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The Nature Of The O-2/O-5 Cooperative Effect And Its Role In Chemical Glycosylation, Laurel Kathryn Mydock

Dissertations

Since carbohydrates were first discovered, understanding the structure, reactivity, and function of these bioorganic compounds has remained of great priority. However, as the appreciation for the biological roles of carbohydrates intensifies, a growing demand for efficient and scalable methods towards the synthesis of these challenging molecules has become even more imperative. While modern synthetic techniques have allowed us to readily achieve most glycosidic linkages, it is the inability to effectively predict and control the stereoselectivity of the glycosylation reaction that has remained the synthetic hurdle. Herein, much effort has been placed in the investigation of “mixed-patterned” glycosyl donors as they …

Can Experiential Education Strategies Improve Elementary Science Teachers’ Perceptions Of And Practices In Science Teaching?, Kasey D. Sindel

Dissertations

This study was prompted by the growing amount of research that is in support of science reform and from this researcher’s personal experience and concern that science instructions is no longer a top priority in elementary schools nor are young scientists given the opportunities to act as scientists in a real world setting. This study uses experiential education strategies in a workshop format to try and affect change in the attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of elementary science teachers. Experiential education is not new, but the methods of teaching can span a wide range of topics. The main focus of the …

Perceived Effectiveness Of Special Reading Teacher’S Preparation Through The Reading Practicum Experience, Patricia C. Leitsch

Dissertations

Special reading certification in the state of Missouri requires a candidate to complete coursework that involves two three hour practicum experiences. These experiences must entail working with students in kindergarten through grade 12. The practicum experiences are designed to provide significant instruction in the area of reading strategies for struggling readers. Since the advent of No Child Left Behind (Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education [MODESE], 2009b) there has been an increased demand for special reading teachers. Many universities have experienced an increase in the number of students seeking special reading certification. This qualitative study focuses on the three …

Bridging The Gap: Linking Co-Curricular Activities To Student Learning Outcomes In Community College Students, Katie Lauren Storey

Dissertations

This study investigated the extent to which participation in co-curricular events enhances the achievement of student-learning outcomes in community college students. One community college in Illinois—Chicago Metropolitan Area Community College (CMACC), a pseudonym—was selected to research based on its robust co-curricular activity programming. A concurrent nested mixed methodology (Plano Clark & Creswell, 2007) was used, nesting quantitative data within qualitative data.

To generate quantitative data, a student survey was distributed to 128 students involved with co-curricular activities at CMACC. Participating students were asked to identify their involvement with co-curricular programming and how this participation correlated with the institution’s general education …

Glaciotectonic Deformation Along The Valparaiso Upland In Southwest Michigan, Usa, Brian C. Bird

Dissertations

Glaciotectonic deformation has been observed and analyzed across parts of the Valparaiso, Kendall, and Inner Kalamazoo Moraines in southwest Michigan, USA. Deformation structures such as folds and faults have been analyzed using techniques typically used by structural geologist along with the fabric of elongated clasts in the surficial diamicton. The structures are consistent with simple shear, horizontal compressional stresses, and pure shear. A series of drumlin fields exist along the western boundary of the study area. Direct investigation of the deformed sediments was conducted at a gravel pit in one of these drumlins. Lacustrine derived sediments interbedded with coarse sand …

Essential Personal Attributes, Skills And Abilities Needed By Aspiring Community College Presidents, Jeffery Steven Boyd

Dissertations

The community college presidency is in critical state of evolution. Boggs (2003) stated that the rate of presidential retirements appears to be on the rise, with 79% of presidents planning to retire by 2012. Weisman and Vaughn (2007) in a 2006 survey found the number of presidents planning to retire within ten years is 84%. The most likely candidates to fill these presidential vacancies are the senior administrators. This presents a challenge because the senior administrators are at the same age as the retiring presidents and they too are preparing for retirement.

The previous generations of community college presidents, the …

Suitable Knowledge Management In Project Environment, Taya Polyaninova

Dissertations

Knowledge is becoming one of the main assets for organizations that want to improve their competitiveness in currently changing market. Knowledge comes from different sources within organizations, such as internal processes, projects, customers and stakeholder information. As markets and the way of doing things changes, many companies implement different projects to deal with those changes, which leads to accumulation of knowledge and information. Companies use Knowledge Management to create, identify and distribute knowledge and experiences arising from projects within organisation. However, as projects are done to create unique deliverables and they are never the same, there is a difficulty in …

The Floating Contract Between Risk-Averse Supply Chain Partners In A Volatile Commodity Price Environment, Mojisola Kike Otegbeye

Dissertations

In this dissertation, two separate but closely related decision making problems in environments of volatile commodity prices are addressed. In the first problem, a risk-averse commodity user's purchasing policy and his risk-neutral supplier's pricing decision, where the user can purchase his needs through contract with his supplier as well as directly from the spot market, are analyzed. The commodity user is assumed to be the supplier's sole client, and the supplier can always expand capacity, at a cost to the user, to accommodate the user's demand in excess of initially reserved capacity.

