

    Abstract Objective: Childhood obesity is a health issue in the United States, associated with marketing practices in which media characters are often used to sell unhealthy products. This study examined exposure to a socially contingent touch-screen gaming app, which replied immediately, reliably, and accurately to children's actions. Children's recall of nutritional content and their liking of the character were assessed. Materials and Methods: Four- and five-year-old children (N = 114) received no-exposure, single-exposure, or repeated-exposure to a character-based iPad app rewarding healthy and penalizing unhealthy behaviors. Children reported how much they liked the character and recalled healthy and unhealthy items from the app. An ordinary least squares regression was conducted on how much children liked the character by condition. Poisson regressions were conducted on the number of items recalled by condition alone, and in an interacted model of treatment condition by liking the character. Results: Children liked the character more in the repeated app-exposure condition than in the control group (P = 0.018). Children in the repeated and single app-exposure conditions recalled more healthy (P < 0.001) and unhealthy (P < 0.001) items than the control group. Within treatment conditions, liking the character increased recall of healthy items in the single app-exposure compared to the repeated app-exposure condition (P = 0.005). Conclusions: Results revealed that repeated exposure increased children's learning of nutritional information and liking of the character. The results contribute to our understanding of how to deliver effective nutrition information to young children in a new venue, a gaming app. PMID:29364706

  7. What Does Leaders' Character Add to Transformational Leadership?

    PubMed

    Liborius, Patrick

    2017-04-03

    The influence of leaders' character (e.g., integrity, humility/forgiveness) has rarely been examined in leadership research. The current investigation focused on the impact of integrity and humility/forgiveness on both followers' perceptions of leaders' worthiness of being followed (WBF) and stress. Results from a scenario experiment (n = 347) and a field study (n = 110) indicated that these aspects incrementally predict WBF above and beyond the impact of transformational leadership. Similar results were found concerning followers' stress with the exception of leader integrity in the field study. According to relative importance analyses, integrity and transformational leadership predict WBF equally well. The results have conceivable implications for human resources (personnel selection and development). Future research should examine additional outcome variables that are affected by certain leader characteristics as well as potential negative effects of the examined character aspects.

  8. [Temperament and character traits measured by temperament and character inventory (TCI) by Cloninger in patients with ischemic heart disease].

    PubMed

    Stetkiewicz-Lewandowicz, Agnieszka; Borkowska, Alina; Sobów, Tomasz

    2014-09-01

    Ischemic heart disease (IHD) is one of the main causes of death and disability worldwide. This situation stimulates research of its ethiopathogenesis. The role of psychosocial factors like depression, stress is underlined. Also personality traits play an important role in this process. The aim of study was to assess temperament and character traits in a group of patients with IHD. Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was used to determine temperament and character dimensions. Temperament traits: harm avoidance (HA), reward dependence (RD), novelty seeking (NS), persistence (P), character traits: cooperativeness (C), self-directedness (SD), self-transcendence (ST). Each of these traits has a varying number of subscales. The dimensions are determined from a 240-item questionnaire. Patients with IHD obtained higher scores in HA dimension of the TCI questionnaire. The study group achieved lower score in a subscale of NS called extravagance (NS3), and higher score of C dimension called compassion (C4). The intensity of temperament and character traits are different in a group of patients with IHD in comparison with the control group especially in dimensions of HA, NS3 and C4. Variables that differentiated the study group were also sex, age and years of education.

  9. [Applications and spproved projects of general program, young scientist fund and fund for less developed region of national natural science funds in discipline of Chinese materia medica, NSFC in 2011].

    PubMed

    Han, Liwei; Wang, Yueyun; He, Wenbin; Zhang, Junjie; Bi, Minggang; Shang, Hongcai; Shang, Deyang; Wang, Chang'en

    2012-03-01

    The applications accepted and approved by general program, young scientist fund and fund for less developed region of national natural science funds in the discipline of Chinese materia medica, NSFC in 2011 have been introduced. The character and problems in these applications have been analyzed to give a reference to the scientists in the field of Chinese material medica.

  10. How jurors use and misuse character evidence.

    PubMed

    Hunt, Jennifer S; Budesheim, Thomas Lee

    2004-04-01

    The Federal Rules of Evidence allow defendants to offer testimony about their good character, but that testimony can be impeached with cross-examination or a rebuttal witness. It is assumed that jurors use the defense's character evidence (CE) to form guilt and conviction judgments but use impeachment evidence only to assess the character witness's credibility. Two experiments tested these assumptions by presenting mock jurors with various forms of CE and impeachment. Participants made trait ratings for the character witness and defendant and guilt and conviction judgments. Positive CE did not affect guilt or conviction judgments, but cross-examination caused a backlash in which judgments were harsher than when no CE was given. Using path analysis, the authors tested a model of the process by which CE and impeachment affect defendant and witness impressions and guilt and conviction judgments. Implications for juror decision making are discussed.

  11. Selling Students on the Character of Liberal Arts: A Benefit of Worldview Awareness in Education?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Newell, Ted

    2012-01-01

    Emile Durkheim, the sociologist and education professor, said that the personality developed by a form of literary study was contrary to genuinely Christian character. Provoked by this insight, the author explores whether a Christian university's reliance on classical liberal arts education might be working against its desires for the character of…

  12. Benchmark for license plate character segmentation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gonçalves, Gabriel Resende; da Silva, Sirlene Pio Gomes; Menotti, David; Shwartz, William Robson

    2016-09-01

    Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) has been the focus of many researches in the past years. In general, ALPR is divided into the following problems: detection of on-track vehicles, license plate detection, segmentation of license plate characters, and optical character recognition (OCR). Even though commercial solutions are available for controlled acquisition conditions, e.g., the entrance of a parking lot, ALPR is still an open problem when dealing with data acquired from uncontrolled environments, such as roads and highways when relying only on imaging sensors. Due to the multiple orientations and scales of the license plates captured by the camera, a very challenging task of the ALPR is the license plate character segmentation (LPCS) step, because its effectiveness is required to be (near) optimal to achieve a high recognition rate by the OCR. To tackle the LPCS problem, this work proposes a benchmark composed of a dataset designed to focus specifically on the character segmentation step of the ALPR within an evaluation protocol. Furthermore, we propose the Jaccard-centroid coefficient, an evaluation measure more suitable than the Jaccard coefficient regarding the location of the bounding box within the ground-truth annotation. The dataset is composed of 2000 Brazilian license plates consisting of 14000 alphanumeric symbols and their corresponding bounding box annotations. We also present a straightforward approach to perform LPCS efficiently. Finally, we provide an experimental evaluation for the dataset based on five LPCS approaches and demonstrate the importance of character segmentation for achieving an accurate OCR.

  13. Technical guide for monitoring selected conditions related to wilderness character

    Treesearch

    Peter Landres; Steve Boutcher; Liese Dean; Troy Hall; Tamara Blett; Terry Carlson; Ann Mebane; Carol Hardy; Susan Rinehart; Linda Merigliano; David N. Cole; Andy Leach; Pam Wright; Deb Bumpus

    2009-01-01

    The purpose of monitoring wilderness character is to improve wilderness stewardship by providing managers a tool to assess how selected actions and conditions related to wilderness character are changing over time. Wilderness character monitoring provides information to help answer two key questions about wilderness character and wilderness stewardship: 1. How is...

  14. Next Steps for Research on SACD Programs: Embracing Complexity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Atkins, Marc S.; Shernoff, Elisa S.; Marinez-Lora, Ane

    2009-01-01

    This commentary focuses on the promises and challenges facing the Social and Character Development (SACD) consortium in evaluating the effectiveness of seven universal SACD programs designed to enhance student behavior and school climate under conditions of real world practice. In this commentary, we highlight that the opportunity costs associated…

  15. Maria Montessori on the Natural Formation of Character in Young Children

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Murphy, Madonna

    2003-01-01

    This paper examines this issue of character formation from the perspective of Maria Montessori. Her method has much to offer in developing more peaceful classrooms and helping to develop compassionate and caring citizens. Maria Montessori developed a complete philosophy of education based on her discovery that the child has a mind able to absorb…

  16. Neural system applied on an invariant industrial character recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lecoeuche, Stephane; Deguillemont, Denis; Dubus, Jean-Paul

    1997-04-01

    Besides the variety of fonts, character recognition systems for the industrial world are confronted with specific problems like: the variety of support (metal, wood, paper, ceramics . . .) as well as the variety of marking (printing, engraving, . . .) and conditions of lighting. We present a system that is able to solve a part of this problem. It implements a collaboration between two neural networks. The first network specialized in vision allows the system to extract the character from an image. Besides this capability, we have equipped our system with characteristics allowing it to obtain an invariant model from the presented character. Thus, whatever the position, the size and the orientation of the character during the capture are, the model presented to the input of the second network will be identical. The second network, thanks to a learning phase, permits us to obtain a character recognition system independent of the type of fonts used. Furthermore, its capabilities of generalization permit us to recognize degraded and/or distorted characters. A feedback loop between the two networks permits the first one to modify the quality of vision.The cooperation between these two networks allows us to recognize characters whatever the support and the marking.

  17. Scene text recognition in mobile applications by character descriptor and structure configuration.

    PubMed

    Yi, Chucai; Tian, Yingli

    2014-07-01

    Text characters and strings in natural scene can provide valuable information for many applications. Extracting text directly from natural scene images or videos is a challenging task because of diverse text patterns and variant background interferences. This paper proposes a method of scene text recognition from detected text regions. In text detection, our previously proposed algorithms are applied to obtain text regions from scene image. First, we design a discriminative character descriptor by combining several state-of-the-art feature detectors and descriptors. Second, we model character structure at each character class by designing stroke configuration maps. Our algorithm design is compatible with the application of scene text extraction in smart mobile devices. An Android-based demo system is developed to show the effectiveness of our proposed method on scene text information extraction from nearby objects. The demo system also provides us some insight into algorithm design and performance improvement of scene text extraction. The evaluation results on benchmark data sets demonstrate that our proposed scheme of text recognition is comparable with the best existing methods.

  18. Making Characters Come Alive: Using Characters for Identification and Engagement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chadwick, Jocelyn A.

    2012-01-01

    How do English teachers, with their amazing gift, empower students to see and experience literature not as a burden that must be endured and memorized for the test and then mercifully forgotten, but as a vehicle for self-discovery and reflection? One effective way to help students experience and discover literature is through the characters. For…

  19. Mainstream body-character breach films and subjectivization.

    PubMed

    Meiri, Sandra; Kohen-Raz, Odeya

    2017-02-01

    The authors analyze a unique cinematic corpus - 'body-character breach films' (one character, initially played by a certain actor, occupies the body of another character) - demonstrating Lacan's notion of traversing the fantasy, both on the level of the films' diegesis and that of spectatorship. Breaching the alliance between actors and their characters perturbs the viewer's fantasy of wholeness enabled by this very alliance. Consequently, a change in subject/spectatorial position in relation to the lack in the Other is induced, enhanced through the visualization of various scenarios of unconscious fantasies (mostly incest). These are meant to unsettle the spectator into an awareness of how a conscious fantasy conceals another unconscious fundamental fantasy, thereby encouraging a change in spectatorial position (from 'perverse'/fetishistic to 'neurotic'). Conflating this change with Lacan's notion of traversing the fantasy, the authors contend that mainstream cinema has the capacity to induce a process of subjectivization (assuming responsibility for one's own desire). This process is contingent on four conditions: identification with the protagonist's fantasy to conceal the lack in the Other; dissolution of this fantasy, initiated by the body-character breach; rhetorical strategies (the coding of unconscious scenarios cinematically); and an ethical dimension (encouraging the subject/spectator to follow her/his desire). Copyright © 2016 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

  20. Effect of refractive error on temperament and character properties.

    PubMed

    Kalkan Akcay, Emine; Canan, Fatih; Simavli, Huseyin; Dal, Derya; Yalniz, Hacer; Ugurlu, Nagihan; Gecici, Omer; Cagil, Nurullah

    2015-01-01

    To determine the effect of refractive error on temperament and character properties using Cloninger's psychobiological model of personality. Using the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), the temperament and character profiles of 41 participants with refractive errors (17 with myopia, 12 with hyperopia, and 12 with myopic astigmatism) were compared to those of 30 healthy control participants. Here, temperament comprised the traits of novelty seeking, harm-avoidance, and reward dependence, while character comprised traits of self-directedness, cooperativeness, and self-transcendence. Participants with refractive error showed significantly lower scores on purposefulness, cooperativeness, empathy, helpfulness, and compassion (P<0.05, P<0.01, P<0.05, P<0.05, and P<0.01, respectively). Refractive error might have a negative influence on some character traits, and different types of refractive error might have different temperament and character properties. These personality traits may be implicated in the onset and/or perpetuation of refractive errors and may be a productive focus for psychotherapy.

