Digital Commons Network^™

Using Expectation Methods To Estimate A Discrete Choice Model When Individual Choices Are Not Observable: Methodology And Applications To Tillage Choice, Tara R. Wade

Dissertations

This study presents an alternative method of empirical estimation of a logit model that uses the full information on the attributes of agents and only aggregate measures of agents' choices in an application to the estimation of the costs of the adoption of conservation tillage by Iowa farmers. The methodology treats the aggregated data as an expected value-the group average of individual probabilities of choosing conservation tillage subject to measurement error. The study then adapts the new methodology to the distinctive case where the researcher not only has the group expected value but also knows the magnitude of the within …

Development Of Energy Absorbing Laminated Fiberglass Composites Using Electrospun Glass Nanofibers, Evan Kimbro

Dissertations

The ability to predict failure of composite laminates due to delaminations is critical because of its subsurface nature. Traditional strengthening methods such as stitching and Z-pinning, while improving interlaminar properties in woven composites, lead to a reduction of the in-plane properties. Electrospun non-woven sheets of nanofibrous mat applied at interfacial regions offer an option to traditional treatments. Applications where protrusion energy must be dissipated completely would benefit the most from the use of the electrospinning treatment. Examples are bullet proof vests and vehicle armor. Penetration of a projectile through a composite material may be avoided by creating more energy absorbent …

The Impact Of Using Formative Assessment Attributes In Daily Instruction On Student Affect, Joshua William Ruland

Dissertations

The main focus of the research was to determine if the systematic use of formative assessment attributes had an impact on two affective variables--Academic Efficacy and Eagerness to Learn. Both the control and experimental students' affect was measured using a pre and post test administration of the Student Affect Inventory created by Popham and Stiggins (2008) in conjunction with the CCSSO. The post administration results of the experimental and control group were compared to determine if the systematic use of formative assessment attributes had a statistically significant impact on student affect. In addition, the pre and post test data of …

Integration Of Cognitive And Physical Factors To Model Human Performance In Fluid Power Systems, Khaliah K. Hughes

Dissertations

Fluid power technology is constantly evolving as a result of the interaction between the human and the system. Systems such as the hydraulic excavator utilize this technology in order to deliver safe, efficient, and effective performance. However, traditional research has placed much emphasis on technical performance rather than on human components. Imbalances of this nature demonstrate inadequate understanding, lack of knowledge, and limited research on the factors affecting performance. This research aims to address these shortcomings by using an integrated approach to better model human performance in fluid power systems. Through the development of an integrative framework considering cognitive and …

Mentoring As A Professional Development Tool In Preparing The Next Generation Of Leaders In The North Carolina Community College System, Manuel C. Dudley

Dissertations

The North Carolina community college is approaching 50 years of existence in 2013. It is a community college system that is respected both nationally and internationally. The economic downturn of the United States has created a period of record enrollment in the community college, as individuals seek upgrades in training, work skills, and educational attainment. This period of record enrollment is not without challenges. Budgetary constraints, a consumer demand for easier access to classes through online and distance learning, and an increase in the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the student population has created a proverbial perfect storm. Many …

Variable Block Size Motion Compensation In The Redundant Wavelet Domain, Ahmed Abdelgadir Suliman

Dissertations

Video is one of the most powerful forms of multimedia because of the extensive information it delivers. Video sequences are highly correlated both temporally and spatially, a fact which makes the compression of video possible. Modern video systems employ motion estimation and motion compensation (ME/MC) to de-correlate a video sequence temporally. ME/MC forms a prediction of the current frame using the frames which have been already encoded. Consequently, one needs to transmit the corresponding residual image instead of the original frame, as well as a set of motion vectors which describe the scene motion as observed at the encoder. The …

Reduced-Order Equivalent-Circuit Models Of Thermal Systems Including Thermal Radiation, Serap Karagol

Dissertations

We established a general, automatic, and versatile procedure to derive an equivalent circuit for a thermal system using temperature data obtained from FE simulations. The EC topology was deduced from the FE mesh using a robust and general graph-partitioning algorithm. The method was shown to yield models that are independent of the boundary conditions for complicated 3D thermal systems such as an electronic chip. The results are strongly correlated with the geometry, and the EC can be extended to yield variable medium-order models. Moreover, a variety of heat sources and boundary conditions can be accommodated, and the EC models are …

Perceptions Of Mentor Teachers In A Professional Development School, Gertrude Nalumansi

Dissertations

The professional development school (PDS) is an innovative teacher education

program, designed to foster simultaneous teacher and student development in K-12 schools and teacher training institutions. Built as a partnership between professional education institutions and K-12 schools, the program aims at preparing new teachers, promoting the professional development of practicing teachers, and improving student performance through the application of inquiry-based practices. This study examined the perceptions of mentor teachers in an urban elementary professional development school regarding mentoring strategies used to enhance teacher development, benefits to mentor

teachers in a PDS, and support and guidance strategies used by the partnering …

Contemplation And The Human Animal In The Philosophy Of St. Thomas Aquinas, Edyta M. Imai

Dissertations

This dissertation explores how, according to Thomas Aquinas, the operations of the sensitive soul are necessary for ordinary (i.e., not mystical) human contemplation, and for the acquisition of knowledge which precedes contemplation.

