Digital Commons Network^™

Desired Characteristics Of Ethical Leaders In Business, Educational, Political And Religious Organizations From East Tennessee: A Delphi Investigation., Jeff Moorhouse

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Leadership is the moving of people towards specified goals. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes. The leadership dynamic of human interaction is one of the most studied and least understood phenomena. More attention is currently being given to the ethics of leadership in light of recent situations involving misconduct in the White House, illeagal accounting practices amoung top corporations, and misuse of power in religous organizations.

In this study, I sought to identify and prioritize characteristics of ehtical leadership with the assistance of leaders in four distinct groups; the business, religious, political, and educational communities within a six county …

Perceived Barriers To The National Board For Professional Teaching Standards Certification., Jan Woodard Moore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Since its conception in 1987, much money and effort have been expended establishing the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Although 16,038 educators in 45 states and the District of Columbia have obtained National Board Certification, there are over 1,200 teachers in the East Tennessee counties of Cocke and Sevier who are eligible for National Board Certification, but have not obtained this certification. This study sought to identify the barriers that discouraged this population from attempting to gain National Board Certification.

The research design was inferential and utilized data from a survey instrument constructed by the researcher. A pilot test …

Organizational Structural And Cultural Variables As Predictors Of Quality In Federally Approved Nursing Homes., Lorraine V. Desormeaux

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which nursing home organizational structure and cultural variables were related to the outcomes reported by the Health Care Finance Administration public use data set (HCFA-NHCD). A second purpose was to examine the effects of a new style of nursing home management called the Eden Alternative™ concept. A related purpose was to test the usefulness of the HCFA-NHCD in predicting the quality of care for residents in federally approved nursing homes. Secondary data analysis was conducted on the HCFA-NHCD, as published in December 2001. Descriptive statistics and measures of association …

Folk Medicine In Southern Appalachian Fiction., Catherine Benson Strain

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The region of Southern Appalachia, long known for its colorful storytellers, is also rich in folk medical lore and practice. In their Appalachian novels, Lucy Furman, Emma Bell Miles, Mildred Haun, Catherine Marshall, Harriette Arnow, Lee Smith, and Charles Frazier, feature folk medicine prominently in their narratives. The novels studied, set against the backdrop of the rise of official medicine, are divided into three major time periods that correspond to important chapters in the history of American medicine: the 1890s through the 1930s; the 1940s through the 1960s; and the 1970s through the present. The study of folk medicine, a …

Students' Perceptions Of Multimedia Classrooms At East Tennessee State University., Shouhong Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate students' perceptions of multimedia classrooms at East Tennessee State University regarding technologies in multimedia classrooms, students' learning achievements, instructors' instructional methods, and students' learning styles. Two surveys in multimedia classrooms and traditional classrooms were designed to measure and compare students' perceptions of multimedia classrooms. The VARK (Fleming, 2002b) learning style survey was used to calculate the students' learning styles.

The research was conducted during spring semester, 2002. Participants in this study included 187 students in multimedia classrooms and 110 students in traditional classrooms at East Tennessee State University. The majority of students …

Relationship Between Text Display Method And College Student Short Term Knowledge Retention During Self-Study., Jeff W. Church

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This purpose of this study was to determine if a significant difference existed in the short-term knowledge retention of college freshmen reading informational stimulus materials presented through one of three different text display modes; 1) traditional printed text, 2) computer-displayed linear text, and 3) computer-displayed hypertext. The sample consisted of 267 college freshmen at a southern regional university. The 267 students were randomly selected from the entire population of entering freshmen during Fall 2002. These students were then randomly assigned to one of the three treatment groups. After reading the stimulus materials for a specified amount of time, students completed …

Error Estimation And Grid Adaptation For Functional Outputs Using Discrete-Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis, Ravishankar Balasubramanian

Theses and Dissertations

Within the design process, computational fluid dynamics is typically used to compute specific quantities that assess the performance of the apparatus under investigation. These quantities are usually integral output functions such as force and moment coefficients. However, to accurately model the configuration, the geometric features and the resulting physical phenomena must be adequately resolved. Due to limited computational resources a compromise must be made between the fidelity of the solution obtained and the available resources. This creates a degree of uncertainty about the error in the computed output functions. To this end, the current study attempts to address this problem …

Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of Radar Obstacle Detection Systems When Used On Industrial Lift Trucks, Oluwatosin Toluwalase Odetola

Theses and Dissertations

This study addresses the application and the effectiveness of radar obstacle sensors for forklift trucks during reverse travel. Two different discriminating radar obstacle sensors with different outputs are evaluated. This study reviews the safety of human exposure to emissions from these radar sensors; documents the field of view obtained from experiments with the two systems; gives the results from experiments with sensors on lift trucks. The influence of obstacle reflectivity, composition and area on the size and shape of the radar detection zone are discussed. An experimental setup for measuring position and velocity of the obstacle crossing the truck path …