  1. On Kristjánsson on Aristotelian Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miller, Christian B.

    2016-01-01

    I pursue three of the many lines of thought that were raised in my mind by Kristjánsson's engaging book. In the first section, I try to get clearer on what exactly Aristotelian character education (ACE) is, and suggest areas where I hope the view is developed in more detail. In the second and longest section, I draw some lessons from social…

  2. A Developmental Study of Chinese Children's Word and Character Reading

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Li, Tong; Wang, Ying; Tong, Xiuhong; McBride, Catherine

    2017-01-01

    To investigate the relationship between Chinese children's character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children,…

  3. Intelligent form removal with character stroke preservation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Garris, Michael D.

    1996-03-01

    A new technique for intelligent form removal has been developed along with a new method for evaluating its impact on optical character recognition (OCR). All the dominant lines in the image are automatically detected using the Hough line transform and intelligently erased while simultaneously preserving overlapping character strokes by computing line width statistics and keying off of certain visual cues. This new method of form removal operates on loosely defined zones with no image deskewing. Any field in which the writer is provided a horizontal line to enter a response can be processed by this method. Several examples of processed fields are provided, including a comparison of results between the new method and a commercially available forms removal package. Even if this new form removal method did not improve character recognition accuracy, it is still a significant improvement to the technology because the requirement of a priori knowledge of the form's geometric details has been greatly reduced. This relaxes the recognition system's dependence on rigid form design, printing, and reproduction by automatically detecting and removing some of the physical structures (lines) on the form. Using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) public domain form-based handprint recognition system, the technique was tested on a large number of fields containing randomly ordered handprinted lowercase alphabets, as these letters (especially those with descenders) frequently touch and extend through the line along which they are written. Preserving character strokes improves overall lowercase recognition performance by 3%, which is a net improvement, but a single performance number like this doesn't communicate how the recognition process was really influenced. There is expected to be trade- offs with the introduction of any new technique into a complex recognition system. To understand both the improvements and the trade-offs, a new analysis was designed to

  4. A Japanese logographic character frequency list for cognitive science research.

    PubMed

    Chikamatsu, N; Yokoyama, S; Nozaki, H; Long, E; Fukuda, S

    2000-08-01

    This paper describes a Japanese logographic character (kanji) frequency list, which is based on an analysis of the largest recently available corpus of Japanese words and characters. This corpus comprised a full year of morning and evening editions of a major newspaper, containing more than 23 million kanji characters and more than 4,000 different kanji characters. This paper lists the 3,000 most frequent kanji characters, as well as an analysis of kanji usage and correlations between the present list and previous Japanese frequency lists. The authors believe that the present list will help researchers more accurately and efficiently control the selection of kanji characters in cognitive science research and interpret related psycholinguistic data.

  5. A study of the utility of convergent characters for phylogeny reconstruction: do ecomorphological characters track evolutionary history in Anolis lizards?

    PubMed

    Poe, Steven

    2005-01-01

    The reconstruction of phylogeny requires homologous similarities across species. Characters that have been shown to evolve quickly or convergently in some species are often considered to be poor phylogenetic markers. Here I evaluate the phylogenetic utility of a set of morphological characters that are correlated with ecology and have been shown to evolve convergently in Anolis lizards in the Greater Antilles. Results of randomization tests suggest that these "ecomorph" characters are adequate phylogenetic markers, both for Anolis in general and for the Greater Antillean species for which ecomorphological convergence was originally documented. Explanations for this result include the presence of ecomorphologically similar species within evolutionary radiations within islands, some monophyly of ecomorphs across islands, and the existence of several species that defy ecomorphological characterization but share phylogenetic similarity in some ecomorph characters.

  6. Character context: a shape descriptor for Arabic handwriting recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mudhsh, Mohammed; Almodfer, Rolla; Duan, Pengfei; Xiong, Shengwu

    2017-11-01

    In the handwriting recognition field, designing good descriptors are substantial to obtain rich information of the data. However, the handwriting recognition research of a good descriptor is still an open issue due to unlimited variation in human handwriting. We introduce a "character context descriptor" that efficiently dealt with the structural characteristics of Arabic handwritten characters. First, the character image is smoothed and normalized, then the character context descriptor of 32 feature bins is built based on the proposed "distance function." Finally, a multilayer perceptron with regularization is used as a classifier. On experimentation with a handwritten Arabic characters database, the proposed method achieved a state-of-the-art performance with recognition rate equal to 98.93% and 99.06% for the 66 and 24 classes, respectively.

  7. Using wilderness character to improve wilderness stewardship

    Treesearch

    Peter Landres; Wade M. Vagias; Suzy Stutzman

    2012-01-01

    This article describes how understanding wilderness character leads to improved communication among staff and with the public, helping park staff make more informed decisions about park planning, management, and monitoring in wilderness. Wilderness character is defined in terms of five qualities: natural, solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation, undeveloped,...

  8. An Assessment of Character and Leadership Development Latent Factor Structures through Confirmatory Factor, Item Response Theory, and Latent Class Analyses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Higginbotham, David L.

    2013-01-01

    This study leveraged the complementary nature of confirmatory factor (CFA), item response theory (IRT), and latent class (LCA) analyses to strengthen the rigor and sophistication of evaluation of two new measures of the Air Force Academy's "leader of character" definition--the Character Mosaic Virtues (CMV) and the Leadership Mosaic…

  9. Reading for Character: 40 Lessons for Middle School Classrooms Based on "The Book of Virtues."

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shail, Linda G.

    The character traits children assimilate during their growing-up years will determine how they behave, how they see themselves, how they treat others, and the type of adults they will become. Children who develop character built on honesty, respect, diligence, and self control will be better able to handle the frustrations and disappointments of…

  10. The protective effect of character maturity in child aggressive antisocial behavior.

    PubMed

    Kerekes, Nóra; Falk, Örjan; Brändström, Sven; Anckarsäter, Henrik; Råstam, Maria; Hofvander, Björn

    2017-07-01

    Childhood aggressive antisocial behavior (CD) is one of the strongest predictors of mental health problems and criminal behavior in adulthood. The aims of this study were to describe personality profiles in children with CD, and to determine the strength of association between defined neurodevelopmental symptoms, dimensions of character maturity and CD. A sample of 1886 children with a close to equal distribution of age (9 or 12) and gender, enriched for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric problems were selected from the nationwide Child and Adolescent Twin Study in Sweden. Their parents rated them according to the Junior Temperament and Character Inventory following a telephone interview during which information about the children's development and mental health was assessed with the Autism-Tics, AD/HD and other Comorbidities inventory. Scores on the CD module significantly and positively correlated with scores on the Novelty Seeking temperament dimension and negatively with scores on character maturity (Self-Directedness and Cooperativeness). In the group of children with either neurodevelopmental or behavioral problems, the prevalence of low or very low character maturity was 50%, while when these two problems coexisted the prevalence of low or very low character maturity increased to 70%. Neurodevelopmental problems (such as: oppositional defiant disorder, symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder) and low scores on character maturity emerged as independently significant predictors of CD; in a multivariable model, only oppositional defiant symptoms and impulsivity significantly increased the risk for coexisting CD while a mature self-agency in a child (Self-Directedness) remained a significant protective factor. These results suggest that children's willpower, the capacity to achieve personally chosen goals may be an important protective factor - even in the presence of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric problems - against

  11. The Influence of Chinese Character Handwriting Diagnosis and Remedial Instruction System on Learners of Chinese as a Foreign Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hsiao, Hsien-Sheng; Chang, Cheng-Sian; Chen, Chiao-Jia; Wu, Chia-Hou; Lin, Chien-Yu

    2015-01-01

    This study designed and developed a Chinese character handwriting diagnosis and remedial instruction (CHDRI) system to improve Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners' ability to write Chinese characters. The CFL learners were given two tests based on the CHDRI system. One test focused on Chinese character handwriting to diagnose the CFL…

  12. Multidate Landsat lake quality monitoring program

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Fisher, L. T.; Scarpace, F. L.; Thomsen, R. G.

    1979-01-01

    A unified package of files and programs has been developed to automate the multidate Landsat-derived analyses of water quality for about 3000 inland lakes throughout Wisconsin. A master lakes file which stores geographic information on the lakes, a file giving the latitudes and longitudes of control points for scene navigation, and a program to estimate control point locations and produce microfiche character maps for scene navigation are among the files and programs of the system. The use of ground coordinate systems to isolate irregular shaped areas which can be accessed at will appears to provide an economical means of restricting the size of the data set.

  13. Optical Character Recognition.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Converso, L.; Hocek, S.

    1990-01-01

    This paper describes computer-based optical character recognition (OCR) systems, focusing on their components (the computer, the scanner, the OCR, and the output device); how the systems work; and features to consider in selecting a system. A list of 26 questions to ask to evaluate systems for potential purchase is included. (JDD)

  14. The character strengths of class clowns.

    PubMed

    Ruch, Willibald; Platt, Tracey; Hofmann, Jennifer

    2014-01-01

    Class clowns traditionally were studied as a type concept and identified via sociometric procedures. In the present study a variable-centered approach was favored and class clown behaviors were studied in the context of character strengths, orientations to happiness and satisfaction with life. A sample of 672 Swiss children and adolescents filled in an 18 item self-report instrument depicting class clown behaviors. A hierarchical model of class clown behaviors was developed distinguishing a general factor and the four positively correlated dimensions of "identified as a class clown," "comic talent," "disruptive rule-breaker," and "subversive joker." Analysis of the general factor showed that class clowns were primarily male, and tended to be seen as class clowns by the teacher. Analyses of the 24 character strengths of the VIA-Youth (Park and Peterson, 2006) showed that class clowns were high in humor and leadership, and low in strengths like prudence, self-regulation, modesty, honesty, fairness, perseverance, and love of learning. An inspection of signature strengths revealed that 75% of class clowns had humor as a signature strength. Furthermore, class clown behaviors were generally shown by students indulging in a life of pleasure, but low life of engagement. The four dimensions yielded different character strengths profiles. While all dimensions of class clowns behaviors were low in temperance strengths, the factors "identified as the class clown" and "comic talent" were correlated with leadership strengths and the two negative factors ("disruptive rule-breaker," "subversive joker") were low in other directed strengths. The disruptive rule breaking class clown was additionally low in intellectual strengths. While humor predicted life satisfaction, class clowning tended to go along with diminished satisfaction with life. It is concluded that different types of class clowns need to be kept apart and need different attention by teachers.

  15. The character strengths of class clowns

    PubMed Central

    Ruch, Willibald; Platt, Tracey; Hofmann, Jennifer

    2014-01-01

    Class clowns traditionally were studied as a type concept and identified via sociometric procedures. In the present study a variable-centered approach was favored and class clown behaviors were studied in the context of character strengths, orientations to happiness and satisfaction with life. A sample of 672 Swiss children and adolescents filled in an 18 item self-report instrument depicting class clown behaviors. A hierarchical model of class clown behaviors was developed distinguishing a general factor and the four positively correlated dimensions of “identified as a class clown,” “comic talent,” “disruptive rule-breaker,” and “subversive joker.” Analysis of the general factor showed that class clowns were primarily male, and tended to be seen as class clowns by the teacher. Analyses of the 24 character strengths of the VIA-Youth (Park and Peterson, 2006) showed that class clowns were high in humor and leadership, and low in strengths like prudence, self-regulation, modesty, honesty, fairness, perseverance, and love of learning. An inspection of signature strengths revealed that 75% of class clowns had humor as a signature strength. Furthermore, class clown behaviors were generally shown by students indulging in a life of pleasure, but low life of engagement. The four dimensions yielded different character strengths profiles. While all dimensions of class clowns behaviors were low in temperance strengths, the factors “identified as the class clown” and “comic talent” were correlated with leadership strengths and the two negative factors (“disruptive rule-breaker,” “subversive joker”) were low in other directed strengths. The disruptive rule breaking class clown was additionally low in intellectual strengths. While humor predicted life satisfaction, class clowning tended to go along with diminished satisfaction with life. It is concluded that different types of class clowns need to be kept apart and need different attention by

  16. Direct Measures of Character Mislocalizations with Masked/Unmasked Exposures.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chastain, Garvin; And Others

    Butler (1980) compared errors representing intrusions and mislocalizations on 3x3 letter displays under pattern-mask versus no-mask conditions and found that pattern masking increased character mislocalization errors (naming a character in the display but not in the target position as being the target) over intrusion errors (naming a character not…

  17. Consciousness and abilities of dream characters observed during lucid dreaming.

    PubMed

    Tholey, P

    1989-04-01

    A description of several phenomenological experiments is given. These were done to investigate of which cognitive accomplishments dream characters are capable in lucid dreams. Nine male experienced lucid dreamers participated as subjects. They were directed to set different tasks to dream characters they met while lucid dreaming. Dream characters were asked to draw or write, to name unknown words, to find rhyme words, to make verses, and to solve arithmetic problems. Part of the dream characters actually agreed to perform the tasks and were successful, although the arithmetic accomplishments were poor. From the phenomenological findings, nothing contradicts the assumption that dream characters have consciousness in a specific sense. Herefrom the conclusion was drawn, that in lucid dream therapy communication with dream characters should be handled as if they were rational beings. Finally, several possibilities of assessing the question, whether dream characters possess consciousness, can be examined with the aid of psychophysiological experiments.