The sensitive soul is the soul possessed by all sentient beings, that is, animals, and thus, in examining the role of the sensitive soul in human contemplation we learn about the way the animal side of our nature participates in contemplation.

According to Aquinas, we possess natural inclinations, which direct us to our proper ends, our proper good. Knowledge of truth is also a good to which we …

Hope Is The Ticket To Life: Insights From Disadvantaged African American Youth, Deanna D'Amico Guthrie

Dissertations

It is important to look at strengths in populations, especially those termed "at-risk" or "disadvantaged." Hope and compassion are positive qualities inner-city African American youth can possess, and further research on these constructs with this population is needed. This exploratory, mixed methods study included both quantitative measures of hope and compassion and qualitative interviews with inner-city African American youth who are participating in an after school program. The following research questions were addressed: (1) How do the youth describe hope?, (2) How do the youth's relationships develop and maintain hope?, (3) How do the youth describe goal definition and pursuit …

A Flexible Syntactic Foam For Shock Mitigation, Jogi C. Gowda

Dissertations

This dissertation focused on the development and assessment of flexible microballoons filled elastomeric foam for shock mitigation applications. The overall goal of the research was to develop a flexible syntactic foam that has controllable bulk modulus, compressibility and shock mitigation characteristics and to validate these characteristics by experiments. Elastomer LP-2 with solid manganese dioxide and uncured BJO-093 hollow Pμb were chosen for making the syntactic foam. Hand mixing and room temperature curing was used to make foams of 0 to 30% weight of filler, which amounts to 0 to 60% of volume of the filler. Analysis using gas laws and …

Examining The Influence Of Dependent Demand Arrivals On Patient Scheduling, Husniyah B. Abdus-Salaam

Dissertations

This research examines the influence of batch appointments on patient scheduling systems. Batch appointments are characterized by multiple patients within a family desiring appointments within the same time frame. These patients are considered to be dependent amongst each other within the batch request for both arrival and no-shows. Three models are proposed to further understand the impact of these dependent demand arrivals. First, a multivariate statistical model is developed to understand the behavior of patients at public and private dental clinics. Results indicate that approximately 42% of all appointments are associated with a batch request. Also, there is a dependency …

Investigating The Influence Of Organic Acids On Uraninite Solubility And Uranyl Sorption Onto Kaolinite, Michelle L. Barger

Dissertations

Within anoxic near surface aqueous settings where U0_2(S) may be released an opportunity to encounter and complex with organic acids may occur. Reactions between U0_2(S) and ligands may promote the solubility and mobility of uranium. Organic ligands investigated in the dissolution work include citric acid, NTA and EDTA. Exposure to the ligands had little effect on U0_2(S) solubility. The log activity of U0_2(S) hydrolysis under reduced conditions was -6.56. Under all measured conditions of ligand concentration, the data consistently show an increase in uranium concentration to a median log U activity of -4.89. The observed solubility …

New Media Icc Profiles Construction And Concerns, Reem El Asaleh

Dissertations

With the advent of the modern digital technology, users can now capture an image and reproduce it between different media, such as display it on LCD monitor or tablet computer, print it on desktop printer or send it to a printing press. The challenge has been then to maintain the accuracy of image colors during this reproduction, which has led to the development of Color Management Systems. Using these systems, the color reproduction across-media will be accomplished using device ICC profiles that describe each device’s color characterization data in a standardized format based on International Color Consortium (ICC) specifications.

ICC …

Leach-Sm: A Protocol For Extending Wireless Sensor Network Lifetime By Management Of Spare Nodes, Bilal Abu Bakr

Dissertations

Operational lifetime of a wireless sensor network (WSN) depends on its energy resources. Significant improvement of WSN lifetime can be achieved by adding spare sensor nodes to WSN. Spares are ready to be switched on when any primary (a node that is not a spare) exhausts its energy. A spare replacing a primary becomes a primary itself.

