Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Of Race And Ethnic Identity To Perceptions Of Multicultural Counseling Competencies, Tonita C. Baines

Dissertations

Multicultural counseling competencies refer to the awareness, knowledge, and skills that are considered important for counselors to possess when working with culturally diverse clients (Constantine, 2002; Constantine & Ladany, 2001). Relatively few studies have looked at factors that may impact a client'sperception of a counselor's multicultural competence. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between a person's race, ethnic identity, and his/her ratings of the importance of 31 multicultural counseling competencies. A total of 304 undergraduate students (152 African-American and 152 White) from a large Midwestern university were surveyed to determine if there was a relationship …

A Behavioral Model For The Assessment And Management Of Dehydration In Older Adults, Leilani Feliciano

Dissertations

Dehydration is a serious health concern in the elderly, constituting 1 of the 10 most common causes for hospitalization in this population (Sanservo, 1997). Previous research on dehydration has typically been conducted within nursing home settings (Chidester & Spangler, 1997; Holbren, Hassell, Williams, & Helle, 1999; Spangler, Risley, & Bilyew, 1984) without specific attention to the variables maintaining dehydration for any given individual. A functional behavioral approach to assessment and prevention or intervention for dehydration would involve identifying maintaining variables in the environment that can be altered to produce effective, non-intrusive interventions to increase healthy fluid consumption. The current project …

The Practice Of Continuous Improvement In Higher Education, Deborah M. Thalner

Dissertations

Studies on the use of Total Quality Management (TQM) within higher education have primarily focused on the implementation of TQM as an institutional initiative. While TQM has been successful in business and industry and has seen some limited success in higher education, the most recent studies on its usein higher education indicate that it has not been successful institution-wide, and in many cases has been abandoned after two to three years. The problem, therefore, is one of a perceived need for continuous improvement in coupled with mixed results from previous attempts at implementation. This research study focused on higher education's …

Essential Features Of Cultural Proficiency In American International Schools In Latin America: A Delphi Study, Rebecca Mcbride Bustamante Edd

Dissertations

American international schools in Latin America can play a vital role in preparing future leaders to effectively interact with people of diverse cultures. These schools provide ideal settings for exploring how policies, programs, and practices that reflect diverse perspectives and encourage intercultural learning might enhance global leadership development. Multidisciplinary reviews of the literature reveal a dearth of studies examining culture and leadership development in American international schools in Latin America. The model of cultural proficiency provides a comprehensive framework for exploring how these schools might proactively and effectively respond to diversity in a cross-cultural environment and develop globally competent leaders. …

Optimization Of Sequential Purification Of Beta-Glucosidase From Tricoderma Reesei In Aqueous Two-Phase System, Shalini Gautam

Dissertations

A novel sequential technique was developed for the purification of a valuable enzyme, beta-glucosidase, from microorganism Tricoderma reesei. The fungus T. reesei produces cellulose degrading enzymes, called cellulases: beta-glucosidase, endo-glucanase and exo-glucanase and low molecular weight proteins. For specific applications, the enzyme must be separated from other contaminants. The sequential technique, that included affinity precipitation with chitosan followed by separation with an aqueous two-phase system (ATPS), was implemented for the purification of beta-glucosidase from the culture filtrate of T. reesei.

The cultivation medium (nutrient) was optimized for the production of betaglucosidase from T. reesei cell culture. Treatment of the …

Communications Over Fading Channels With Partial Channel Information : Performance And Design Criteria, Xinmin Deng

Dissertations

The effects of system parameters upon the performance are quantified under the assumption that some statistical information of the wireless fading channels is available. These results are useful in determining the optimal design of system parameters. Suboptimal receivers are designed for systems that are constrained in terms of implementation complexity.

The achievable rates are investigated for a wireless communication system when neither the transmitter nor the receiver has prior knowledge of the channel state information (CSI). Quantitative results are provided for independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian signals. A simple, low-duty-cycle signaling scheme is proposed to improve the information rates …

The Effects Of Digital Audio On Social Presence, Motivation And Perceived Learning In Asynchronous Learning Networks, Eunhee Kim

Dissertations

This study explores the possibilities of applying digital audio to the ALN environment, so that students can speak and listen rather than type and read. Two sets of 1x2 field experiments (text vs. digital audio) were conducted with two formats of digital audio -recorded voice messages and narrated Microsoft PowerPoint presentation - used in several NJIT courses conducted via ALN. The perceptions of communication media were measured from two different user perspectives: active use when the subjects created their assignments using prescribed communication media (audio or text) and passive use when the subjects viewed/listened to other students' work.