In the more generalized second problem, both parties …

New Data Structures, Models, And Algorithms For Real-Time Resource Management, Xinfa Hu

Dissertations

Real-time resource management is the core and critical task in real-time systems. This dissertation explores new data structures, models, and algorithms for real-time resource management.

At first, novel data structures, i.e., a class of Testing Interval Trees (TITs), are proposed to help build efficient scheduling modules in real-time systems. With a general data structure, i.e., the TIT* tree, the average costs of the schedulability tests in a wide variety of real-time systems can be reduced. With the Testing Interval Tree for Vacancy analysis (TIT-V), the complexities of the schedulability tests in a class of parallel/distributed real-time systems can be effectively …

Constitutive Modeling Of Glassy Memory Polymers, Mahesh Khanolkar

Dissertations

The aim of this research is to develop constitutive models for non-linear materials. Here, issues related for developing constitutive model for glassy shape memory polymers are addressed in detail. Shape memory polymers are novel material that can be easily formed into complex shapes, retaining memory of their original shape even after undergoing large deformations. The temporary shape is stable and return to the original shape is triggered by a suitable mechanism such heating the polymer above a transition temperature. Glassy shape memory polymers are called glassy because the temporary shape is fixed by the formation of a glassy solid, while …

Transport Mechanisms And Modeling Of Riser Reactor, Dawei Wang

Dissertations

Riser reactors are extensively employed in various industrial applications. In a riser reactor, the hydrodynamics is closely interacted with kinetic reactions. Common models for the performance prediction of riser reactors overlook this vital coupling effect, which not only miss the important reaction characteristics in the dense-phase transport regime of riser reactors but also misinterpret the kinetic properties via ad hoc adjustments. It is noted that the modeling of hydrodynamics in riser flows has major flaws in its predictability of phase transport in both dense-phase and accelerating regimes where most reactions occur. In addition, with the spray feeding of reactants at …

Optimizing Integrated Service For A Transit Route With Heterogeneous Demand, Yavuz Yusuf Ulusoy

Dissertations

The methodology developed in this dissertation attempts to optimize integrated service that minimizes the total cost, including user and supplier costs, of a transit route with heterogeneous demand. While minimizing total cost, a set of practical constraints, such as capacity, operable fleet size and frequency conservation, are considered.

The research problem is presented in three scenarios, consisting of various service patterns (e.g., all-stop, short-turn and express) under heterogeneous demand. A logit-based model was used to estimate passenger transfer demand. An exhaustive search method was developed to find the optimal solutions for a simplified transit route with six stops, and a …

Coupled Simulation Of Loading And Response Of Columns Under Extreme Events, Navid H. Allahverdi

Dissertations

Forces imparted to structural columns during blast-induced loading depends on the shape and size of columns as well as on the intensity of the blast. Column's geometry - i.e., shape and size - influences the flow field around the column and consequently the flow field determines forces experienced by the column The main objective of this research is to estimate the forces imparted to columns in a blast event through studying the air flow field around columns

In this study, the physics of shock wave reflection and rarefaction waves are reviewed with application to describing the air flow around columns …

Variance Reduction Techniques For Estimating Quantiles And Value-At-Risk, Fang Chu

Dissertations

Quantiles, as a performance measure, arise in many practical contexts. In finance, quantiles are called values-at-risk (VARs), and they are widely used in the financial industry to measure portfolio risk. When the cumulative distribution function is unknown, the quantile can not be computed exactly and must be estimated. In addition to computing a point estimate for the quantile, it is important to also provide a confidence interval for the quantile as a way of indicating the error in the estimate. A problem with crude Monte Carlo is that the resulting confidence interval may be large, which is often the case …

Modeling With Bivariate Geometric Distributions, Jing Li

Dissertations

This dissertation studied systems with several components which were subject to different types of failures. Systems with two components having frequency counts in the domain of positive integers, and the survival time of each component following geometric or mixture geometric distribution can be classified into this category. Examples of such systems include twin engines of an airplane and the paired organs in a human body. It was found that such a system, using conditional arguments, can be characterized as multivariate geometric distributions. It was proved that these characterizations of the geometric models can be achieved using conditional probabilities, conditional failure …

A Qualitative Study Of A Native American Mascot At "Public University", Michelle Lyn Brune