The LEACH-SM protocol (Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy with Spare Management) proposed by us is a modification of the prominent LEACH protocol. LEACH extends WSN lifetime via rotation of cluster heads but allows for inefficiencies due to redundant sensing target coverage. There are two …

Experiences That Influence A Student's Choice On Majoring In Physics, Donya Rae Dobbin

Dissertations

Currently the production of college graduates with science and engineering degrees is insufficient to fill the increasing number of jobs requiring these skills. This study focuses on physics majors with an in-depth examination of student transitions from high school to college. Many different areas of influence could affect a student's decision to major in physics. The first phase of this study addresses all of the potential areas of influence identified from the literature. The goal was to identify common influences that might be used to increase students' interest in majoring in physics. Subjects (N=35) from the first phase were recruited …

Debugging Support For Message-Passing Based Concurrent Software, Mohamed Medhat Elwakil

Dissertations

Today, multi-core processors are used in all computing aspects, including embedded systems such as mobile devices. In order for software programs to benefit from the transition to multi-core processors, the programs need to be concurrent.

Recent research shows that programs developed using the message-passing model can scale better than programs developed using the shared-memory model. However, the message-passing model is not widely adopted, partly, because of the lack of debugging tools. Debugging message-passing programs is very intricate due to their inherent nondeterministic behavior; even with the same input, a program may behave differently when executed multiple times. Bugs in message-passing …

Relativistic R-Matrix Theory, Janina Grineviciute

Dissertations

We have developed a relativistic coupled{channel reaction theory in which binary break-up channels satisfy a relative Dirac equation. This theory is developed by extending the R-matrix formalism of Lane and Thomas to the relativistic case and implementing the Dirac oscillator basis. The motivation for this project is testing po- tentials for the dense matter calculations and generating relativistic wave functions for the nal states in the knockout reactions. As an example of the formalism we have calculated observables for the proton scattering on light-to-medium weight nuclei in the relativistic impulse approximation using the relativistic Love-Franey amplitudes of Horowitz. The R-matrix …

Summative Confidence, Paul Cristian Gugiu

Dissertations

Often the singular goal of an evaluation is to render a summative conclusion of merit, worth or feasibility that is based on multiple streams of multidimensional data. Exacerbating this difficulty, conducting evaluations in real-world settings often necessitates implementation of less than ideal study designs. This reality gets further complicated by the standard method for estimating the precision of results via the confidence interval (CI). Traditional CIs offer a limited approach for understanding the precision of a summative conclusion. This dissertation develops and presents a unified approach for the construction of a CI for a summative conclusion (SC).

This study derived …

An Exploration Of Worldview And Conceptions Of Nature Of Science Among Science Teachers At A Private Christian High School, Kara M. Kits

Dissertations

Both worldview and conceptions of nature of science (NOS) are important components in teaching and learning science. However, few empirical studies have examined the interplay between both of these components for teachers or students. Therefore, this study examines the possible relationship between worldview and conceptions of nature of science for secondary science teachers who currently teach at a Christian school.

Qualitative methodologies developed a rich description of the worldview beliefs and conceptions of NOS for teachers in this study. Eight secondary science teachers employed at a private Christian school participated in the study. A Views of Nature of Science (VNOS) …

Robust Adaptive Scheme For Linear Mixed Models, Gabriel Asare Okyere

Dissertations

If the underlying distribution of a statistical model is known then a procedure which maximizes power and efficiency can be selected. For example, if the distribution of errors is known to be normal in a linear model then inference based on least squares maximizes power and efficiency. More generally, if this distribution is known then a ranked based inference based on the appropriate rank score function has maximum efficiency. In practice, though, this distribution is not known. Adaptive schemes are procedures which hopefully select appropriate methods to optimize the analysis.

Hogg (1974) presented an adaptive rank-based scheme for testing in …

Robust Nonparametric Methods For Regression To The Mean Model, Therawat Wisadrattanapong

Dissertations

Regression to the mean is a statistical phenomenon that often confounds treatment effects in experiments. Consider an experiment involving a treatment, in which a response is measured (baseline) on a subject then a treatment is applied and a second measurement is taken. Then under many bivariate models for the pair of responses (including the bivariate normal), the predicted response of the second measurement will regress to the mean. In experiments where the second response is only taken for a select sample, say above a cutoff value, then this regression to the mean effect may mistakenly be thought of as a …

How Politics, Economics, And Technology Influence Evaluation Requirements For Federally Funded Projects: A Historical Study Of The Elementary And Secondary Education Act From 1965 To 2005, Maxine R. Eversley-Gilling

Dissertations

Program evaluation does not take place in a vacuum. Its context is the interaction of political, economic, and technological developments that influenced the formation of federal policies for mandated evaluation requirements. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 established policies to provide “financial assistance to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to expand and improve their educational program” (Public Law 89-10—Apr. 11, 1965). This legislation also had another consequence: it helped drive the establishment of educational program evaluation and the field of evaluation as a profession.

