Digital Commons Network^™

Students’ Conceptions Of Mathematics And The Transition From A Standards-Based Reform Curriculum To College Mathematics, Rebecca K. Walker

Dissertations

Students’ conceptions of mathematics are shaped by the environment within which they learn mathematics and in turn they affect the manner in which students engage in mathematics.

This study examined students’ conceptions about learning, knowing, and doing mathematics after studying four years of a Standards-based reform high school mathematics curriculum developed by the Core-Plus Mathematics Project (CPMP). Student conceptions were examined at the end of high school (n = 2S6) and after one semester of college mathematics (n = 92). The study also provides case studies of six students as they navigated from the CPMP curriculum through college Precalculus or …

Site-Based Management And Student Achievement, Roxana Marie Hopkins

Dissertations

The question that this study seeks to answer is. Does site-based management increase student achievement? Researchers believe that when a school can function more like a closed system, involved in site-based decision making, the culture of the organization may be more conducive to higher student achievement. This study has attempted to determine if there is a basis for this belief.

Supporting the study are three organization theories. Bureaucracy Theory, Systems Theory, and Human Resource Development Theory. These three theories run like threads in a tapestry throughout the research and legislation upon which this research is developed.

Researchers, up to this …

A Comparison Of International And U.S. Students In Apa-Accredited Programs: Acculturation, Counseling Self-Efficacy And Role Difficulties In Supervision, Johanna E. Nilsson

Dissertations

There has been a call in the multicultural supervision literature to enhance the understanding of minority students’ unique training needs and develop appropriate theories and models of training for these students (Leong & Wagner, 1994; McNeill, Horn, & Perez, 1995). Although a few researchers have empirically examined differences between U.S. majority and minority students in multicultural supervision (Cook & Helms, 1988; Vander Kolk, 1974), virtually no empirical studies have been published on international students’ training experiences.

The main purpose of the present study was to advance knowledge regarding the training needs of international students in APA-accredited programs in psychology. It …

Protein And Endotoxin Interactions And Endotoxin Removal From Protein Solutions, Liping Li

Dissertations

The investigation objectives of this study include: endotoxin disaggregation by proteins; protein concentration effect on protein-endotoxin binding and endotoxin removal; size exclusion high performance liquid chromatography (SE-HPLC) studies on endotoxin dissociation by bovin serum albumin (BSA); use of Ca⁺² to re-aggregate endotoxin in hemoglobin solutions and the subsequent removal of endotoxin by ultrafiltration; quantitative determination of Ca⁺² effects on endotoxin removal and protein yield in a two-stage ultrafiltration.

It is known that some proteins can disaggregate endotoxins and form complexes with lipopolysaccharides (LPS). It is also known that Ca can act as "bridges" to aggregate LPS in aqueous …

Evaluation Of Raman Spectroscopy And Ruby Piezospectroscopy As Tools For Investigating The Corrosion Of Metallic Alloys, Daniel P. Renusch

Dissertations

Stainless steel system components that operate in high temperature oxidizing environments obtain protection from corrosion by means of thermally grown chromia and alumina scales. Ongoing investigations of protective scales utilize a battery of experimental and theoretical techniques. A technique which has received little attention is Raman scattering. The reason for its limited use has been long data acquisition times required to obtain suitable spectra from thin surface oxides. Because advances in detection systems, namely the multichannel CCD (charge coupled devices), have recently provided dramatic improvement in the sensitivity of Raman scattering experiments, we decided to reevaluate the technique as a …

The Use Of Curriculum-Based Measurement To Evaluate The Effects Of A Remedial Education Program, Michael D. Hixson

Dissertations

This study examined the effectiveness of two Direct Instruction programs: Corrective Reading: Decoding and Connecting Math Concepts. The effectiveness of the interventions was evaluated using a single-subject experimental design with curriculumbased measurement (CBM) probes as the main means of assessment. Other methods of assessment included standardized achievement tests, school reports, and pre- and postcurriculum- based assessment probes. The CBM probes for all students were sensitive to the effects of the interventions, although there was a great deal of variability in the CBM reading probes and little correspondence across methods of assessment. The results indicate that the two Direct Instruction programs …

An Analysis Of Nine K-12 School Districts That Have Established Membership With The Coalition Of Essential Schools, Shari A. Peters Kitchen

Dissertations

In the late 1970s, Ted Sizer, professor of education at Brown University, and a team of researchers traveled the country visiting dozens of secondary schools. The purpose of these visits was to understand the American high school by observing it firsthand. Sizer reported his findings in 1984 in Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School.