Dissertations

At the time this study began, there were approximately 60 senior colleges and universities using Native American mascots or nicknames to represent their athletic teams (Fournier, 2003). Many Native Americans, coalitions, organizations, and researchers (Connolly, 2000; Davis, 2002; King & Springwood, 2000; NCAA, 2001) believe that these mascots are racist stereotypes of Native Americans and recommend that they be banned. In contrast, other people believe that Native American mascots signify honor and tradition. Differing meanings or opinions create an obvious conflict and each viewpoint includes a set of arguments to justify their beliefs. For example, many universities claim their alumni …

Effect Of Anions On The Iron Release Pathways Of Human Serum Transferrin, Rashmi Subhash Chander Sharma

Dissertations

Transferrin, the serum iron transport protein in humans, is used to transport 30-40 mg of iron per day through blood. The accessibility of transferrin makes it an attractive target for iron cheating therapeutic agents used in the treatment of iron overload. There is an ongoing search for ligands which can accelerate the rate of iron release, as the currently approved drug DFO has a very slow rate for iron removal. Previous studies have shown that anions can accelerate the rate of iron release. Studies on the effect of anions on the rates of iron release from C-terminal monoferric transferrin at …

Weak Shear Study Of Galaxy Clusters By Simulated Gravitational Lensing, David Raymond Coss

Dissertations

Gravitational lensing has been simulated for numerical galaxy clusters in order to characterize the effects of substructure and shape variations of dark matter halos on the weak lensing properties of clusters. In order to analyze realistic galaxy clusters, 6 high-resolution Adaptive Refinement Tree N-body simulations of clusters with hydrodynamics are used, in addition to a simulation of one group undergoing a merger. For each cluster, the three-dimensional particle distribution is projected perpendicular to three orthogonal lines of sight, providing 21 projected mass density maps. The clusters have representative concentration and mass values for clusters in the concordance cosmology. Two gravitational …

Project-Based Learning About Nutrition With Technology In An African-American Middle School: An Action Research Study, Sibyl A. Banks

Dissertations

In the last few years, there has been a growing problem with the prevalence of being overweight. This is becoming an accepted lifestyle in the African American community, and has begun to impact not just adults, but also adolescents and young children. There are problems associated with being overweight or obese that could have lifetime consequences. Causes of African American adolescents becoming overweight include cultural factors, lack of access to large grocery stores and insufficient outlets for exercise. This action research study investigated the effect a project based approach, utilizing technology, had on students from three 7th and 8th grade …

The Use Of A Metacognitive Tool In An Online Social Supportive Learning Environment: An Activity Theory Analysis, Ray Earl Martinez

Dissertations

This investigation is an exploratory study of the use of a metacognitive software tool in a social supportive learning environment. The tool combined metacognitive knowledge and regulation functionality embedded within the content of an eight week online graduate education course. Twenty-three learners, who were practicing teachers, used the tool. Prior knowledge of metacognition, including responses to the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Dennison, 1994), was obtained. Prior knowledge of community instructional approaches was also obtained. Learner interviews focused on the mediational aspects of the metacognitive tool and the social supportive learning environment, as well as an evaluation of the tool. …

Strategic Information Systems Alignment: A Longitudinal Investigation, Chowa Kachaka Charles

Dissertations

The alignment between business and information systems’ strategies (strategic IS alignment) has occupied researchers’ and practitioners’ interest over the past two decades. This is due to the belief that strategic IS alignment positively affects business performance. However, despite the concerted effort in seeking to understand the alignment phenomenon, executives in organizations continue to complain of the difficulty in achieving and sustaining alignment. This may be due to a lack of a comprehensive model of alignment that takes into account its dynamic nature and the factors that affect it over time. Therefore, this study seeks to add to our accumulated knowledge …

Curriculum Coherence: A Comparative Analysis Of Elementary Science Content Standards In People's Republic Of China And The Usa, Fang Huang

Dissertations

This study examines elementary science content standards curriculum coherence between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America. Three aspects of curriculum coherence are examined in this study: topic inclusion, topic duration, and curriculum structure. Specifically this study centers on the following research questions: 1) What science knowledge is intended for elementary students in each country? 2) How long each topic stays in the curriculum? 3) How these topics sequence and connect with each other? 4) And finally, what is the implication for elementary science curriculum development?