  18. Developing Strategic Collaborative Partnerships within a Workforce Development Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hiscano, Lisa Raudelunas

    2010-01-01

    Workforce development programs provide training and education to welfare recipients to prepare them to obtain and retain employment in their communities. Federal, state, and local investments are made to develop and implement programs. But, do these programs have relationships with local employers to obtain their input to provide the education and…

  19. Characteristics of Sports-Based Youth Development Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Perkins, Daniel F.; Noam, Gil G.

    2007-01-01

    The term "sports-based youth development programs" is coined and defined in the context of the community youth development framework. Sports-based youth development programs are out-of-school-time programs that use a particular sport to facilitate learning and life skill development in youth. Community youth development programs use a community…

  20. Chinese character recognition based on Gabor feature extraction and CNN

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xiong, Yudian; Lu, Tongwei; Jiang, Yongyuan

    2018-03-01

    As an important application in the field of text line recognition and office automation, Chinese character recognition has become an important subject of pattern recognition. However, due to the large number of Chinese characters and the complexity of its structure, there is a great difficulty in the Chinese character recognition. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a method of printed Chinese character recognition based on Gabor feature extraction and Convolution Neural Network(CNN). The main steps are preprocessing, feature extraction, training classification. First, the gray-scale Chinese character image is binarized and normalized to reduce the redundancy of the image data. Second, each image is convoluted with Gabor filter with different orientations, and the feature map of the eight orientations of Chinese characters is extracted. Third, the feature map through Gabor filters and the original image are convoluted with learning kernels, and the results of the convolution is the input of pooling layer. Finally, the feature vector is used to classify and recognition. In addition, the generalization capacity of the network is improved by Dropout technology. The experimental results show that this method can effectively extract the characteristics of Chinese characters and recognize Chinese characters.

  1. A Chinese Character Teaching System Using Structure Theory and Morphing Technology

    PubMed Central

    Sun, Linjia; Liu, Min; Hu, Jiajia; Liang, Xiaohui

    2014-01-01

    This paper proposes a Chinese character teaching system by using the Chinese character structure theory and the 2D contour morphing technology. This system, including the offline phase and the online phase, automatically generates animation for the same Chinese character from different writing stages to intuitively show the evolution of shape and topology in the process of Chinese characters teaching. The offline phase builds the component models database for the same script and the components correspondence database for different scripts. Given two or several different scripts of the same Chinese character, the online phase firstly divides the Chinese characters into components by using the process of Chinese character parsing, and then generates the evolution animation by using the process of Chinese character morphing. Finally, two writing stages of Chinese characters, i.e., seal script and clerical script, are used in experiment to show the ability of the system. The result of the user experience study shows that the system can successfully guide students to improve the learning of Chinese characters. And the users agree that the system is interesting and can motivate them to learn. PMID:24978171

  2. Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Noddings, Nel

    An alternative to character education is care ethics. The ethics of care can be seen as fundamentally relational, not individual-agent-based in the way of virtue ethics, and the ethics of care is more indirect than character education. After an introductory chapter that outlines the similarities and differences between character education and care…

  3. Restriction of Odd Degree Characters of Sn

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Bessenrodt, Christine; Giannelli, Eugenio; Olsson, Jørn B.

    2017-09-01

    Let n and k be natural numbers such that 2^k < n. We study the restriction to S_{n-2^k} of odd-degree irreducible characters of the symmetric group S_n. This analysis completes the study begun in [Ayyer A., Prasad A., Spallone S., Sém. Lothar. Combin. 75 (2015), Art. B75g, 13 pages] and recently developed in [Isaacs I.M., Navarro G., Olsson J.B., Tiep P.H., J. Algebra 478 (2017), 271-282].

  4. Relationships between Character Education and School Climate

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Karaburk, Hasan

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between character education and school climate based on the lived experiences and beliefs of teachers. The research was conducted in a public middle school to explore understandings and beliefs of teachers about character education and its perceived impact on school climate. Social…

  5. Factors Influencing the Learning of Chinese Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sung, Ko-Yin; Wu, Hsiao-Ping

    2011-01-01

    This survey study, which involved 108 language learners enrolled in first-year Chinese as a foreign language classrooms in the United States, intended to address the research questions, "What types of Chinese-character learning strategies do US learners use?" and "Do US learners' Chinese-character learning strategy use differ based on the…

  6. Characteristics of sports-based youth development programs.

    PubMed

    Perkins, Daniel F; Noam, Gil G

    2007-01-01

    The term "sports-based youth development programs" is coined and defined in the context of the community youth development framework. Sports-based youth development programs are out-of-school-time programs that use a particular sport to facilitate learning and life skill development in youth. Community youth development programs use a community youth development approach to create opportunities for youth to connect to others, develop skills, and use those skills to contribute to their communities. This, in turn, increases their ability to succeed. The authors describe how sports-based youth development programs can be contexts that promote positive youth development. The features of positive developmental settings for youth from the work of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, as well as the features identified by other researchers, are presented in the context of sports-based youth development programs. For example, a sports program that provides appropriate structure has delineated clear rules, expectations, and responsibilities for youth, parents, coaches, officials, and other organizers.

  7. Genotypic character relationship and phenotypic path coefficient analysis in chili pepper genotypes grown under tropical condition.

    PubMed

    Usman, Magaji G; Rafii, Mohd Y; Martini, Mohammad Y; Oladosu, Yusuff; Kashiani, Pedram

    2017-03-01

    Studies on genotypic and phenotypic correlations among characters of crop plants are useful in planning, evaluating and setting selection criteria for the desired characters in a breeding program. The present study aimed to estimate the phenotypic correlation coefficients among yield and yield attributed characters and to work out the direct and indirect effects of yield-related characters on yield per plant using path coefficient analysis. Twenty-six genotypes of chili pepper were laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. Yield per plant showed positive and highly significant (P ≤ 0.01) correlations with most of the characters studied at both the phenotypic and genotypic levels. By contrast, disease incidence and days to flowering showed a significant negative association with yield. Fruit weight and number of fruits exerted positive direct effect on yield and also had a positive and significant (P ≤ 0.01) correlation with yield per plant. However, fruit length showed a low negative direct effect with a strong and positive indirect effect through fruit weight on yield and had a positive and significant association with yield. Longer fruits, heavy fruits and a high number of fruits are variables that are related to higher yields of chili pepper under tropical conditions and hence could be used as a reliable indicator in indirect selection for yield. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry. © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.

  8. Competence is My Watchword: An Analysis of the Relationship between Competence and Character in the Army

    DTIC Science & Technology

    2016-06-10

    first is a 2013 Army War College manuscript by Colonel (COL) Brian M. Michelson entitled Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: A Laissez Faire ...Leaders: A Laissez Faire Approach” (Strategy Research Project, US Army War College, 2013), 19. 21 Ibid., 6-7. 22 Ibid., 20. 23 Ibid., 16. 24...2014. Michelson, Brian M. “Character Development of U.S. Army Leaders: A Laissez Faire Approach.” Strategy Research Project, US Army War College

  9. Children's Contemporary Realistic Fiction Portraying Dyslexic Characters: An Examination of the Issues Confronted and the Gender of the Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Altieri, Jennifer L.

    2006-01-01

    Seventy-seven contemporary realistic fiction children's books portraying a dyslexic character were published in the United States between 1993 and 2003. This study examined the texts to determine what types of issues the reading difficulty posed for the character. Texts were analyzed to determine if there was a relationship between the gender of…

  10. Neural basis of hierarchical visual form processing of Japanese Kanji characters.

    PubMed

    Higuchi, Hiroki; Moriguchi, Yoshiya; Murakami, Hiroki; Katsunuma, Ruri; Mishima, Kazuo; Uno, Akira

    2015-12-01

    We investigated the neural processing of reading Japanese Kanji characters, which involves unique hierarchical visual processing, including the recognition of visual components specific to Kanji, such as "radicals." We performed functional MRI to measure brain activity in response to hierarchical visual stimuli containing (1) real Kanji characters (complete structure with semantic information), (2) pseudo Kanji characters (subcomponents without complete character structure), (3) artificial characters (character fragments), and (4) checkerboard (simple photic stimuli). As we expected, the peaks of the activation in response to different stimulus types were aligned within the left occipitotemporal visual region along the posterior-anterior axis in order of the structural complexity of the stimuli, from fragments (3) to complete characters (1). Moreover, only the real Kanji characters produced functional connectivity between the left inferotemporal area and the language area (left inferior frontal triangularis), while pseudo Kanji characters induced connectivity between the left inferotemporal area and the bilateral cerebellum and left putamen. Visual processing of Japanese Kanji takes place in the left occipitotemporal cortex, with a clear hierarchy within the region such that the neural activation differentiates the elements in Kanji characters' fragments, subcomponents, and semantics, with different patterns of connectivity to remote regions among the elements.

  11. Automotive Stirling engine development program

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Ernst, W.; Richey, A.; Farrell, R.; Riecke, G.; Smith, G.; Howarth, R.; Cronin, M.; Simetkosky, M.; Meacher, J.

    1986-01-01

    This is the ninth Semiannual Technical Progress Report prepared under the Automotive Stirling Engine Development Program. It covers the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth quarters of activity after award of the contract. Quarterly Technical Progress Reports related program activities from the first through the thirteenth quarters; thereafter, reporting was changed to a Semiannual format. This report summarizes the study of higher-power kinematic Stirling engines for transportation use, development testing of Mod I Stirling engines, and component development activities. Component development testing included successful conical fuel nozzle testing and functional checkout of Mod II controls and auxiliaries on Mod I engine test beds. Overall program philosophy is outlined and data and test results are presented.

  12. Evaluating Youth Development Programs: Progress and Promise

    PubMed Central

    Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne

    2016-01-01

    Advances in theories of adolescent development and positive youth development have greatly increased our understanding of how programs and practices with adolescents can impede or enhance their development. In this paper the authors reflect on the progress in research on youth development programs in the last two decades, since possibly the first review of empirical evaluations by Roth, Brooks-Gunn, Murray, and Foster (1998). The authors use the terms Version 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 to refer to changes in youth development research and programs over time. They argue that advances in theory and descriptive accounts of youth development programs (Version 2.0) need to be coupled with progress in definitions of youth development programs, measurement of inputs and outputs that incorporate an understanding of programs as contexts for development, and stronger design and evaluation of programs (Version 3.0). The authors also advocate for an integration of prevention and promotion research, and for use of the term youth development rather than positive youth development. PMID:28077922

  13. Text Extraction from Scene Images by Character Appearance and Structure Modeling

    PubMed Central

    Yi, Chucai; Tian, Yingli

    2012-01-01

    In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to detect text information from natural scene images. Scene text classification and detection are still open research topics. Our proposed algorithm is able to model both character appearance and structure to generate representative and discriminative text descriptors. The contributions of this paper include three aspects: 1) a new character appearance model by a structure correlation algorithm which extracts discriminative appearance features from detected interest points of character samples; 2) a new text descriptor based on structons and correlatons, which model character structure by structure differences among character samples and structure component co-occurrence; and 3) a new text region localization method by combining color decomposition, character contour refinement, and string line alignment to localize character candidates and refine detected text regions. We perform three groups of experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm, including text classification, text detection, and character identification. The evaluation results on benchmark datasets demonstrate that our algorithm achieves the state-of-the-art performance on scene text classification and detection, and significantly outperforms the existing algorithms for character identification. PMID:23316111

  14. STS pilot user development program

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Mcdowell, J. R.

    1977-01-01

    Full exploitation of the STS capabilities will be not only dependent on the extensive use of the STS for known space applications and research, but also on new, innovative ideas of use originating with both current and new users. In recognition of this, NASA has been engaged in a User Development Program for the STS. The program began with four small studies. Each study addressed a separate sector of potential new users to identify techniques and methodologies for user development. The collective results established that a user development function was not only feasible, but necessary for NASA to realize the full potential of the STS. This final report begins with a description of the overall pilot program plan, which involved five specific tasks defined in the contract Statement of Work. Each task is then discussed separately; but two subjects, the development of principal investigators and space processing users, are discussed separately for improved continuity of thought. These discussions are followed by a summary of the primary results and conclusions of the Pilot User Development Program. Specific recommendations of the study are given.