Surface Mesh Generation Using Curvature-Based Refinement, Bhaskar Sinha

Theses and Dissertations

Surface mesh generation is a critical component of the mesh generation process. The objective of the described effort was to determine if a combination of constrained Delaunay triangulation (for triangles), advancing front method (for quadrilaterals), curvature-based refinement, smoothing, and reconnection is a viable approach for discretizing a NURBS patch holding the boundary nodes fixed. The approach is significant when coupled with recently developed geometry specification that explicitly identifies common edges. This thesis describes the various techniques used to achieve the above objectives. Application of this approach to several representative geometries demonstrates that it is an effective alternative to traditional approaches.

Code Verification Using The Method Of Manufactured Solutions, Vasanth Kumar Murali

Theses and Dissertations

Implementations of numerical simulations for solving systems of partial differential equations are often not verified and are falsely assumed to work correctly. As a result, the implementations are prone to coding errors that could degrade the accuracy of the solution. In order to ensure that a code is written correctly, rigorous verification of all parts of the code is necessary. Code verification is the task of ascertaining whether a numerical algorithm is solving the governing equations of the problem correctly. If an exact solution existed for the governing equations then verification would be easier but these solutions are rare because …

Condensation Heat Transfer In Horizontal Micro-Fin Tubes, Chea-Chun Kung

Theses and Dissertations

Three existing condensation heat transfer models are validated using 544 experimental data points for pure refrigerants and refrigerant mixtures. The Cavallini et al. (1999) model predicts well with the pure-refrigerant data sets. However, the Cavallini et al. (1999) model fails to predict the refrigerant-mixture data sets. The Yu and Koyama (1998) model, which is applicable for the pure refrigerants only, fails to predict most of the R22 data sets. The Kedzierski and Goncalves (1999) model, which is applicable for both pure refrigerants and refrigerant mixtures, yields relatively high mean absolute deviations for most of the pure-refrigerant data sets. The Kedzierski …

The Salvation Army And Government Funding - Blessing Or Bane?, Noreen Scott

Master's Theses

This study was conducted to explore the issues surrounding government funding of faithbased nonprofit organizations. The main question addressed was what, if any, are the positives and negatives for a religious nonprofit faith-based organization accepting government funding. This study examined the Salvation Army, a faith-based 50l(c)(3) charitable organization with a long history of accepting government funding for its social service programs. Seven Salvation Army administrators were interviewed to determine whether government funding for this organization's social services had any impact on the organization in four specific areas:

1. Finances

2. Staffing

3. Administrative reporting

4. Mission

Three noteworthy issues were …

Growth Of 6h-Sic Homoepitaxy On Substrates Off-Cut Between The [01-10] Planes, James Dennis Vandersand Jr

Theses and Dissertations

The wide band-gap semiconductor silicon carbide has tremendous potential for use in high power, high temperature, and high frequency electronic devices. One of the more important design factors for these devices is the epitaxial layer. It is desirable that this thin film have uniform polytype, thickness, and impurity concentration, as well as be defect free. One method used for SiC to ensure epitaxial layers with homogenous polytype is to cut wafers from a boule that has been tilted towards a specific crystallographic face at a fixed angle (known as ?off cut?). The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the …

Two And Three-Dimensional Finite Element Analysis Of Plasticity-Induced Fatigue Crack Closure: A Comprehensive Parametric Study, Kiran N. Solanki

Theses and Dissertations

Finite element analyses are frequently used to model growing fatigue cracks and the associated plasticity-induced crack closure. Two-dimensional, elastic-perfectly plastic finite element analyses of middle-crack tension (M(T)), bend (SEB), and compact tension (C(T)) geometries were conducted to study fatigue crack closure and to calculate the crack opening values under plane-strain and plane-stress conditions. The loading was selected to give the same maximum stress intensity factor in both geometries, and thus similar initial forward plastic zone sizes. Mesh refinement studies were performed on all geometries with various element types. For the C(T) geometry, negligible crack opening loads under plane-strain conditions were …

Sic Etch Development In A Lam Tcp 9400se Ii System, Janna Rea Bonds

Theses and Dissertations

SiC etch development has been performed in a Lam TCP 9400SE II system (a system meant for polysilicon etching and modified for SiC etching). SiC etching has never been reported in this particular system. Various parameters (carrier material, pressure, gas additives, gas flow, and electrode power) were examined and their effects determined on etch rate and resulting surface morphology. An efficient carrier material (graphite), operating pressure (25 mTorr), and gas flow rate (30 sccm) for obtaining peak etch rates were determined for this system. Peak etch rates of 1254 Å/min. in CHF3:O2, 4314 Å/min. in SF6:O2, and 1255 Å/min. in …

