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The Future Of Nuclear Security: A Medical Physicist’S Perspective, Katharine E. Thomson

International Journal of Nuclear Security

Planning for the future of nuclear security is a vital and complex task, requiring cooperation and contribution from many disciplines and industries. This diversity of expertise should include the medical sector, which faces many of the same challenges as the nuclear industry: controlling access to dangerous material, creating a strong security culture, cooperating with the wider world and engaging the public.

Medical physicists, of which the author is one, oversee all aspects of small-scale radiation use. This paper discusses three key areas increasingly important to both medical and nuclear uses of radioactive materials: public engagement, prevention of nuclear and radiological …

Rural Appalachian Person And Family Decision Making At End Of Life, Mary Lou Clark Fornehed

Doctoral Dissertations

The dynamics of delivering care to persons at end of life (EOL) have dramatically changed in the last twenty years. Improved management of chronic illness and provision of aggressive life sustaining measures for an illness once deemed fatal are more common, significantly increasing longevity. While it is estimated that more than 40 million persons with life-limiting illness worldwide are candidates for some form of palliative or end-of-life care (EOLC), less than 14% of them will receive it.

When coping with life-limiting illness, people and their families are asked to make many complex and difficult decisions about EOL, palliative, or hospice …

Exploring Workplace Connections Of Employees With Multiple Role Expectations: Accommodating Communication Behaviors Of Hospital Chaplains, Stephen Spates

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to explore the communication behaviors of hospital chaplains in an effort to understand their workplace role. In the literature, most chaplain recognition related to spiritual interactions and improved health outcomes for patients, which left much information about their workplace lives unknown. This study used interviews with hospital chaplains to explore their communication behaviors. Using communication allowed chaplains to manage roles and uncertainty, build relationships, and handle the paradoxical interactions they encounter at work. The findings revealed that hospital chaplains, who operate as liaisons in their organizations, practiced convergence to accommodate others. They also managed …

Scalable High-Speed Communications For Neuromorphic Systems, Aaron Reed Young

Masters Theses

Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC), and other chip/multi-chip level implementations can be used to implement Dynamic Adaptive Neural Network Arrays (DANNA). In some applications, DANNA interfaces with a traditional computing system to provide neural network configuration information, provide network input, process network outputs, and monitor the state of the network. The present host-to-DANNA network communication setup uses a Cypress USB 3.0 peripheral controller (FX3) to enable host-to-array communication over USB 3.0. This communications setup has to run commands in batches and does not have enough bandwidth to meet the maximum throughput requirements of the DANNA device, resulting …

Understanding Social Identity Through Children’S Drawings: Where Is Your Happy Place?, Elizabeth Hampton Hurst

Masters Theses

Civil war and instability in Syria has resulted in mass casualties and the largest migration of peoples since WWII (International Organization for Migration, 2015). The year 2015 witnessed a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe, a crisis that continues today. Fleeing danger undoubtedly shapes the identities of refugees, and the identities of refugee children are indeed the most vulnerable. This study examines ways in which Syrian refugee orphans communicate elements of social identity. Utilizing social identity theory (SIT) as a lens to analyze children’s drawings, this study not only reveals which social groups are most salient amongst children’s …

A Practical Realization Of A Return Map Immune Lorenz Based Chaotic Stream Cipher In Circuitry, Daniel Robert Brown

Masters Theses

Some chaotic systems are advantageously capable of self-synchronizing with a like system through a single shared state. Using a plain text binary message, a single system parameter can be modulated to mask this message and transmit it securely through the single shared state. The most simple implementations of this encryption technique are, however, vulnerable to the return map attack. Using a time-scaling factor to further obfuscate the modulation process, a return map attack immunity is gained. We report on the progress towards a realization of this process in real-time analog circuitry using off-the-shelf components.