  15. [Impact of interactivity on identification with characters in fiction].

    PubMed

    Soto-Sanfiel, María T; Aymerich-Franch, Laura; Ribes Guàrdia, Francesc Xavier

    2010-11-01

    The effect of interactivity on identification with characters in audiovisual fiction was observed. 310 participants were asked to watch a film in one of these two conditions: 1) interactive (they selected the plot), and 2) non-interactive (they consumed the fiction in a conventional way). After watching the movie, they completed a questionnaire with the EDI scale of identification and empathy with characters, created by Igartua and Paez. The capacity to intervene in the configuration of the plot (interactivity) affected identification with characters. The results provide data about the psychology of media and interactivity in communication and allow us to understand the processes of empathy and identification with characters.

  16. Meeting Characters in Caldecotts: What Does This Mean for Today's Readers?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Koss, Melanie D.; Martinez, Miriam; Johnson, Nancy J.

    2016-01-01

    We examined representations of main characters in Caldecott Award winner and honor books over the past 25 years. Each book containing a human main character was coded for the following features: culture/ethnicity, gender, age, place where character lives, time period in which the character lives, disability, religion, socioeconomic status, and…

  17. Item-specific and generalization effects on brain activation when learning Chinese characters

    PubMed Central

    Deng, Yuan; Booth, James R.; Chou, Tai-Li; Ding, Guo-Sheng; Peng, Dan-Ling

    2009-01-01

    Neural changes related to learning of the meaning of Chinese characters in English speakers were examined using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We examined item specific learning effects for trained characters, but also the generalization of semantic knowledge to novel transfer characters that shared a semantic radical (part of a character that gives a clue to word meaning, e.g. water for lake) with trained characters. Behavioral results show that acquired semantic knowledge improves performance for both trained and transfer characters. Neuroimaging results show that the left fusiform gyrus plays a central role in the visual processing of orthographic information in characters. The left superior parietal cortex seems to play a crucial role in learning the visual–spatial aspects of the characters because it shows learning related decreases for trained characters, is correlated with behavioral improvement from early to late in learning for the trained characters, and is correlated with better long-term retention for the transfer characters. The inferior frontal gyrus seems to be associated with the efficiency of retrieving and manipulating semantic representations because there are learning related decreases for trained characters and this decrease is correlated with greater behavioral improvement from early to late in learning. PMID:18514678

  18. Portrayal of Physically Handicapped Characters in Adolescent Fiction.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stroud, Janet G.

    1980-01-01

    Reviews the portrayals of handicapped fictional characters for prognosis of the handicap, for effect on the subject and other characters, and for treatment of the disability. Twelve recently published books are examined for their readership interest for young people. (RAA)

  19. Playing MMORPGs: connections between addiction and identifying with a character.

    PubMed

    Smahel, David; Blinka, Lukas; Ledabyl, Ondrej

    2008-12-01

    Addiction to online role-playing games is one of the most discussed aspects of recent cyberpsychology, mainly for its potentially negative impact on the social lives of young people. In our study, we focus on some aspects of youth and adolescent addiction to MMORPGs. We investigated connections between players and their game characters and examined if, and in what ways, player relationship to their character affected potential addiction. Players attitude to their characters seems to play a specific role, since players who tend to be addicted view their characters as being superior and more often wish to be like their characters in their real lives. Our research also confirmed that younger players are generally more prone to addiction.

  20. Principal Component 2-D Long Short-Term Memory for Font Recognition on Single Chinese Characters.

    PubMed

    Tao, Dapeng; Lin, Xu; Jin, Lianwen; Li, Xuelong

    2016-03-01

    Chinese character font recognition (CCFR) has received increasing attention as the intelligent applications based on optical character recognition becomes popular. However, traditional CCFR systems do not handle noisy data effectively. By analyzing in detail the basic strokes of Chinese characters, we propose that font recognition on a single Chinese character is a sequence classification problem, which can be effectively solved by recurrent neural networks. For robust CCFR, we integrate a principal component convolution layer with the 2-D long short-term memory (2DLSTM) and develop principal component 2DLSTM (PC-2DLSTM) algorithm. PC-2DLSTM considers two aspects: 1) the principal component layer convolution operation helps remove the noise and get a rational and complete font information and 2) simultaneously, 2DLSTM deals with the long-range contextual processing along scan directions that can contribute to capture the contrast between character trajectory and background. Experiments using the frequently used CCFR dataset suggest the effectiveness of PC-2DLSTM compared with other state-of-the-art font recognition methods.

  1. Influence of licensed characters on children's taste and snack preferences.

    PubMed

    Roberto, Christina A; Baik, Jenny; Harris, Jennifer L; Brownell, Kelly D

    2010-07-01

    The goal was to study how popular licensed cartoon characters appearing on food packaging affect young children's taste and snack preferences. Forty 4- to 6-year-old children tasted 3 pairs of identical foods (graham crackers, gummy fruit snacks, and carrots) presented in packages either with or without a popular cartoon character. Children tasted both food items in each pair and indicated whether the 2 foods tasted the same or one tasted better. Children then selected which of the food items they would prefer to eat for a snack. Children significantly preferred the taste of foods that had popular cartoon characters on the packaging, compared with the same foods without characters. The majority of children selected the food sample with a licensed character on it for their snack, but the effects were weaker for carrots than for gummy fruit snacks and graham crackers. Branding food packages with licensed characters substantially influences young children's taste preferences and snack selection and does so most strongly for energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods. These findings suggest that the use of licensed characters to advertise junk food to children should be restricted.

  2. Developing an Intergenerational Program.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brummel, Steven W.

    1989-01-01

    Steps in the development of intergenerational programs include the following: (1) needs assessment; (2) planning; (3) implementation; (4) assuring program longevity; and (5) establishing a national focus. Detailed description of such stages as facility and site procurement, recruitment, orientation, training, maintenance, and support is provided.…

  3. Character displacement in the fighting colours of Hetaerina damselflies.

    PubMed

    Anderson, Christopher N; Grether, Gregory F

    2010-12-07

    Aggression between species is a seldom-considered but potentially widespread mechanism of character displacement in secondary sexual characters. Based on previous research showing that similarity in wing coloration directly influences interspecific territorial aggression in Hetaerina damselflies, we predicted that wing coloration would show a pattern of character displacement (divergence in sympatry). A geographical survey of four Hetaerina damselfly species in Mexico and Texas showed evidence for character displacement in both species pairs that regularly occurs sympatrically. Hetaerina titia, a species that typically has large black wing spots and small red wing spots, shifted to having even larger black spots and smaller red wing spots at sites where a congener with large red wing spots is numerically dominant (Hetaerina americana or Hetaerina occisa). Hetaerina americana showed the reverse pattern, shifting towards larger red wing spots where H. titia is numerically dominant. This pattern is consistent with the process of agonistic character displacement, but the ontogenetic basis of the shift remains to be demonstrated.

  4. ERPs reveal sub-lexical processing in Chinese character recognition.

    PubMed

    Wu, Yan; Mo, Deyuan; Tsang, Yiu-Kei; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

    2012-04-18

    The present study used ERPs and a lexical decision task to explore the roles of position-general and position-specific radicals and their relative time courses in processing Chinese characters. Two types of radical frequency were manipulated: the number of characters containing a specific radical irrespective of position (i.e., radical frequency or RF) and the number of characters containing a specific radical at a particular position (i.e., position-specific radical frequency or PRF). The PRF effect was found to be associated with P150, P200, and N400, whereas the RF effect was associated with P200. These results suggest that both position-general and position-specific radicals could influence character processing, but the effect of position-specific radicals appeared earlier and lasted longer than that of position-general radicals. These findings are interpreted in terms of the specific orthographic properties of the sub-lexical components of Chinese characters. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Examples of Sports-Based Youth Development Programs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Berlin, Richard A.; Dworkin, Aaron; Eames, Ned; Menconi, Arn; Perkins, Daniel F.

    2007-01-01

    The authors provide examples of sports-based youth development programs and offer information about program mission and vision, program design and content, evaluation results, and program sustainability. The four sports-based youth development programs presented are Harlem RBI, Tenacity, Snowsports Outreach Society, and Hoops & Leaders…

  6. Brain Activity while Reading Sentences with Kanji Characters Expressing Emotions

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yuasa, Masahide; Saito, Keiichi; Mukawa, Naoki

    In this paper, we describe the brain activity associated with kanji characters expressing emotion, which are places at the end of a sentence. Japanese people use a special kanji character in brackets at the end of sentences in text messages such as those sent through e-mail and messenger tools. Such kanji characters plays a role to expresses the sender's emotion (such as fun, laughter, sadness, tears), like emoticons. It is a very simple and effective way to convey the senders' emotions and his/her thoughts to the receiver. In this research, we investigate the effects of emotional kanji characters by using an fMRI study. The experimental results show that both the right and left inferior frontal gyrus, which have been implicated on verbal and nonverbal information, were activated. We found that we detect a sentence with an emotional kanji character as the verbal and nonverval information, and a sentence with emotional kanji characters enrich communication between the sender and the reciever.

  7. Stroop phenomena in the Japanese language: the case of ideographic characters (kanji) and syllabic characters (kana).

    PubMed

    Morikawa, Y

    1981-08-01

    Utilizing a unique feature of the Japanese languages--that besides two syllabic orthographies, which have identical pronunciations, words with the same pronunciation may also be written in an orthography composed of ideographic characters--we have conducted an investigation of Stroop phenomena. The fact that pronunciations of the three Japanese orthographies are identical means that, if there are any differences between them in the Stroop phenomena observed, we can place the locus of this interference effect in the perceptual process. Five color names were written in the ideographic characters (kanji) and the two syllabic orthographies (hiragana and katakana). Color-congruent cards and incongruent cards were utilized in a color-naming task and a word-reading task. Mean required times for the color-naming condition and the word-reading conditions were compared with those for control conditions. Stroop phenomena were observed in both ideographic and syllabic orthographies. Significant differences in mean required times were observed between the ideographic and syllabic orthographies but not between the two syllabic orthographies. Interferences in comparisons of Japanese orthographies and color patch control conditions were much smaller than in the case of Stroop's (1935) experiment. A "Reverse Stroop Phenomenon" was observed only in the case of kanji on incongruent cards in the word-reading condition. The results support the hypothesis that both ideographic characters (in this case, kanji) and colors are processed in a parallel fashion in the non-dominant right cerebral hemisphere, while syllabic or phonetic characters are processed in the dominant left cerebral hemisphere.

  8. A New Experiment on Bengali Character Recognition

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Barman, Sumana; Bhattacharyya, Debnath; Jeon, Seung-Whan; Kim, Tai-Hoon; Kim, Haeng-Kon

    This paper presents a method to use View based approach in Bangla Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system providing reduced data set to the ANN classification engine rather than the traditional OCR methods. It describes how Bangla characters are processed, trained and then recognized with the use of a Backpropagation Artificial neural network. This is the first published account of using a segmentation-free optical character recognition system for Bangla using a view based approach. The methodology presented here assumes that the OCR pre-processor has presented the input images to the classification engine described here. The size and the font face used to render the characters are also significant in both training and classification. The images are first converted into greyscale and then to binary images; these images are then scaled to a fit a pre-determined area with a fixed but significant number of pixels. The feature vectors are then formed extracting the characteristics points, which in this case is simply a series of 0s and 1s of fixed length. Finally, an artificial neural network is chosen for the training and classification process.

  9. Animal regeneration: ancestral character or evolutionary novelty?

    PubMed

    Slack, Jonathan Mw

    2017-09-01

    An old question about regeneration is whether it is an ancestral character which is a general property of living matter, or whether it represents a set of specific adaptations to the different circumstances faced by different types of animal. In this review, some recent results on regeneration are assessed to see if they can throw any new light on this question. Evidence in favour of an ancestral character comes from the role of Wnt and bone morphogenetic protein signalling in controlling the pattern of whole-body regeneration in acoels, which are a basal group of bilaterian animals. On the other hand, there is some evidence for adaptive acquisition or maintenance of the regeneration of appendages based on the occurrence of severe non-lethal predation, the existence of some novel genes in regenerating organisms, and differences at the molecular level between apparently similar forms of regeneration. It is tentatively concluded that whole-body regeneration is an ancestral character although has been lost from most animal lineages. Appendage regeneration is more likely to represent a derived character resulting from many specific adaptations. © 2017 The Author.