In response to the compromises raised in Horace's Compromise, 12 schools volunteered to become the Coalition of Essential Schools. The Coalition rests on a set of nine Common Principles, which include intellectual rigor, simple and universal goals, personalized school, graduation by exhibitions …

A Comprehensive Approach For Evaluation Of Groundwater Vulnerability To Contamination, Shafiul H. Chowdhury

Dissertations

Groundwater vulnerability to contamination from surface sources was evaluated for Nottawa Creek Watershed, Calhoun County Michigan using AQUIPRO and DRASTIC vulnerability methods. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to analyze and map the data. Forty groundwater samples were collected following a statistical sampling protocol from private wells. Samples were analyzed for nitrate-N and atrazine. Atrazine was not detected (detection limit 0.1 ppb) in any of the samples. Five samples contained detectable nitrate-N (detection limit 0.05 mg/L). Due to insufficient chemical data, the relative AQUIPRO and DRASTIC vulnerability scores could not be compared with the frequency of occurrences o f …

An Analysis Of Grade-Level Expenditures Of At-Risk Funding Among Districts Of Different Economic Status In The State Of Michigan, Benard A. Meyer

Dissertations

Many of the recent financial reforms failed to address the needs of at-risk children. Effective solutions to the problems of the educationally disadvantaged must include changes within the schools, how the schools are funded, and how the schools spend their funding. Michigan’s 1994 finance reform included a funded plan for “unequal treatment of unequals” directed for the support of at-risk students. This fund was called Section 31a Program for At-Risk Pupils and involved a 230 million dollar compensatory education funding allowance for students at risk of school failure. This study presented here will determine if there is a relationship between …

Adaptive Interference Cancelation Techniques For Multicarrier Modulated Systems, Matthijs A. Visser

Dissertations

Current wireline systems and wireless broadcasting systems employ multicarrier modulation (MCM). This includes the high-rate digital subscriber line (HDSL), digital audio broadcasting system (DAB) and the digital terrestrial television broadcasting system (dTTb). Multicarrier modulation is also envisioned for high-speed indoor wireless local area networks (WLAN). Additionally, multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA), a hybrid of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and CDMA, is proposed for the downlink (base-to-mobile) of a 3rd generation wireless system as part of the IMT-2000 standardization process.

The performance of an MC-CDMA system--similar to a direct sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) system--is limited by the presence of multiple …

Cadmium, Chromium And Lead In Environmental Samples : Speciation And Determination, Hsing-Hui Yu

Dissertations

Heavy metals are important contaminants in many environmental media. This work focuses on the improvement of current methods for water and sediment analysis for three metals, cadmium, chromium and lead. Batch ion exchange was used for water speciation and a microwave assisted sequential extraction scheme was developed for sediment characterization. The developed methods were applied to a group of environmental samples.

The exchangeable species of these metals in water were preconcentrated on ion exchange resins. These include the bioavailable free ions and weakly complexed ions. Metals sorbed on particles and strongly complexed ions, less bioavailable, were eliminated. The method was …

Applications Of A Microtrap For On-Line Monitoring Of Volatile Organics, Chaohua Feng

Dissertations

Microtrap is made by packing a narrow metal tubing with adsorbents. The advantage of a microtrap is that it can be heated and cooled in the order of seconds. It has been used previously as a concentration cum injection device for on-line gas chromatography and also monitoring non-methane organic carbon in air emissions. In this research breakthrough and desorption characteristics of the microtrap were studied. A two-stage microtrap system was developed to reduce breakthrough while making sharp injection for GC separation. Microtrap was also used as a concentrator cum injector in on-line mass spectrometry. Finally, a microtrap based, continuous non-methane …

Development Of Membrane Extraction Systems For Measuring Trace Level Organic Compounds In Water, Xuemei Guo

Dissertations

The presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in ground and surface water resources poses a threat to public health. The measurement of these trace level contaminants in water is of significant importance. Conventional methods for analysis of trace volatile organic compounds in water include purge and trap, head space analysis, and solid phase microextraction (SPME). While these are excellent laboratory techniques, none of them can be used for continuous, on-line monitoring of water streams. Membrane separation of organic compounds from water provides an exciting possibility for on-line extraction and analysis. In previous investigations, water continuously flowed on the feed side …

Chemical Reactions And Mass Transport In Emulsion Liquid Membrane, Huifang Fan

Dissertations

Emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) systems are an important technique for wastewater cleanup. For this purpose, emulsion globules are dispersed in wastewater (external phase), each emulsion globule consisting of many tiny aqueous droplets (internal phase) enclosed in oil (membrane phase). Hazardous chemicals in the wastewater are transported into the internal droplets by mass transfer mechanisms.

Since Li first invented an ELM system in the 1960s, much research effort has been devoted to experimentally finding the optimal conditions for ELM recovery of various chemicals. Such studies would have benefited greatly from the guidance of mathematical models, especially those that provide analytical predictions. …

Long Term Risks Associated With Brownfield Containments, Shailesh Shirish Chirputkar

Dissertations

The sites at which the development is hindered by real or perceived contamination are called as Brownfield sites. It is a common trend in industry to develop these types of sites with surface and peripheral containments. It might prove unwise to develop the sites in this manner from a long term perspective without considering the associated risk. Because of this, a model has been proposed for long term risk assessments of brownfield containments.

Objectives of this study were to develop a contaminant transport model for flow of contaminants towards the surface and peripheral containments inside the site, a model for …

Developing Techniques For Enhancing Comprehensibility Of Controlled Medical Terminologies, Huanying Gu

Dissertations

A controlled medical terminology (CMT) is a collection of concepts (or terms) that are used in the medical domain. Typically, a CMT also contains attributes of those concepts and/or relationships between those concepts. Electronic CMTs are extremely useful and important for communication between and integration of independent information systems in healthcare, because data in this area is highly fragmented. A single query in this area might involve several databases, e.g., a clinical database, a pharmacy database, a radiology database, and a lab test database.