The perceptions …

Direct Numerical Simulations And Experimental Investigation Of Dielectrophoresis, Arun Thankamony John-Kadaksham

Dissertations

This dissertation deals with the numerical and experimental studies of the phenomenon of dielectrophoresis, i.e., the motion of neutral particles in nonuniform electric fields. Dielectrophoresis is the translatory motion of neutral particles suspended in a dielectric medium when they are subjected to an external nonuniform electric field. The translatory motion occurs because a force called the dielectrophoretic force, which depends on the spatial variation of the electric field, acts on the particles. As the generation of force involves no moving parts and the particles can be moved without touching them, dielectrophoresis can be used in many applications, including manipulation and …

Virtual Transshipments And Revenue-Sharing Contracts In Supply Chain Management, Zhaoqiong Qin

Dissertations

This dissertation presents the use of virtual transshipments and revenue-sharing contracts for inventory control in a small scale supply chain. The main objective is to maximize the total profit in a centralized supply chain or maximize the supply chain's profit while keeping the individual components' incentives in a decentralized supply chain.

First, a centralized supply chain with two capacitated manufacturing plants situated in two distinct geographical regions is considered. Normally, demand in each region is mostly satisfied by the local plant. However, if the local plant is understocked while the remote one is overstocked, some of the newly generated demand …

Security Information Management With Frame-Based Attack Presentation And First-Order Reasoning, Wei Yan

Dissertations

Internet has grown by several orders of magnitude in recent years, and this growth has escalated the importance of computer security. Intrusion Detection System (IDS) is used to protect computer networks. However, the overwhelming flow of log data generated by IDS hamper security administrators from uncovering new insights and hidden attack scenarios. Security Information Management (SIM) is a new growing area of interest for intrusion detection. The research work in this dissertation explores the semantics of attack behaviors and designs Frame-based Attack Representation and First-order logic Automatic Reasoning (FAR-FAR) using linguistics and First-order Logic (FOL) based approaches. Techniques based on …

Transceiver Design And System Optimization For Ultra-Wideband Communications, Hongshan Sheng

Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the potential promises and proposes possible solutions to the challenges of designing transceivers and optimizing system parameters in ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. The goal is to provide guidelines for UWB transceiver implementations under constraints by regulation, existing interference, and channel estimation.

New UWB pulse shapes are invented that satisfy the Federal Communications Commission spectral mask. Parameters are designed to possibly implement the proposed pulses. A link budget is quantified based on an accurate frequency-dependent path loss calculation to account for variations across the ultra-wide bandwidth of the signal.

Achievable information rates are quantified as a function of transmission …

Quality-Of-Service Provisioning In High Speed Networks : Routing Perspectives, Gang Cheng

Dissertations

The continuous growth in both commercial and public network traffic with various quality-of-service (QoS) requirements is calling for better service than the current Internet's best effort mechanism. One of the challenging issues is to select feasible paths that satisfy the different requirements of various applications. This problem is known as QoS routing. In general, two issues are related to QoS routing: state distribution and routing strategy. Routing strategy is used to find a feasible path that meets the QoS requirements. State distribution addresses the issue of exchanging the state information throughout the network, and can be further divided into two …

Image Watermarking, Steganography, And Morphological Processing, Yi-Ta Wu

Dissertations

With the fast development of computer technology, research in the fields of multimedia security, image processing, and robot vision have recently become popular. Image watermarking, steganogrphic system, morphological processing and shortest path planning are important subjects among them. In this dissertation, the fundamental techniques are reviewed first followed by the presentation of novel algorithms and theorems for these three subjects.

The research on multimedia security consists of two parts, image watermarking and steganographic system. In image watermarking, several algorithms are developed to achieve different goals as shown below. In order to embed more watermarks and to minimize distortion of watermarked …

Collaborative Examinations In Asyncronous Learning Networks : Field Experiments On Collaborative Learning Through Online Assessments, Jia Shen

Dissertations

With the proliferation of computer networks and the emergence of virtual teams, learning and knowledge sharing in the online environment has become an increasingly important topic. Applying constructivism and collaborative learning theories to assessment, the collaborative online exam is designed featuring students' active participation in various phases of the exam process through small group activities online. A participatory online exam process is designed featuring similar procedures except that students' involvement in each phase of the exam is individual. The collaborative online exam and the participatory online exam are investigated regarding student exam study strategies, group process, exam outcomes, faculty satisfaction, …

On Rate Capacity And Signature Sequence Adaptation In Downlink Of Mc-Cdma System, Jianming Zhu

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses two topics in the MC-CDMA system: rate capacity and adaptation of users' signature sequences. Both of them are studied for the downlink communication scenario with multi-code scheme.