Four intended science curriculum frameworks were selected respectively for each …

Investigating Efforts To Change Educator Attitudes And Teaching Strategies Through Professional Development Focused On The Use Of Backward Design Curriculum And The Principles Of Efficacy: Student Behavior, Feedback And Assessments, Gwendolyn Grooms

Dissertations

School districts continually face problems associated with student achievement. The 2001–2002 federal mandate contained in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act held schools accountable for success of all students in reading and mathematics. Standardized tests were employed to measure the success. The purpose of this study was to investigate efforts to change educator attitudes and teaching strategies through professional development focused on the use of backward design curriculum and the principles of efficacy. Participants completed a pre and post Likert survey. Three 45-minute professional development sessions were conducted incorporating discussions on the principles of efficacy and backward design curriculum. …

Superintendents' Use Of Research-Based Responsibilities/Practices In High-Performing School Districts, Wayne Russell Stitt

Dissertations

The purpose of this research study was to identify "how" effective superintendents use the research-based leadership responsibilities/practices outlined in Marzano and Waters' (2006) meta-analysis that significantly and positively impact student achievement. A second purpose of this research was to find challenges that superintendents face in their attempts to be successful within their school districts.

The study employed a qualitative multi-site case study using elite purposeful sampling. Five superintendents in southwest Michigan were targeted and agreed to participate in this study. They were the only superintendents in this region who met the criteria, which included school districts who have a total …

Proportional Signs In The Works Of Heinrich Schutz, Jang Woo Park

Dissertations

Some time signatures used in the Neue Schütz Ausgabe (Bärenreither, 1955-2008) differ from both modern signatures and contemporary mensuration signs, obscuring Schütz's original intentions. A review of the history of proportion signs from the late 14th century to the 17th century shows that the four basic mensuration signs of the late 14th century were the foundation of the proportion system throughout the period, and that the proportion signs of the 16th and 17th century were adaptations of modus cum tempore signs and fractions. Although confusion was created through misunderstandings of the meanings of the signs and by attempts to reform …

A Validation Study Of The Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, And Successive (Pass) Theory And Its Relationship To Reading Achievement In Adults, Justin Moore Walker

Dissertations

This study set out to determine if the Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, Successive (PASS) cognitive processing model, a model previously investigated with children, would hold its factorial structure with adults. A collection of PASS experimental tasks were analyzed through Maximum Likelihood Factor Analysis. A four-factor solution consistent with the theoretical model was found with little variation from the literature. In addition, the extent to which the PASS experimental tasks and composite areas predicted reading achievement was examined through multiple regression. The results suggested that the PASS cognitive processing model provides adequate prediction of academic achievement in adults. The Successive PASS composite …

Virtual Teacher Talk: Blogging With And By Pre-Service Teachers, Melanie Bishop

Dissertations

This action research study investigated the use of a blog in a pre-service teacher orientation foundational course in a mid-western college. The purpose of using the blog was to integrate face-to-face instruction and virtual interactive technology throughout the course, in particular while the students were away from class for five weeks to participate in a practicum. The face-to-face and virtual interactions were designed to provide mutual support. This study was conducted in a course entitled Orientation to Education, a foundational course required of all undergraduate pre-service education students. Of the 34 students, 24 were freshmen or sophomores. The median age …

The Lost-Boys Phenomenon: Case Studies Of San Diego High School Males, Richard Stakelum Edd

Dissertations

By most measures of success—e.g., academic Grade Point Average (GPA), graduation rates, participation in extracurricular and civic activities, and college enrollment—adolescent males are less successful than females. Young males are falling behind in reading and writing and are more likely to be involved in truancy, violence, crime, suicide, and substance abuse. While the nation mobilized to address historical gender discrimination issues for females since the 1970s, there has not been a similar effort mounted to assist adolescent males. The trends alluded to in the previous paragraph have begun to be recognized by popular-press authors. Some have begun to refer to …

Indigenous Leadership: A Talking-Circle Dialogue With Cree Leaders, Julia L. Buchanan Phd

Dissertations

The study of leadership is gaining popularity as evidenced by the increasing number of leadership development programs in both corporate and academic environments. Therefore, the way that leadership is defined becomes important. Unfortunately, the majority of literature on leadership emphasizes a Eurocentric or Western perspective. This study explored the leadership-related thinking and practices embraced by a First Nations population in Canada: nehiyawak or the Cree people. As the research evolved, the study also ended up exploring both cultural differences with respect to knowledge and knowing and the ethical issues involved with permitting non-native researchers to study native groups. The latter …

The Relationship Between Reading Fluency, Writing Fluency, And Reading Comprehension In Suburban Third-Grade Students, Mary Leonard Palmer Edd

Dissertations

The topic of reading fluency is of great importance in education today. Research has shown a significant positive relationship between reading fluency and reading comprehension. However, little is known about writing fluency and its connection with reading comprehension. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between reading fluency, writing fluency, and reading comprehension. First, using the principles of assessing reading fluency, I designed a writing assessment and measured the writing fluency of 54 3rd graders. I examined the writing assessments as they related to the students' reading fluency and reading comprehension scores. Secondly, I performed a quasi-experimental …