  10. Body-conscious Shakespeare: sensory disturbances in troubled characters.

    PubMed

    Heaton, Kenneth W

    2011-12-01

    It is widely accepted that Shakespeare was unique in the range of his insights into the human mind, but the way his characters reveal their mental states through bodily sensations has not been systematically explored. The author has searched for these phenomena in the 42 major works of Shakespeare and in 46 genre-matched works by his contemporaries, and in this paper the author focuses on sensory changes other than those involving vision, taste, the heart and the alimentary tract (all considered in other papers). Vertigo is experienced by five distressed Shakespearean characters, all men, but not at all by the other writers' characters. Breathlessness, probably representing hyperventilation, occurs eleven times in Shakespeare's works but only twice in the other writers' works. Fatigue, expressing grief, is articulated by several Shakespearean characters including Hamlet. It features less often in the others' works. Deafness at a time of high emotion is mentioned by Shakespeare several times but usually by a character 'turning a deaf ear', consciously or unconsciously. To the other writers, ears show emotion only by burning or itching. Blunting of touch and pain and their opposites of hypersensitivity to touch and pain are all to be found in Shakespeare's works when a character is distressed or excited, but not so with his contemporaries' works. Faint feelings and cold feelings are also more common in the works of Shakespeare. Overall, therefore, Shakespeare was exceptional in his use of sensory disturbances to express emotional upset. This may be a conscious literary device or a sign of exceptional awareness of bodily sensations.

  11. Maintaining the Special Character of a Faith-Based Schooling System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    van der Nest, Theo; Buchanan, Michael T.

    2014-01-01

    Since the enactment of the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act in New Zealand in 1975, leadership in Catholic schools has become increasingly complex. Under the legislation Catholic schools are required to develop and maintain their "Special Character." The Director of Religious Studies (DRS) has become the position with a key…

  12. Dangers on the Web--Pornography, Hate, the Internet, and the Character Development of America's Youth.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hoj, John

    1998-01-01

    Cautions that with growing access to new technologies, the expansion of Internet pornography and hate sites is fast becoming a danger for students, teachers, parents, and communities. Discusses technological possibilities for regulating Internet use available at school and at home. Relates Internet regulation with the goals of character education.…

  13. Mathematical morphology-based shape feature analysis for Chinese character recognition systems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Pai, Tun-Wen; Shyu, Keh-Hwa; Chen, Ling-Fan; Tai, Gwo-Chin

    1995-04-01

    This paper proposes an efficient technique of shape feature extraction based on the application of mathematical morphology theory. A new shape complexity index for preclassification of machine printed Chinese Character Recognition (CCR) is also proposed. For characters represented in different fonts/sizes or in a low resolution environment, a more stable local feature such as shape structure is preferred for character recognition. Morphological valley extraction filters are applied to extract the protrusive strokes from four sides of an input Chinese character. The number of extracted local strokes reflects the shape complexity of each side. These shape features of characters are encoded as corresponding shape complexity indices. Based on the shape complexity index, data base is able to be classified into 16 groups prior to recognition procedures. The performance of associating with shape feature analysis reclaims several characters from misrecognized character sets and results in an average of 3.3% improvement of recognition rate from an existing recognition system. In addition to enhance the recognition performance, the extracted stroke information can be further analyzed and classified its own stroke type. Therefore, the combination of extracted strokes from each side provides a means for data base clustering based on radical or subword components. It is one of the best solutions for recognizing high complexity characters such as Chinese characters which are divided into more than 200 different categories and consist more than 13,000 characters.

  14. Professional Development Programs That Work.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shawl, William F.

    The professional development program at Golden West College has successfully maximized instructional change and innvovation for several years. The success of the program is due to factors such as support from the president; the appointment of a dean of educational development whose sole responsibility is to work with faculty on new developmental…

  15. Moral Competence and Character Strengths among Adolescents: The Development and Validation of the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Park, Nansook; Peterson, Christopher

    2006-01-01

    Moral competence among adolescents can be approached in terms of good character. Character is a multidimensional construct comprised of a family of positive traits manifest in an individual's thoughts, emotions and behaviours. The Values in Action Inventory for Youth (VIA-Youth) is a self-report questionnaire suitable for adolescents that measures…

  16. Character virtues in psychiatric practice.

    PubMed

    Radden, Jennifer; Sadler, John Z

    2008-01-01

    The character-focused approach known as virtue ethics is especially well suited to understanding and promoting ethical psychiatric practice. Virtues are stable dispositions and responses attributed to character, and a virtue-based ethics is one in which people's selves or characters are at the center of moral assessment. In this discussion by a clinician and a philosopher, clinical scenarios using exchanges and inner monologue illustrate key aspects of virtues. Virtues are acquired through habituation; they are habits of mind as much as behavior; they are as a group heterogeneous, and individually composite; they involve affective responses; they are not impartial; they are compatible with the "role morality" required of professionals; they are responses to particular temptations and weaknesses; and they include, in the capacity for practical judgment known as phronesis, a way of resolving many of the conflicts and dilemmas that arise in practice. The virtue approach to ethics will likely be most useful in the educational setting where practitioners are learning clinical skills and socialized into the broad ethos of professional practice. Aspects of this educational effort are briefly reviewed, including whether it ought to be undertaken at all, whether the effort to teach virtues is possible, and, if so, how it can be achieved.

  17. Character convergence under competition for nutritionally essential resources.

    PubMed

    Fox, Jeremy W; Vasseur, David A

    2008-11-01

    Resource competition is thought to drive divergence in resource use traits (character displacement) by generating selection favoring individuals able to use resources unavailable to others. However, this picture assumes nutritionally substitutable resources (e.g., different prey species). When species compete for nutritionally essential resources (e.g., different nutrients), theory predicts that selection drives character convergence. We used models of two species competing for two essential resources to address several issues not considered by existing theory. The models incorporated either slow evolutionary change in resource use traits or fast physiological or behavioral change. We report four major results. First, competition always generates character convergence, but differences in resource requirements prevent competitors from evolving identical resource use traits. Second, character convergence promotes coexistence. Competing species always attain resource use traits that allow coexistence, and adaptive trait change stabilizes the ecological equilibrium. In contrast, adaptation in allopatry never preadapts species to coexist in sympatry. Third, feedbacks between ecological dynamics and trait dynamics lead to surprising dynamical trajectories such as transient divergence in resource use traits followed by subsequent convergence. Fourth, under sufficiently slow trait change, ecological dynamics often drive one of the competitors to near extinction, which would prevent realization of long-term character convergence in practice.

  18. Kodak AMSD Mirror Development Program

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Matthews, Gary; Dahl, Roger; Barrett, David; Bottom, John; Russell, Kevin (Technical Monitor)

    2002-01-01

    The Advanced Mirror System Demonstration Program is developing minor technology for the next generation optical systems. Many of these systems will require extremely lightweight and stable optics due to the overall size of the primary mirror. These segmented, deployable systems require new technology that AMSD is developing. The on-going AMSD program is a critical enabler for Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) which will start in 2002. The status of Kodak's AMSD mirror and future plans will be discussed with respect to the NGST program.

  19. "I Had to Live, Breathe, and Write My Character": Character Selection and Student Engagement in an Online Role-Play Simulation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rector-Aranda, Amy; Raider-Roth, Miriam; Glaser, Noah; Behrman, Matthew

    2017-01-01

    This study explores the relationship between character selection and student engagement in the Jewish Court of All Time (JCAT), an online and classroom-based role-playing simulation of a current events court case with Jewish historical roots. Analyzing students' responses to three questions posed in an out-of-character JCAT discussion forum, we…

  20. Prevalence of smoking among major movie characters: 1996–2004

    PubMed Central

    Worth, Keilah A; Cin, Sonya Dal; Sargent, James D

    2006-01-01

    Background Reports of a relationship between watching smoking in movies and smoking among adolescents have prompted greater scrutiny of smoking in movies by the public health community. Objective To assess the smoking prevalence among adult and adolescent movie characters, examine trends in smoking in movies over time, and compare the data with actual smoking prevalence among US adults and adolescents. Design and methods Smoking status of all major human adolescent and adult movie characters in the top 100 box office hits from 1996 to 2004 (900 movies) was assessed, and smoking prevalence was examined by Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating and year of release. Results The movies contained 5944 major characters, of whom 4911 were adults and 466 were adolescents. Among adult movie characters, the overall smoking prevalence was 20.6%; smoking was more common in men than in women (22.6% v 16.1%, respectively, p<0.001), and was related to MPAA rating category (26.9% for movies rated R (restricted, people aged <17 years require accompanying adult), 17.9% for PG‐13 (parents strongly cautioned that some material might be inappropriate for children) and 10.4% for G/PG (general audiences, all ages; parental guidance suggested for children), p<0.001). In 1996, the smoking prevalence for major adult movie characters (25.7%) was similar to that in the actual US population (24.7%). Smoking prevalence among adult movie characters declined to 18.4% in 2004 (p for trend <0.001), slightly below that for the US population for that year (20.9%). Examination of trends by MPAA rating showed that the downward trend in smoking among adult movie characters was statistically significant in movies rated G/PG and R, but not in those rated PG‐13. A downward trend over time was also found for smoking among adolescent movie characters. There was no smoking among adult characters in 43.3% of the movies; however, in 39% of the movies, smoking prevalence among adult characters

  1. A cognitive network for oracle bone characters related to animals

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dress, Andreas; Grünewald, Stefan; Zeng, Zhenbing

    2016-01-01

    In this paper, we present an analysis of oracle bone characters for animals from a “cognitive” point of view. After some general remarks on oracle-bone characters presented in Sec. 1 and a short outline of the paper in Sec. 2, we collect various oracle-bone characters for animals from published resources in Sec. 3. In the next section, we begin analyzing a group of 60 ancient animal characters from www.zdic.net, a highly acclaimed internet dictionary of Chinese characters that is strictly based on historical sources, and introduce five categories of specific features regarding their (graphical) structure that will be used in Sec. 5 to associate corresponding feature vectors to these characters. In Sec. 6, these feature vectors will be used to investigate their dissimilarity in terms of a family of parameterized distance measures. And in the last section, we apply the SplitsTree method as encoded in the NeighborNet algorithms to construct a corresponding family of dissimilarity-based networks with the intention of elucidating how the ancient Chinese might have perceived the “animal world” in the late bronze age and to demonstrate that these pictographs reflect an intuitive understanding of this world and its inherent structure that predates its classification in the oldest surviving Chinese encyclopedia from approximately the third century BC, the Er Ya, as well as similar classification systems in the West by one to two millennia. We also present an English dictionary of 70 oracle bone characters for animals in Appendix A. In Appendix B, we list various variants of animal characters that were published in the Jia Gu Wen Bian (cf. 甲骨文编, A Complete Collection of Oracle Bone Characters, edited by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, published by the Zhonghua Book Company in 1965). We recall the frequencies of the 521 most frequent oracle bone characters in Appendix C as reported in [T. Chen, Yin-Shang Jiaguwen Zixing

  2. Lessons in Character Impact Evaluation. Final Report. NCEE 2012-4004

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hanson, Thomas; Dietsch, Barbara; Zheng, Hong

    2012-01-01

    Character education has become one of the fastest growing reform movements in K-12 education today, partially in response to unacceptable levels of student misbehavior and inadequate endorsement of good character values (Williams 2000). Between 1993 and 2009, 36 states passed laws mandating or recommending some aspect of character education in…

  3. The Re-Emergence of Character Education in British Education Policy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Arthur, James

    2005-01-01

    Character education is a specific approach to morals or values education, which is consistently linked with citizenship education. But how is it possible for a heterogeneous society that disagrees about basic values to reach a consensus on what constitutes character education? This article explores how character education has returned to the…

  4. Specifications for Developing Secondary Program Proposals.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maryland State Dept. of Education, Baltimore. Div. of Career Technology and Adult Learning.

    This document, which is designed for individuals developing local career and technology education (CTE) program proposals and/or designing new CTE facilities in Maryland, presents the CTE program specifications that were developed to ensure the quality of CTE programs in public schools in Maryland. The document is divided into four sections. The…

  5. Instructional Development Grant Program.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Los Angeles Community Coll. District, CA. Div. of Educational Planning and Development.