The purpose of this study is …

The Application Of Fuzzy Logic In Determining Linguistic Rules And Associative Membership Functions For The Control Of A Manufacturing Process, Marcus Foley, John Mcgrory

Dissertations

Fuzzy logic is a form of multi-valued logic derived from fuzzy set theory. Its methodology aims to provide a definitive solution from information that may be construed as ambiguous, imprecise or noisy. Classical set theory studies the properties of sets, while fuzzy set theory investigates the degree to which an element can be related to a set. The aim of this project is to develop a control strategy for a specific technical challenge relating to the food processing sector based on the deployment of fuzzy logic control concepts. Specifically, in this paper the author is concerned with the ability to …

Memory And Language: Evidence Of Relationships From Three Studies Of School-Age Children, Michele A. Anderson

Dissertations

The purpose of this three-paper dissertation was to explore the relationship between performance on verbal memory and language assessment tasks in school-age children. Study one used data from whole-class administration of three language assessment tasks to 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 9th graders (N= 187). Studies two and three used data from individualized administration of language assessment and verbal memory tasks to comparable samples of children between the ages of 6 and 18 years with typical language (TL) and language impairment (LI) (n = 37 per group).

The first study addressed practical and theoretical questions regarding memory and language demands of …

The Impact Of The Head Start Parent Teacher Partnership On Home Based Mathematical Interventions Provided By Single Rural Head Start Mothers, Curtiss J. Babcock

Dissertations

Increased research in the area of early childhood education has expanded knowledge in the area of educating young children and improving school readiness. In Head Start, as well as other preschool programs, attention has recently focused on the pre-mathematics component of early education and school readiness.

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the home-based mathematic activities and experiences single rural Head Start mothers use to provide math-related instruction to their children prior to Head Start entry. Also examined was the preschool teacher's influence on parent initiated in-home mathematics practices.

This study looked for relationships between the …

Bayesian Item Response Theory: Statistical Inference And Power Analysis, Jason W. Bodnar

Dissertations

The regulatory pharmaceutical approval process is flawed in that industry clinical trials (ICTs) are always powered for efficacy and rarely powered for safety. The key safety parameter is the adverse event (AE). This practice may result in efficacious products with confounded safety. An ICT’s ability to be powered for detecting AE trends may improve patient safety. Therefore, this dissertation’s purpose was to determine if power analysis resulted in feasible sample sizes for substantiating AE hypotheses. AEs were modeled with three Bayesian 2PL IRT models. The unidimensional latent trait, transfusion-related AE, was modeled as a patient predisposition for experiencing an AE. …

The Principle Of Flickering, Laura K. Donnelly

Dissertations

The Principle of Flickering is a collection of poems that map our endeavors to survive and make sense of the flux of the world. The title poem introduces the reader to the ways the collection will approach this survival - through the poem's movement into and out of the frames of other art forms, its process of filtering a collage of voices, and its attempts to momentarily apprehend and still sources of internal and external chaos. Subsequent poems continue this engagement with survival in a variety of ways, including a lyrical study of the evolution of finches ("Darwin's Finches"), a …

Death By Boredom: The Role Of Visual Processing Theory In Written Evaluation Communication, Stephanie D. H. Evergreen

Dissertations

Evaluation reporting is an educational act and, as such, should be communicated using principles that support cognition. This study drew upon visual processing theory and theory-based graphic design principles to develop the Evaluation Report Layout Checklist intended to guide report development and support cognition in the readers of evaluation reports. It was then reviewed by an expert panel and applied by a group of raters to a set of evaluation reports obtained from the Informal Science Education evaluation website with maximum variability sampling. Results showed fairly high exact percent agreement and strong to very strong correlation with the author’s ratings. …

Evaluating The Impact Of Small-Group Discussion On Learning In Anorganizational Psychology Class Utilizing A Classroom Response System, Thorhallur Orn Flosason

Dissertations

A classroom response system is a technology that allows individual students to clickers favorably. The second study showed that clicker use during lecture was associated with higher exam scores, but that relationship can be interpreted in several different ways, some of which are not tied to active responding. The implications of these findings with respect to previous research are discussed. provide answers to questions posed by the instructor during lecture using hand held remotes (clickers) that transmit a signal to the instructor's computer via a receiver and computer software (Judson & Sawada, 2002). This instructional technology is widely used in …