Experimental Studies Of The Drag Of An Axisymmetric Submarine Hull, John Lindsley Freudenthal

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of these studies was to measure the drag coefficient of a small model submarine to add data to a Reynolds number study. First, a laser Doppler velocimeter (LDV) was used to measure the flow characteristics of the Mississippi State University water tunnel. The velocity and turbulence intensity profiles were measured for a range of freestream velocities of 8.6 m/s to 10.7 m/s. Several wake velocity profiles were taken for a model submarine at downstream distances of x/d = 10 to x/d = 28, with a freestream velocity of 8.6 m/s. A formula for the drag coefficient that uses …

Self-Smoothing Functional Estimation, Bronson Thomas Yake

Theses and Dissertations

Analysis of measured data is often required when there is no deep understanding of the mathematics that accurately describes the process being measured. Additionally, realistic estimation of the derivative of measured data is often useful. Current techniques of accomplishing this type of data analysis are labor intensive, prone to significant error, and highly dependent on the expertise of the engineer performing the analysis. The ?Self-Smoothing Functional Estimation? (SSFE) algorithm was developed to automate the analysis of measured data and to provide a reliable basis for the extraction of derivative information. In addition to the mathematical development of the SSFE algorithm, …

Development Of Application Program For Harmonic Analysis, Sunitha Uppalapati

Theses and Dissertations

Increased power quality problems due to intensive usage of power electronic devices resulted in development of software applications to perform quick harmonic analysis. However, the present harmonic analysis applications have special software or computer locks requirements and occupy huge memory and cost high. An application program (using Microsoft Visual C++) that is simple yet accurate in calculations; with no special software or high memory requirements is developed in this thesis work. The program uses the automatic acceptance criteria (AAC) and the harmonic penetration techniques in calculating the system voltages. Several userriendly features and tools that aid in better understanding of …

Accuracy Study Of A Free Particle Using Quantum Trajectory Method On Message Passing Architecture, Ravi K. Vadapalli

Theses and Dissertations

Bhom's hydrodynamic formulation (or quantum fluid dynamics) is an attractive approach since, it connects classical and quantum mechanical theories of matter through Hamilton-Jacobi (HJ) theory, and quantum potential. Lopreore and Wyatt derived and implemented one-dimensional quantum trajectory method (QTM), a new wave-packet approach, for solving hydrodynamic equations of motion on serial computing environment. Brook et al. parallelized the QTM on shared memory computing environment using a partially implicit method, and conducted accuracy study of a free particle. These studies exhibited a strange behavior of the relative error for the probability density referred to as the transient effect. In the present …

Adsorption Of Organic Pollutants Onto Natural Adsorbents, Arun Subramani

Theses and Dissertations

In this research, the adsorptive capacities of kenaf, peat moss, hay, and peanut hulls were evaluated for the removal of TNT and 2,4-DCP from aqueous solutions. Adsorbent loading capacities determined by batch studies were verified by continuous column experiments. It was found that the adsorption capacity of the candidate adsorbents were significantly lower than granular activated carbon (GAC). The impact of surface modification techniques, such as surface oxidation, were evaluated to study the effect on adsorption capacity. At lower equilibrium concentrations of the adsorbate (less than 10 ppb), surface oxidation by ozone showed an increase in the adsorption capacity. The …

An Advanced Signal Processing Toolkit For Java Applications, Vijay Pravin Shah

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study is to examine the capability, performance, and relevance of a signal processing toolkit in Java, a programming language for Web-based applications. Due to the simplicity, ease and application use of the toolkit and with the advanced Internet technologies such as Remote Method Invocation (RMI), a spectral estimation applet has been created in the Java environment. This toolkit also provides an interactive and visual approach in understanding the various theoretical concepts of spectral estimation and shows the need to create more application applets to better understand the various concepts of signal and image processing. This study …

An Analysis For Evaluating The Cost/Profit Effectiveness Of Parallel Systems, Maria Teran

Theses and Dissertations

A new domain of commercial applications demands the development of inexpensive parallel computing platforms to lower the cost of operations and increase the business profit. The calculation of returns on an IT investment is now important to justify the decision of upgrading or replacing parallel systems. This thesis presents a framework of the performance and economic factors that are considered when evaluating a parallel system. We introduce a metric called the cost/profit effective metric, which measures the effectiveness of a parallel system in terms of performance, cost and profit. This metric describes the profit obtained from the performance of three …

Integration Of Zero-Valent Metals And Chemical Oxidation For The Destruction Of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene Within Aqueous Matrices, Rafael Hernandez

Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense (DoD) has numerous sites that contain groundwater contaminated with 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). The currently applied technologies for treating TNT contaminated waters are carbon adsorption and chemical oxidation. Carbon adsorption is a non-destructive technology, which could create future liability issues and is inefficient at relatively low TNT concentrations. On the other hand, application of chemical oxidation for the treatment of TNT contaminated water generates trinitrobenzene (TNB), a by-product of the incomplete oxidation of TNT. TNB is regulated as strictly as TNT. Additionally, over 70% of the reactor required treatment time for meeting target levels is due solely for …

Effects Of Brain Region And Gender On Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy In Normal Subjects, Marlyanne Pol-Rodriguez

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

The purpose of this study was to acquire spectra using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) with a long echo time (TE) to measure clinically important brain metabolites in normal subjects. We aimed to determine whether these metabolites vary across brain regions and between men and women. The results of this study will constitute a normative database that will be used as a reference for MRS studies of patients with neurological disease. Single voxel proton (1H) spectra were acquired in seventy-two subjects ranging in age from twenty to forty-four years. Ten brain regions were examined. Six gray matter sites in the …

Dimensionality Reduction Of Hyperspectral Signatures For Optimized Detection Of Invasive Species, Abhinav Mathur

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of hyperspectral reflectance signals for the discrimination of cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica) from other subtly different vegetation species. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves are used to determine which spectral bands should be considered as candidate features. Multivariate statistical analysis is then applied to the candidate features to determine the optimum subset of spectral bands. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) is used to compute the optimum linear combination of the selected subset to be used as a feature for classification. Similarly, for comparison purposes, ROC analysis, multivariate statistical analysis, and LDA are utilized …

Efficient Reliability Estimation Approach For Analysis And Optimization Of Composite Structures, Mukti Nath Singh

Theses and Dissertations

The efficient evaluation of reliability index is of considerable importance in the assessment of component reliability and reliability-based structural optimization. In this thesis, the structural reliabiltiy analysis is performed using the random sampling techniques such as traditional Monte Carlo simulation and the analytical techniques such as first-order reliability method. The feasibility of Gauss quadrature points as means of target sampling of design space and generating accurate first- and second-order response surface models of failure functions is examined. Parametric uncertainty is considered by probabilistic modeling of design parameters. Various alternative approaches for estimation of component reliability index are examined with application …

A Framework For Automatic Ontology Generation From Autonomous Web Applications, Giovanni Modica

Theses and Dissertations

Ontologies capture the structure, relationships, semantics and other essential meta information of an application. This thesis describes a framework to automate application interoperability by using dynamically generated ontologies. We propose a set of techniques to extract ontologies from data accessible on the Web in the form of semi-structured HTML pages. Ontologies retrieved from similar applications are matched together to create a general ontology describing the application domain. Information retrieval and graph matching techniques are used to match and measure the usefulness of the ontologies created. Matching algorithms are combined together to produce global ontologies based on local ontologies inherently present …

Short Term Observations Of In Vitro Biocorrosion Of Two Commonly Used Implant Alloys, Hsin-Yi Lin

Theses and Dissertations

Orthopedic metal implant materials may mediate a variety of adverse tissue reactions by releasing ions through corrosion. Adverse tissue reactions include inflammation, fibrosis and hypersensitivity. All of these reactions eventually lead to implant failure. The goal of this study was to provide a better understanding of the cellular-material interaction at the metal surface. The hypotheses were that 1. the attachment of cells and their released reactive inflammatory compounds (e.g. hydrogen peroxide H2O2, superoxide O2. and nitric oxide NO.) on the surfaces alter the alloys? corrosion and surface properties and 2. the changes in corrosion and chemical properties of the surfaces …

Small Signal Stability Of An Unregulated Power System, Vikas Singhvi

Theses and Dissertations

Rotor angle stability is the ability of the interconnected synchronous machines of a power system to remain in synchronism. This stability problem is concerned with the behavior of one or more synchronous machine after they have been perturbed. These perturbations can be small or large depending upon the type of disturbances considered. The work presented in this thesis is focused on the power system behavior when subjected to small disturbances. The ?small signal? disturbances are considered sufficiently small for the linearization of system equations to be permissible for the purpose of the analysis. The first step in the small signal …

Linear Unmixing Of Hyperspectral Signals Via Wavelet Feature Extraction, Jiang Li

Theses and Dissertations

A pixel in remotely sensed hyperspectral imagery is typically a mixture of multiple electromagnetic radiances from various ground cover materials. Spectral unmixing is a quantitative analysis procedure used to recognize constituent ground cover materials (or endmembers) and obtain their mixing proportions (or abundances) from a mixed pixel. The abundances are typically estimated using the least squares estimation (LSE) method based on the linear mixture model (LMM). This dissertation provides a complete investigation on how the use of appropriate features can improve the LSE of endmember abundances using remotely sensed hyperspectral signals. The dissertation shows how features based on signal classification …