    The Instructional Development Grant Program of the Los Angeles Community College District encourages developmental work by faculty members towards innovative approaches that are designed to have a positive impact on the learning process. The goals of the program are to: (1) provide incentives for faculty contributions beyond the normal assignment…

  6. Toda Systems, Cluster Characters, and Spectral Networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Williams, Harold

    2016-11-01

    We show that the Hamiltonians of the open relativistic Toda system are elements of the generic basis of a cluster algebra, and in particular are cluster characters of nonrigid representations of a quiver with potential. Using cluster coordinates defined via spectral networks, we identify the phase space of this system with the wild character variety related to the periodic nonrelativistic Toda system by the wild nonabelian Hodge correspondence. We show that this identification takes the relativistic Toda Hamiltonians to traces of holonomies around a simple closed curve. In particular, this provides nontrivial examples of cluster coordinates on SL n -character varieties for n > 2 where canonical functions associated to simple closed curves can be computed in terms of quivers with potential, extending known results in the SL 2 case.

  7. Program Formats, Vehicles, and Characters for Junior High School Audiences. Satellite Technology Demonstration, Technical Report No. 0509.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Connolly, A. J.; Lonsdale, Helen C.

    The "Time Out" series designed by the Satellite Technology Demonstration (STD) used a variety of formats, vehicles, and characters to explain career concepts to junior high school students. A science fiction set with a futuristic approach, called the Time Control Center (TCC) used vehicles to move forward and backward in time to access a…

  8. Assessing Multi-cultural Television Characters for Children. Revised.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    LaRose, Robert; Eisenstock, Barbara

    Two studies were undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of portrayals of minority group characters in television productions. One study evaluated minority children's identification with minority characters in the "Superfriends" series. The second study focused on interracial attitude changes associated with exposure to a pilot for "The New…

  9. Character Decomposition and Transposition Processes in Chinese Compound Words Modulates Attentional Blink.

    PubMed

    Cao, Hongwen; Gao, Min; Yan, Hongmei

    2016-01-01

    The attentional blink (AB) is the phenomenon in which the identification of the second of two targets (T2) is attenuated if it is presented less than 500 ms after the first target (T1). Although the AB is eliminated in canonical word conditions, it remains unclear whether the character order in compound words affects the magnitude of the AB. Morpheme decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words can provide an effective means to examine AB priming and to assess combinations of the component representations inherent to visual word identification. In the present study, we examined the processing of consecutive targets in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm using Chinese two-character compound words in which the two characters were transposed to form meaningful words or meaningless combinations (reversible, transposed, or canonical words). We found that when two Chinese characters that form a compound word, regardless of their order, are presented in an RSVP sequence, the likelihood of an AB for the second character is greatly reduced or eliminated compared to when the two characters constitute separate words rather than a compound word. Moreover, the order of the report for the two characters is more likely to be reversed when the normal order of the two characters in a compound word is reversed, especially when the interval between the presentation of the two characters is extremely short. These findings are more consistent with the cognitive strategy hypothesis than the resource-limited hypothesis during character decomposition and transposition of Chinese two-character compound words. These results suggest that compound characters are perceived as a unit, rather than two separate words. The data further suggest that readers could easily understand the text with character transpositions in compound words during Chinese reading.

  10. The Power of Social Skills in Character Development: Helping Diverse Learners Succeed.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Scully, Jennifer L.

    Students must demonstrate not only academic ability but also social competence as they develop to become involved members of society. This guide for teachers, parents, and other professionals addresses the necessity for teaching students social competence as they also learn their core academic material. The program starts with solid lessons in…

  11. A 21st-Century Framework for Character Formation in Sports

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Naylor, Adam H.; Yeager, John M.

    2013-01-01

    The value of athletics in character development has been anecdotally touted for centuries, but the reality is that sporting environments have regularly failed to achieve the potentials of moral education. The shared physical and mental demands of sports combined with the intensity with which much of society approaches competition makes the playing…

  12. Character Education: Controversy and Consensus. Controversial Issues in Education Series.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lockwood, Anne Turnbaugh

    This book draws on conversations with six individuals, each of whom offers a distinct approach to character education and speaks to the problems and the practical side of designing, implementing, and evaluating character education. The text opens with an overview of character education, exploring what it is, moral dilemmas, goals, and criticisms.…

  13. The Inversion Effect for Chinese Characters is Modulated by Radical Organization.

    PubMed

    Luo, Canhuang; Chen, Wei; Zhang, Ye

    2017-06-01

    In studies of visual object recognition, strong inversion effects accompany the acquisition of expertise and imply the involvement of configural processing. Chinese literacy results in sensitivity to the orthography of Chinese characters. While there is some evidence that this orthographic sensitivity results in an inversion effect, and thus involves configural processing, that processing might depend on exact orthographic properties. Chinese character recognition is believed to involve a hierarchical process, involving at least two lower levels of representation: strokes and radicals. Radicals are grouped into characters according to certain types of structure, i.e. left-right structure, top-bottom structure, or simple characters with only one radical by itself. These types of radical structures vary in both familiarity, and in hierarchical level (compound versus simple characters). In this study, we investigate whether the hierarchical-level or familiarity of radical-structure has an impact on the magnitude of the inversion effect. Participants were asked to do a matching task on pairs of either upright or inverted characters with all the types of structure. Inversion effects were measured based on both reaction time and response sensitivity. While an inversion effect was observed in all 3 conditions, the magnitude of the inversion effect varied with radical structure, being significantly larger for the most familiar type of structure: characters consisting of 2 radicals organized from left to right. These findings indicate that character recognition involves extraction of configural structure as well as radical processing which play different roles in the processing of compound characters and simple characters.

  14. Live texturing of augmented reality characters from colored drawings.

    PubMed

    Magnenat, Stéphane; Ngo, Dat Tien; Zünd, Fabio; Ryffel, Mattia; Noris, Gioacchino; Rothlin, Gerhard; Marra, Alessia; Nitti, Maurizio; Fua, Pascal; Gross, Markus; Sumner, Robert W

    2015-11-01

    Coloring books capture the imagination of children and provide them with one of their earliest opportunities for creative expression. However, given the proliferation and popularity of digital devices, real-world activities like coloring can seem unexciting, and children become less engaged in them. Augmented reality holds unique potential to impact this situation by providing a bridge between real-world activities and digital enhancements. In this paper, we present an augmented reality coloring book App in which children color characters in a printed coloring book and inspect their work using a mobile device. The drawing is detected and tracked, and the video stream is augmented with an animated 3-D version of the character that is textured according to the child's coloring. This is possible thanks to several novel technical contributions. We present a texturing process that applies the captured texture from a 2-D colored drawing to both the visible and occluded regions of a 3-D character in real time. We develop a deformable surface tracking method designed for colored drawings that uses a new outlier rejection algorithm for real-time tracking and surface deformation recovery. We present a content creation pipeline to efficiently create the 2-D and 3-D content. And, finally, we validate our work with two user studies that examine the quality of our texturing algorithm and the overall App experience.

  15. Virtual muscularity: a content analysis of male video game characters.

    PubMed

    Martins, Nicole; Williams, Dmitri C; Ratan, Rabindra A; Harrison, Kristen

    2011-01-01

    The 150 top-selling video games were content analyzed to study representations of male bodies. Human males in the games were captured via screenshot and body parts measured. These measurements were then compared to anthropometric data drawn from a representative sample of 1120 North American men. Characters at high levels of photorealism were larger than the average American male, but these characters did not mirror the V-shaped ideal found in mainstream media. Characters at low levels of photorealism were also larger than the average American male, but these characters were so much larger that they appeared cartoonish. Idealized male characters were more likely to be found in games for children than in games for adults. Implications for cultivation theory are discussed. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Chinese-Cantonese Dictionary of Common Chinese-Cantonese Characters.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Defense Language Inst., Washington, DC.

    This dictionary contains 1,500 Chinese-Cantonese characters (selected from three frequency lists), and more than 6,000 Chinese-Cantonese terms (selected from three Cantonese-English dictionaries). The characters are arranged alphabetically according to the U.S. Army Language School System of Romanization, which is described in the…

  17. 12 CFR 333.2 - Change in general character of business.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 12 Banks and Banking 4 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Change in general character of business. 333.2... GENERAL POLICY EXTENSION OF CORPORATE POWERS Regulations § 333.2 Change in general character of business... permit any change to be made in the general character or type of business exercised by it after the...

  18. Mapping wilderness character in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

    Treesearch

    James Tricker; Ann Schwaller; Teresa Hanson; Elizabeth Mejicano; Peter Landres

    2017-01-01

    A GIS-based approach was used to depict how threats to wilderness character vary in extent and magnitude across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Based on the interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character, Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy for Monitoring Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres et al. 2008a...

  19. Picture This Character: Using Imagery To Teach a Japanese Syllabary.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thompson, Joyce D.; Wakefield, John F.

    This study examined the effectiveness of imagery to teach native English speakers to associate hiragana characters (a Japanese script) with the spoken Japanese syllables that the characters represent. Twenty-one adults in a psychology of learning class for teachers were taught to picture a hiragana character in such a way as to establish an…

  20. Reading, Writing, and Animation in Character Learning in Chinese as a Foreign Language

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Xu, Yi; Chang, Li-Yun; Zhang, Juan; Perfetti, Charles A.

    2013-01-01

    Previous studies suggest that writing helps reading development in Chinese in both first and second language settings by enabling higher-quality orthographic representation of the characters. This study investigated the comparative effectiveness of reading, animation, and writing in developing foreign language learners' orthographic knowledge…

  1. Leadership Development for Program Directors

    PubMed Central

    Bing-You, Robert; Wiltshire, Whitney; Skolfield, Jenny

    2010-01-01

    Background Residency program directors have increasingly challenging roles, but they may not be receiving adequate leadership development. Objective To assess and facilitate program directors' leadership self-awareness and development at a workshop retreat. Methods At our annual program director retreat, program directors and associate program directors from a variety of specialties completed the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI), which evaluates an individual's behavior in conflict situations, and the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership (HBSL) model, which measures individuals' preferred leadership style in working with followers. Participants received their results during the retreat and discussed their leadership style results in the context of conflict situations experienced in the past. An online survey was distributed 3 weeks after the retreat to assess participant satisfaction and to determine whether participants would make changes to their leadership styles. Results Seventeen program directors attended the retreat and completed the tools. On the TKI, 47% preferred the Compromising mode for handling conflict, while 18% preferred either the Avoiding or Accommodating modes. On the HBSL, 71% of program directors preferred a Coaching leadership style. Ninety-one percent of postretreat-survey respondents found the leadership tools helpful and also thought they had a better awareness of their conflict mode and leadership style preferences. Eighty-two percent committed to a change in their leadership behaviors in the 6 months following the retreat. Conclusions Leadership tools may be beneficial for promoting the professional development of program directors. The TKI and HBSL can be used within a local retreat or workshop as we describe to facilitate positive leadership-behavior changes. PMID:22132267

  2. Commercial Crew Development Program Overview

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Russell, Richard W.

    2011-01-01

    NASA's Commercial Crew Development Program is designed to stimulate efforts within the private sector that will aid in the development and demonstration of safe, reliable, and cost-effective space transportation capabilities. With the goal of delivery cargo and eventually crew to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and the International Space Station (ISS) the program is designed to foster the development of new spacecraft and launch vehicles in the commercial sector. Through Space Act Agreements (SAAs) in 2011 NASA provided $50M of funding to four partners; Blue Origin, The Boeing Company, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX. Additional, NASA has signed two unfunded SAAs with ATK and United Space Alliance. This paper will give a brief summary of these SAAs. Additionally, a brief overview will be provided of the released version of the Commercial Crew Development Program plans and requirements documents.

  3. Evaluating a Development Program.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Frantzreb, Arthur C.

    Problems in evaluating the success of an institutional resource development program are examined and suggestions are offered for effective assessment. Such a program is seen as a sequence of events in the artful management of people, from the planning stage to obtaining a financial commitment in writing from persons who want to share their assets…

  4. [The representation of madness in William Shakespeare's characters].

    PubMed

    Stompe, Thomas; Ritter, Kristina; Friedmann, Alexander

    2006-08-01

    Shakespeare is one of the great creators of human characters of the 16(th) century. Like for many of his contemporaries madness was a central topic of his work. The first part of this paper discusses the sociocultural environment and the semantic field of madness in the Elizabethan age, which forms the background for Shakespeare's characters. In the second part we try to analyze the clinical pictures of the fictive characters of Othello, Hamlet, Lear and Macbeth. While we find melancholy, delusions and hallucinations, other diseases such as schizophrenia are missing entirely. Schizophrenia only appears in the literature more than two hundred years later, in the beginning of modern age.

  5. Re-Imagining Program Development and Re-Engineering Program Design.

    PubMed

    Currie, Geoffrey M; Thomas, Catherine J

    2018-05-03

    Program development and review is a central part of institutional and industry quality assurance. Traditional approaches, while well established, present a number of barriers that could undermine process integrity and quality outcomes. Here a new approach to program development and design is explored with the goal of enhancing outcomes for students and institutions. Copyright © 2018 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Inc.