The purpose of studying rate capacity is to understand the potential of applying MC-CDMA technique for high speed wireless data communications. It is shown that, to maintain high speed data transmission with multi-code scheme, each mobile should cooperatively decode its desired user's encoded data symbols which are spread with different signature sequences simultaneously. Higher data rate can be achieved by implementing dirty paper coding (DPC) to cooperatively encode all users' …

Algorithms And Complexity Analyses For Some Combinational Optimization Problems, Hairong Zhao

Dissertations

The main focus of this dissertation is on classical combinatorial optimization problems in two important areas: scheduling and network design.

In the area of scheduling, the main interest is in problems in the master-slave model. In this model, each machine is either a master machine or a slave machine. Each job is associated with a preprocessing task, a slave task and a postprocessing task that must be executed in this order. Each slave task has a dedicated slave machine. All the preprocessing and postprocessing tasks share a single master machine or the same set of master machines. A job may …

Just-In-Time Hypermedia, Li Zhang

Dissertations

Many analytical applications, especially legacy systems, create documents and display screens in response to user queries "dynamically" or in real time . These documents and displays do not exist in advance, and thus hypermedia must be generated 'just in time" -automatically and dynamically.

This dissertation details the idea of 'just-in-time" hypermedia and discusses challenges encountered in this research area. A fully detailed literature review about the research issues and related research work is given. A framework for the 'just-in-time" hypermedia compares virtual documents with static documents, as well as dynamic with static hypermedia functionality. Conceptual 'just-in-time" hypermedia architecture is proposed …

Improving Document Representation By Accumulating Relevance Feedback : The Relevance Feedback Accumulation (Rfa) Algorithm, Razvan Stefan Bot

Dissertations

Document representation (indexing) techniques are dominated by variants of the term-frequency analysis approach, based on the assumption that the more occurrences a term has throughout a document the more important the term is in that document. Inherent drawbacks associated with this approach include: poor index quality, high document representation size and the word mismatch problem. To tackle these drawbacks, a document representation improvement method called the Relevance Feedback Accumulation (RFA) algorithm is presented. The algorithm provides a mechanism to continuously accumulate relevance assessments over time and across users. It also provides a document representation modification function, or document representation learning …

The Control Of Frequency Of A Conditional Oscillator Simultaneously Subjected To Multiple Oscillatory Inputs, Christina L. Ambrosio

Dissertations

A conditional oscillator is one that requires input to oscillate. An example of such is the gastric mill network of the stomatogastric ganglion of the crab Cancer borealis which requires modulatory input from outside the stomatogastric ganglion and fast input from the pyloric network of the animal in order to become active. This dissertation studies how the frequency of the gastric mill network is determined when it is simultaneously subjected to two different rhythmic inputs whose timing may be mismatched. We derive a mathematical model of the gastric mill network and deduce that the difference in timing between the pyloric …

A Versatile Programming Model For Dynamic Task Scheduling On Cluster Computers, Dejiang Jin

Dissertations

This dissertation studies the development of application programs for parallel and distributed computer systems, especially PC clusters. A methodology is proposed to increase the efficiency of code development, the productivity of programmers and enhance performance of executing the developed programs on PC clusters while facilitating improvement of scalability and code portability of these programs. A new programming model, named the Super-Programming Model (SPM), is created. Programs are developed assuming an instruction set architecture comprised of SuperInstructions (SIs). SPM models the target system as a large Virtual Machine (VM); VM contains functional units which are underlain with sub-computer systems and SIs …

Order Scheduling In Dedicated And Flexible Machine Environments, Haibing Li

Dissertations

Order scheduling models are relatively new in the field of scheduling. Consider a facility with m parallel machines that can process k different products (job types). Each machine can process a given subset of different product types. There are n orders from n different clients. Each order requests specific quantities of the various different products that can be produced concurrently on their given subsets of machines; it may have a release date, a weight and a due date. Preemptions may be allowed. An order can not be shipped until the processing of all the products for the order has been …

Tcp Performance Enhancement In Wireless Networks Via Adaptive Congestion Control And Active Queue Management, Kai Xu

Dissertations

The transmission control protocol (TCP) exhibits poor performance when used in error-prone wireless networks. Remedy to this problem has been an active research area. However, a widely accepted and adopted solution is yet to emerge. Difficulties of an acceptable solution lie in the areas of compatibility, scalability, computational complexity and the involvement of intermediate routers and switches.