  6. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2012 CFR

    2012-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2012-10-01 2012-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  7. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2014 CFR

    2014-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2014-10-01 2014-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  8. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2013 CFR

    2013-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2013-10-01 2013-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  9. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2011-10-01 2011-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  10. 42 CFR 54.5 - Religious character and independence.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-10-01

    ... definition, practice and expression of its religious beliefs. The organization may not expend funds that it... 42 Public Health 1 2010-10-01 2010-10-01 false Religious character and independence. 54.5 Section... AND/OR PROJECTS FOR ASSISTANCE IN TRANSITION FROM HOMELESSNESS GRANTS § 54.5 Religious character and...

  11. 12 CFR 925.12 - Character of management requirement.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

    2010-01-01

    ... 12 Banks and Banking 7 2010-01-01 2010-01-01 false Character of management requirement. 925.12 Section 925.12 Banks and Banking FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE BOARD FEDERAL HOME LOAN BANK MEMBERS AND HOUSING ASSOCIATES MEMBERS OF THE BANKS Eligibility Requirements § 925.12 Character of management requirement. An...

  12. The Implementation of Character Education through Scout Activities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mislia; Mahmud, Alimuddin; Manda, Darman

    2016-01-01

    This research aims at describing the factors influencing the extracurricular activities especially scouting. This research also aims at describing the Scouts skills that can form the students' character. This research is also to describe the strategies for the formation of the students' character through scout activities. This research was a…

  13. Temperament and character profile of patients with fibromyalgia.

    PubMed

    Gencay-Can, Asli; Can, Serdar Suleyman

    2012-12-01

    Personality may play an important role in the development and initiation of fibromyalgia (FM). It may also be used for individualized treatment planning. We aimed to assess personality profiles of FM patients and to evaluate the association of personality profiles with education, symptom severity, depression, anxiety, and functioning. Forty-two female patients with FM and 48 healthy female controls were enrolled in the study. We assessed personality profiles of FM patients using the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was used to detect the correlation between the TCI and education, symptom severity, depression, anxiety, and functioning. FM patients had significantly higher harm avoidance (HA) and self-transcendence (ST) scores, and lower self-directedness (SD) scores than those in the healthy controls. High HA scores were related to impaired functioning, depression, and anxiety symptoms. A negative correlation has been found between SD scores and depression scores. The study suggests that FM patients have distinctive temperament and character profile compared with healthy controls. FM patients tend to have high HA, high ST, and low SD scores.

  14. 7 CFR 371.9 - Policy and Program Development.

    Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

    2011-01-01

    ... 7 Agriculture 5 2011-01-01 2011-01-01 false Policy and Program Development. 371.9 Section 371.9... and Program Development. (a) General statement. Policy and Program Development (PPD) provides... development; and policy, risk, and economic analysis for APHIS programs. (3) Analyzing the environmental...

  15. Cytochrome P450 2D6 polymorphism and character traits.

    PubMed

    Suzuki, Eiji; Kitao, Yoshie; Ono, Yutaka; Iijima, Yoshimi; Inada, Toshiya

    2003-06-01

    It has been suggested that cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) is involved in dopamine metabolism within the brain. The dopamine system is suggested to play a role in determining normal character. The purpose of this study was to examine whether character traits are dependent on cytochrome P450 2D6 activity. We investigated the association between temperament and CYP2D6 gene polymorphism. The subjects were all Japanese and the polymorphism genotyped in the present study was CYP2D6*10. Character traits were assessed using the Temperament and Character Inventory. There was no overall or specific association between personality traits and the CYP2D6*10 allele and genotype frequencies. The present results do not support the hypothesis that CYP2D6 activity affects temperament and character.

  16. EEG character identification using stimulus sequences designed to maximize mimimal hamming distance.

    PubMed

    Fukami, Tadanori; Shimada, Takamasa; Forney, Elliott; Anderson, Charles W

    2012-01-01

    In this study, we have improved upon the P300 speller Brain-Computer Interface paradigm by introducing a new character encoding method. Our concept in detection of the intended character is not based on a classification of target and nontarget responses, but based on an identifaction of the character which maximize the difference between P300 amplitudes in target and nontarget stimuli. Each bit included in the code corresponds to flashing character, '1', and non-flashing, '0'. Here, the codes were constructed in order to maximize the minimum hamming distance between the characters. Electroencephalography was used to identify the characters using a waveform calculated by adding and subtracting the response of the target and non-target stimulus according the codes respectively. This stimulus presentation method was applied to a 3×3 character matrix, and the results were compared with that of a conventional P300 speller of the same size. Our method reduced the time until the correct character was obtained by 24%.

  17. Digital access and national character.

    PubMed

    Yang, Bijou; Lester, David

    2006-04-01

    A digital access index was associated with measures of national character (such as extraversion and individualism) for 18 industrialized nations, but statistical controls for gross domestic product per capita eliminated these associations.

  18. Common constraints limit Korean and English character recognition in peripheral vision.

    PubMed

    He, Yingchen; Kwon, MiYoung; Legge, Gordon E

    2018-01-01

    The visual span refers to the number of adjacent characters that can be recognized in a single glance. It is viewed as a sensory bottleneck in reading for both normal and clinical populations. In peripheral vision, the visual span for English characters can be enlarged after training with a letter-recognition task. Here, we examined the transfer of training from Korean to English characters for a group of bilingual Korean native speakers. In the pre- and posttests, we measured visual spans for Korean characters and English letters. Training (1.5 hours × 4 days) consisted of repetitive visual-span measurements for Korean trigrams (strings of three characters). Our training enlarged the visual spans for Korean single characters and trigrams, and the benefit transferred to untrained English symbols. The improvement was largely due to a reduction of within-character and between-character crowding in Korean recognition, as well as between-letter crowding in English recognition. We also found a negative correlation between the size of the visual span and the average pattern complexity of the symbol set. Together, our results showed that the visual span is limited by common sensory (crowding) and physical (pattern complexity) factors regardless of the language script, providing evidence that the visual span reflects a universal bottleneck for text recognition.

  19. Common constraints limit Korean and English character recognition in peripheral vision

    PubMed Central

    He, Yingchen; Kwon, MiYoung; Legge, Gordon E.

    2018-01-01

    The visual span refers to the number of adjacent characters that can be recognized in a single glance. It is viewed as a sensory bottleneck in reading for both normal and clinical populations. In peripheral vision, the visual span for English characters can be enlarged after training with a letter-recognition task. Here, we examined the transfer of training from Korean to English characters for a group of bilingual Korean native speakers. In the pre- and posttests, we measured visual spans for Korean characters and English letters. Training (1.5 hours × 4 days) consisted of repetitive visual-span measurements for Korean trigrams (strings of three characters). Our training enlarged the visual spans for Korean single characters and trigrams, and the benefit transferred to untrained English symbols. The improvement was largely due to a reduction of within-character and between-character crowding in Korean recognition, as well as between-letter crowding in English recognition. We also found a negative correlation between the size of the visual span and the average pattern complexity of the symbol set. Together, our results showed that the visual span is limited by common sensory (crowding) and physical (pattern complexity) factors regardless of the language script, providing evidence that the visual span reflects a universal bottleneck for text recognition. PMID:29327041

  20. Categorical Perception of Chinese Characters by Simplified and Traditional Chinese Readers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yang, Ruoxiao; Wang, William Shi Yuan

    2018-01-01

    Recent research has shown that the visual complexity of orthographies across writing systems influences the development of orthographic representations. Simplified and traditional Chinese characters are usually regarded as the most visually complicated writing systems currently in use, with the traditional system showing a higher level of…

  1. Evoking and Measuring Identification with Narrative Characters - A Linguistic Cues Framework.

    PubMed

    van Krieken, Kobie; Hoeken, Hans; Sanders, José

    2017-01-01

    Current research on identification with narrative characters poses two problems. First, although identification is seen as a dynamic process of which the intensity varies during reading, it is usually measured by means of post-reading questionnaires containing self-report items. Second, it is not clear which linguistic characteristics evoke identification. The present paper proposes that an interdisciplinary framework allows for more precise manipulations and measurements of identification, which will ultimately advance our understanding of the antecedents and nature of this process. The central hypothesis of our Linguistic Cues Framework is that identification with a narrative character is a multidimensional experience for which different dimensions are evoked by different linguistic cues. The first part of the paper presents a literature review on identification, resulting in a renewed conceptualization of identification which distinguishes six dimensions: a spatiotemporal, a perceptual, a cognitive, a moral, an emotional, and an embodied dimension. The second part argues that each of these dimensions is influenced by specific linguistic cues which represent various aspects of the narrative character's perspective. The proposed relations between linguistic cues and identification dimensions are specified in six propositions. The third part discusses what psychological and neurocognitive methods enable the measurement of the various identification dimensions in order to test the propositions. By establishing explicit connections between the linguistic characteristics of narratives and readers' physical, psychological, and neurocognitive responses to narratives, this paper develops a research agenda for future empirical research on identification with narrative characters.

  2. Refined geometric transition and qq-characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kimura, Taro; Mori, Hironori; Sugimoto, Yuji

    2018-01-01

    We show the refinement of the prescription for the geometric transition in the refined topological string theory and, as its application, discuss a possibility to describe qq-characters from the string theory point of view. Though the suggested way to operate the refined geometric transition has passed through several checks, it is additionally found in this paper that the presence of the preferred direction brings a nontrivial effect. We provide the modified formula involving this point. We then apply our prescription of the refined geometric transition to proposing the stringy description of doubly quantized Seiberg-Witten curves called qq-characters in certain cases.

  3. VARIABILITY AND CHARACTER ASSOCIATION IN ROSE COLOURED LEADWORT (PLUMBAGO ROSEA Linn.)

    PubMed Central

    Kurian, Alice; Anitha, C.A.; Nybe, E.V.

    2001-01-01

    Forty five plumbago rosea accessions collected from different parts of Kerala state were evaluated for variability in morphological and yield related characters and plumbagin content. Highly significant variation was evident for all the characters studied except leaf size indicating wide variability in the accessions. Accessions PR 25 and PR 31 appear to be promising with respect to root yield and high plumbagin content. Character association revelated significant and positive correlation of all the characters except leaf size with yield. Hence, selection of high yielding types could easily be done based on visual characters expressing more vegetative growth but with reduced leaf size. PMID:22557037

  4. Most Likely to Succeed: Seeking Self-Knowledge in the Company of Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gardoqui, Kate Ehrenfeld

    2012-01-01

    In this article, the author describes several innovative activities for engaging students in studies of literary characters: voting on superlatives for characters, creating characters' Facebook profiles, and composing creative dialogs in which characters from different works meet each other. The author points out that it is this self-knowledge…

  5. Coaching for Civic Character

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shields, David Light; Bredemeier, Brenda Light

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to examine why and how sport coaches can play an important role in promoting citizenship and democratic character. As microcommunities, sport teams may provide potent venues for learning about the rights and responsibilities of belonging to social organizations; within teams, participants can practice the democratic…

  6. Microbial phenomics information extractor (MicroPIE): a natural language processing tool for the automated acquisition of prokaryotic phenotypic characters from text sources.

    PubMed

    Mao, Jin; Moore, Lisa R; Blank, Carrine E; Wu, Elvis Hsin-Hui; Ackerman, Marcia; Ranade, Sonali; Cui, Hong

    2016-12-13

    The large-scale analysis of phenomic data (i.e., full phenotypic traits of an organism, such as shape, metabolic substrates, and growth conditions) in microbial bioinformatics has been hampered by the lack of tools to rapidly and accurately extract phenotypic data from existing legacy text in the field of microbiology. To quickly obtain knowledge on the distribution and evolution of microbial traits, an information extraction system needed to be developed to extract phenotypic characters from large numbers of taxonomic descriptions so they can be used as input to existing phylogenetic analysis software packages. We report the development and evaluation of Microbial Phenomics Information Extractor (MicroPIE, version 0.1.0). MicroPIE is a natural language processing application that uses a robust supervised classification algorithm (Support Vector Machine) to identify characters from sentences in prokaryotic taxonomic descriptions, followed by a combination of algorithms applying linguistic rules with groups of known terms to extract characters as well as character states. The input to MicroPIE is a set of taxonomic descriptions (clean text). The output is a taxon-by-character matrix-with taxa in the rows and a set of 42 pre-defined characters (e.g., optimum growth temperature) in the columns. The performance of MicroPIE was evaluated against a gold standard matrix and another student-made matrix. Results show that, compared to the gold standard, MicroPIE extracted 21 characters (50%) with a Relaxed F1 score > 0.80 and 16 characters (38%) with Relaxed F1 scores ranging between 0.50 and 0.80. Inclusion of a character prediction component (SVM) improved the overall performance of MicroPIE, notably the precision. Evaluated against the same gold standard, MicroPIE performed significantly better than the undergraduate students. MicroPIE is a promising new tool for the rapid and efficient extraction of phenotypic character information from prokaryotic taxonomic

  7. The Forgotten American: A Story for Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sanchez, Tony

    2007-01-01

    As character education continues to be an objective of the social studies, the more effective educators have taken up the challenge by first understanding the principles of their discipline and the opportunities for examining the values of character to be encountered. Social studies is rediscovering the focus on the actual men and women of history…

  8. Rachel's Challenge: A Moral Compass for Character Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hollingshead, Barbara; Crump, Christi; Eddy, Rochelle; Rowe, Dina

    2009-01-01

    Though American life in 1923 was significantly different than the present day, authors John Dewey and Diana Brannon share similar concerns about character. Historically, educators as far back as the 1800s have felt an obligation to the community to transcend the primary purpose for schooling by including character education in their curricula.…

  9. A psycholinguistic database for traditional Chinese character naming.

    PubMed

    Chang, Ya-Ning; Hsu, Chun-Hsien; Tsai, Jie-Li; Chen, Chien-Liang; Lee, Chia-Ying

    2016-03-01

    In this study, we aimed to provide a large-scale set of psycholinguistic norms for 3,314 traditional Chinese characters, along with their naming reaction times (RTs), collected from 140 Chinese speakers. The lexical and semantic variables in the database include frequency, regularity, familiarity, consistency, number of strokes, homophone density, semantic ambiguity rating, phonetic combinability, semantic combinability, and the number of disyllabic compound words formed by a character. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive powers of these variables for the naming RTs. The results demonstrated that these variables could account for a significant portion of variance (55.8%) in the naming RTs. An additional multiple regression analysis was conducted to demonstrate the effects of consistency and character frequency. Overall, the regression results were consistent with the findings of previous studies on Chinese character naming. This database should be useful for research into Chinese language processing, Chinese education, or cross-linguistic comparisons. The database can be accessed via an online inquiry system (http://ball.ling.sinica.edu.tw/namingdatabase/index.html).

  10. [What is beauty? : Manifest for an aesthetic character medicine].

    PubMed

    Harth, W

    2017-12-01

    Aesthetic medicine has in recent decades attained a growing social significance and firm place in the medical profession image. In a short time, a variety of technical procedures and processes have been developed and applied by specialized physicians. A further leading medical discussion regarding the central question "What is beauty" is missing compared with the technologically innovative progress. Beauty is characterized by an individual and subjective pleasure. Social media and fashion trends exert a central influence on common beauty ideals and aesthetic medicine. In practice, the artificial intervention must accord to the individual personality. Therefore, the professional term Aesthetic Medicine is insufficient and should be replaced by "Aesthetic Character Medicine". The particular purpose is the aim of graceful aging and a sustained adequate result which outlasts the zeitgeist. This requires medical know how and clear aesthetic self-conception of the physician. "Aesthetic Character Medicine" can be realized in a discourse, with the 10-step plan presented in this article.

  11. A menagerie of promotional characters: promoting food to children through food packaging.

    PubMed

    Hebden, Lana; King, Lesley; Kelly, Bridget; Chapman, Kathy; Innes-Hughes, Christine

    2011-01-01

    To determine the extent to which (1) promotional characters are used on food packaging for healthful and less-healthful food and (2) different companies use this persuasive marketing strategy. Cross-sectional supermarket audit of all food and beverages featuring promotional characters on the packaging. Three Australian supermarket chains. Frequency of observed products, package size, nutritional composition. Frequencies and bivariate analyses was conducted. Nutritional composition (healthful vs less healthful) was analyzed by character type and company type, that is, whether the company was signed to the Australian Food and Grocery Council Responsible Marketing to Children Initiative (RMCI) signatory. Products featuring promotional characters on packaging (n = 352) were predominantly less-healthful food and beverages (70%). [corrected]. Nutritional composition varied significantly by character type, with 69% of products with sportspersons, celebrities, or movie tie-ins being healthful, compared with 38% of licensed and 16% [corrected] of company-owned characters. Only 13 of the 75 companies using characters on packaging were RMCI signatory. Promotional characters are largely used on food packaging to promote less-healthful food to children. Most of these characters are company-owned characters that are not subject to any form of regulation in Australia. Further efforts to limit this form of marketing to children are required. Copyright © 2011 Society for Nutrition Education. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  12. Contribution of finger tracing to the recognition of Chinese characters.

    PubMed

    Yim-Ng, Y Y; Varley, R; Andrade, J

    2000-01-01

    Finger tracing is a simulation of the act of writing without the use of pen and paper. It is claimed to help in the processing of Chinese characters, possibly by providing additional motor coding. In this study, blindfolded subjects were equally good at identifying Chinese characters and novel visual stimuli through passive movements made with the index finger of the preferred hand and those made with the last finger of that hand. This suggests that finger tracing provides a relatively high level of coding specific to individual characters, but non-specific to motor effectors. Beginning each stroke from the same location, i.e. removing spatial information, impaired recognition of the familiar characters and the novel nonsense figures. Passively tracing the strokes in a random sequence also impaired recognition of the characters. These results therefore suggest that the beneficial effect of finger tracing on writing or recall of Chinese characters is mediated by sequence and spatial information embedded in the motor movements, and that proprioceptive channel may play a part in mediating visuo-spatial information. Finger tracing may be a useful strategy for remediation of Chinese language impairments.

  13. Development of a character, line and point display system. [for medical records

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Owen, E. W.

    1977-01-01

    A compact graphics terminal for use as the input to a computerized medical records system is described. The principal mode of communication between the terminal and the records system is by checklists and menu selection. However, the terminal accepts short, handwritten messages as well as conventional alphanumeric input. The terminal consists of an electronic tablet, a display, a microcomputer controller, a character generator, and a refresh memory for the display. An Intel SBC 80/10 microcomputer controls the flow of information and a 16 kilobyte memory stores the point-by-point array of information to be displayed. A specially designed interface continuously generates the raster display without the intervention of the microcomputer.

  14. Bruno Braunerde und die Bodentypen - The German-speaking friends of the Scottish soil characters

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Hofmann, Anett

    2014-05-01

    Cartoon figures of soil profiles with faces, legs, arms and funny names: the Scottish soil characters Rusty (Cambisol), Heather (Podzol), Pete (Histosol) and five others were developed at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen for outreach activities. They represent eight soil types that are common in Scotland. Recently they have become movie stars in an animated film, where they speak with a Scottish accent. The Scottish soil characters are a true soil science communication success story and it would be great if they had friends in many places to tell some stories from the underground in the respective native languages. This contribution will introduce the draft for 13 German-speaking soil characters that represent the most common soil types in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Each name is a play on words with respect to German soil classification terms and serves as a mnemonic for typical characteristics of these soils. The 'hair' shows detailed vegetation and the context with common land use. For non-soil scientists the soil characters can be used as story-tellers, e.g. about their life (soil evolution), home (spatial distribution), job (function), fears (threats) and joys (best-practice land use, restoration). Because the International Year of Soil (2015) is an excellent opportunity for new outreach activities, the aim is to publish the German-speaking soil characters as a collaboration of the Austrian, German and Swiss Soil Science Societies. The soil characters could be used in print or online formats, and even - as can be seen in Aberdeen - as human-sized walking soil profiles.

  15. Non-Markovian character in human mobility: Online and offline.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Zhi-Dan; Cai, Shi-Min; Lu, Yang

    2015-06-01

    The dynamics of human mobility characterizes the trajectories that humans follow during their daily activities and is the foundation of processes from epidemic spreading to traffic prediction and information recommendation. In this paper, we investigate a massive data set of human activity, including both online behavior of browsing websites and offline one of visiting towers based mobile terminations. The non-Markovian character observed from both online and offline cases is suggested by the scaling law in the distribution of dwelling time at individual and collective levels, respectively. Furthermore, we argue that the lower entropy and higher predictability in human mobility for both online and offline cases may originate from this non-Markovian character. However, the distributions of individual entropy and predictability show the different degrees of non-Markovian character between online and offline cases. To account for non-Markovian character in human mobility, we apply a protype model with three basic ingredients, namely, preferential return, inertial effect, and exploration to reproduce the dynamic process of online and offline human mobilities. The simulations show that the model has an ability to obtain characters much closer to empirical observations.

  16. On defining a unique phylogenetic tree with homoplastic characters.

    PubMed

    Goloboff, Pablo A; Wilkinson, Mark

    2018-05-01

    This paper discusses the problem of whether creating a matrix with all the character state combinations that have a fixed number of steps (or extra steps) on a given tree T, produces the same tree T when analyzed with maximum parsimony or maximum likelihood. Exhaustive enumeration of cases up to 20 taxa for binary characters, and up to 12 taxa for 4-state characters, shows that the same tree is recovered (as unique most likely or most parsimonious tree) as long as the number of extra steps is within 1/4 of the number of taxa. This dependence, 1/4 of the number of taxa, is discussed with a general argumentation, in terms of the spread of the character changes on the tree used to select character state distributions. The present finding allows creating matrices which have as much homoplasy as possible for the most parsimonious or likely tree to be predictable, and examination of these matrices with hill-climbing search algorithms provides additional evidence on the (lack of a) necessary relationship between homoplasy and the ability of search methods to find optimal trees. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Chinese Readers Can Perceive a Word Even When It's Composed of Noncontiguous Characters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ma, Guojie; Pollatsek, Alexander; Li, Yugang; Li, Xingshan

    2017-01-01

    This study explored whether readers could recognize a word composed of noncontiguous characters (a "cross-character word") in Chinese reading. All 3 experiments employed Chinese 4-character strings ABCD, where both AB and CD were 2-character words. In the cross-character word condition, AC was a word but in the control condition, AC was…

  18. FPT- FORTRAN PROGRAMMING TOOLS FOR THE DEC VAX

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Ragosta, A. E.

    1994-01-01

    The FORTRAN Programming Tools (FPT) are a series of tools used to support the development and maintenance of FORTRAN 77 source codes. Included are a debugging aid, a CPU time monitoring program, source code maintenance aids, print utilities, and a library of useful, well-documented programs. These tools assist in reducing development time and encouraging high quality programming. Although intended primarily for FORTRAN programmers, some of the tools can be used on data files and other programming languages. BUGOUT is a series of FPT programs that have proven very useful in debugging a particular kind of error and in optimizing CPU-intensive codes. The particular type of error is the illegal addressing of data or code as a result of subtle FORTRAN errors that are not caught by the compiler or at run time. A TRACE option also allows the programmer to verify the execution path of a program. The TIME option assists the programmer in identifying the CPU-intensive routines in a program to aid in optimization studies. Program coding, maintenance, and print aids available in FPT include: routines for building standard format subprogram stubs; cleaning up common blocks and NAMELISTs; removing all characters after column 72; displaying two files side by side on a VT-100 terminal; creating a neat listing of a FORTRAN source code including a Table of Contents, an Index, and Page Headings; converting files between VMS internal format and standard carriage control format; changing text strings in a file without using EDT; and replacing tab characters with spaces. The library of useful, documented programs includes the following: time and date routines; a string categorization routine; routines for converting between decimal, hex, and octal; routines to delay process execution for a specified time; a Gaussian elimination routine for solving a set of simultaneous linear equations; a curve fitting routine for least squares fit to polynomial, exponential, and sinusoidal forms (with

  19. Bringing in a New Era in Character Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hymowitz, Kay S.

    2003-01-01

    Reviews the book, "Bringing in a New Era in Character Education," a collection of essays by prominent social critics and social scientists. Suggests that the book shows that the character education movement is a reaction to the moral vacuum created by the transformations of the middle and late 20th century. Notes that most of the essays…

  20. When goals collide: monitoring the goals of multiple characters.

    PubMed

    Magliano, Joseph P; Taylor, Holly A; Kim, Hyun-Jeong Joyce

    2005-12-01

    Most story plots contain multiple characters who are independent, interact, and often have conflicting goals. One would expect that narrative understanding would require monitoring of the goals, concerns, and situations of multiple agents. There is considerable evidence that understanders monitor the primary protagonist's goal plans (e.g., Suh & Trabasso, 1993). However, there is relatively little research on the extent to which understanders monitor the goals of multiple agents. We investigated the impact of characters' roles and prominence on the extent to which understanders monitor the goal plans of multiple characters in a feature length film. In Experiment 1, participants made situation change judgments, and in Experiment 2, they verbally described scenes. Both types of judgments indicated that viewers monitor the goals and plans of multiple agents but do so to a greater extent for characters more prominent to the plotline.