This dissertation rexriews the current start-of-the-art solutions to TCP performance enhancement, and pursues an end-to-end solution framework to the problem. The most noticeable cause of the performance degradation of TCP in wireless networks is the higher packet loss rate as compared to that …

High School Principals' Values And Their Symbolic And Cultural Leadership Approaches To Character Education In China, T.C. Kao Edd

Dissertations

Relatively little is known about the symbolic and cultural leadership practices and approaches used to imbed character education in high schools in China. In addition, there is a lack of published studies and reports investigating the revival between character and moral education in the Chinese school system. Without additional information, it is impossible to understand and develop effective leadership approaches that will shape and mold school cultures to effectively support both character and moral education. The literature reviewed in this study revealed little information about if, and in what form, there is a return to moral education focusing on traditional …

How School Counselors Gain Support To Implement Comprehensive Guidance And Counseling Programs, Jo Ann Grant Edd

Dissertations

The school counseling field is evolving from a focus on ancillary activities to a commitment to comprehensive guidance and counseling programs. Understanding strategies school counselors have used in gaining support from key stakeholders to implement comprehensive guidance and counseling programs can be a valuable addition to the literature of school counseling. The present study investigated how elementary and secondary school counselors gained support when implementing comprehensive guidance and counseling programs based on the National Standards for School Counseling Programs. A qualitative methodology was used in the study. The findings revealed that: (a) counselors studied believed their role in gaining support …

An Examination Of The Media's Framing Of The Illegal Street Racing Issue, Kevin Andrew Igasaki Edd

Dissertations

For the last sixty years, the legal community and public policymakers have assumed that illegal street racing has appealed to a single portion of the driving population—young adults driving modified vehicles. However, this assumption has been based solely on anecdotal information and has never been empirically investigated in the literature. To remedy this situation, this mixed methodology study examined whether this narrow framing of the illegal street racing issue was present in two southern California newspapers and two nationally circulated magazines over a three-year time period. Specifically, this study examined the way in which this issue was framed in daily …

The Courage To Change: Striving For Magnet Hospital Recognition, Janet M. Jones Edd

Dissertations

In the ever-changing environment of health care, good leaders are of utmost importance to the effective functioning of the hospital. Leadership in the hospital setting requires innovativeness and courage. This means the passion to discover, create and experience the unknown. Until recently why some hospitals attract and retain good nurses while others do not was unknown. The magnet hospital concept identified attributes that supported the professional practice of nursing which, in turn increased nurse recruitment and retention. The objective of this study was to compare Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) perceptions of their innovativeness and leadership …

Facing The Leadership Challenges On Decommissioning United States Navy Ships, Darren J. Mcglynn Edd

Dissertations

Since the late 1980s, hundreds of U.S. Navy ships have been decommissioned. Although ship decommissionings were postponed immediately after the September 11th attack, today the Navy is again engaged in “rightsizing” its force. Depending on the type of ship and its age, a ship faces different fates after the decommissioning process has been completed. Except on the rare occasion when a ship is turned into a museum, most decommissioned ships are disposed of in one of three ways. Some ships are sold to foreign navies to recoup some costs. Other ships are reassigned to the Military Sealift Command (MSC) to …

The Role Of The Chief Instructional Officer Within The California Community Colleges, Patrick M. Schwerdtfeger Edd

Dissertations

California community colleges enroll one out of ten public college students in the United States. The Chief Instructional Officer (CIO) serves as leader within each college. Research examining CIOs in California is limited. This study investigates work performed by CIOs and the organizational factors which support or impede that work. Four questions guided this study. What is the role of the CIO—what do they do? What are the organizational factors which support or impede CIO effectiveness? How do the CIOs influence the enhancement of learning and instruction? What changes would CIOs suggest to become more effective leaders? This study relied …

To Be Or Not To Be: Status Of Guam's Middle Schools, Judith T. Won Pat Edd

Dissertations

In an effort to help middle school programs respond to the unique developmental needs of their students, in 1995 the National Middle School Association issued their influential list of twelve essential characteristics for a developmentally sound middle school. Although this paper spawned a significant amount of research regarding the importance of these essential characteristics, there has been little, if any, research in the last decade describing the extent to which these characteristics have been implemented in middle schools outside of the continental United States. To remedy this situation, this study surveyed all 471 middle school teachers on Guam as well …

Culture And Motivation In Online Learning Environments, Frances A. Clem Edd

Dissertations

In the past, instructional design of online learning has largely ignored culture in the creation of online learning environments. Because research in the interaction of culture and online learning is very sparse, an exploratory, blended study was conducted to assess whether there is evidence that one measurable aspect of learners’ culture interacts with the online learning environment in ways that can be observed and identified, and whether this interaction impacts learners’ motivation and behavior in those environments. “Culture” is a complex concept consisting of many interrelated behaviors and values. For this reason, the study focused on one single aspect of …