Unfortunately, the extensive sizes of CMTs, often containing tens of thousands of concepts and hundreds of …

Porting The Sisal Functional Language To Distributed-Memory Multiprocessors, Jui-Yuan Ku

Dissertations

Parallel computing is becoming increasingly ubiquitous in recent years. The sizes of application problems continuously increase for solving real-world problems. Distributed-memory multiprocessors have been regarded as a viable architecture of scalable and economical design for building large scale parallel machines. While these parallel machines can provide computational capabilities, programming such large-scale machines is often very difficult due to many practical issues including parallelization, data distribution, workload distribution, and remote memory latency.

This thesis proposes to solve the programmability and performance issues of distributed-memory machines using the Sisal functional language. The programs written in Sisal will be automatically parallelized, scheduled and …

A Methodology For Solving The Network Toll Design Problem, Mei Chen

Dissertations

Congestion pricing has been regarded as an efficient method to reduce network-wide travel cost. In this dissertation, a methodology for toll design is developed to provide policy-makers with suggestions on both where to charge tolls and how much the tolls should be. As opposed to the traditional approach of marginal social cost pricing, this methodology is capable of dealing with the more realistic case, in which only a small number of links can be tolled. Furthermore, this methodology is expanded to accommodate multiple user groups.

The toll design problem can be formulated using both deterministic and stochastic route choice models. …

Flame Dynamics In Steady Strained Flows, Zili Huang

Dissertations

In this dissertation, the response of a premixed flame to time-dependent strained flow fields is investigated. Because of the potential application to turbulent combustion modeling, the main focus is on the particular case of a flame in stagnation point flow with an imposed oscillatory strain rate. The flame is modeled as a hydrodynamic discontinuity separating burned from unburned gasses. To complete the formulation of the problem, conditions relating the fluid variables across the flame front are needed, as is a flame speed equation that determines the evolution of the discontinuity. These conditions are derived through asymptotic analysis of the flame …

Dynamical Systems Associated With Particle Flow Models : Theory And Numerical Methods, Roman V. Samulyak

Dissertations

A new class of integro - partial differential equation models is derived for the prediction of granular flow dynamics. These models are obtained using a novel limiting averaging method (inspired by techniques employed in the derivation of infinite-dimensional dynamical systems models) on the Newtonian equations of motion of a many-particle system incorporating widely used inelastic particle-particle force formulas. By using Taylor series expansions, these models can be approximated by a system of partial differential equations of the Navier-Stokes type. Solutions of the new models for granular flows down inclined planes and in vibrating beds are compared with known experimental and …

On-Line State And Parameter Estimation In Nonlinear Systems, David A. Haessig

Dissertations

On-line, simultaneous state and parameters estimation in deterministic, nonlinear dynamic systems of known structure is the problem considered. Available methods are few and fall short of user needs in that they are difficult to apply, their applicability is restricted to limited classes of systems, and for some, conditions guaranteeing their convergence don't exist.

The new methods developed herein are placed into two categories: those that involve the use of Riccati equations, and those that do not. Two of the new methods do not use Riccati equations, and each is considered to be a different extension of Friedland' s parameter observer …

Automatic Document Classification And Extraction System (Adoces), Xuhong Li

Dissertations

Document processing is a critical element of office automation. Document image processing begins from the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) phase with complex processing for document classification and extraction. Document classification is a process that classifies an incoming document into a particular predefined document type. Document extraction is a process that extracts information pertinent to the users from the content of a document and assigns the information as the values of the “logical structure” of the document type. Therefore, after document classification and extraction, a paper document will be represented in its digital form instead of its original image file format, …

Optimization Of Urban Traffic Control Strategies By A Network Design Model, Wu Sun

Dissertations

The efficiency of congested urban transportation networks can be improved by implementing appropriate traffic control strategies, such as signal control timing, turning movement control; implementation of one-way traffic policies, lane distribution controls etc.. In this dissertation, the following strategies are addressed: 1) Intersection left turn addition/deletion, 2) Lane designation,. and 3) Signal optimization.

The analogy between the network design problem (NDP) and the optimization of traffic control strategies motivated the formulation of an urban transportation network design problem (UTNDP) to optimize traffic control strategies. An UTNDP is a typical bi-level programming program, where the lower level problem is a User …

Knowledge Management For Texpros, Jianshun Hu

Dissertations

Most of the document processing systems today have applied Al technologies to support their system intelligent behaviors. For the application of Al technologies in such systems, the core problem is how to represent and manage different kinds of knowledge to support their inference engine components' functionalities. In other words, knowledge management has become a critical issue in the document processing systems. In this dissertation, within the scope of the TEXt PROcessing System (TEXPROS), we identify knowledge of various kinds that are applicable in the system. We investigate several problems of managing this knowledge and then develop a knowledge base for …

Development Of Computer Model And Expert System For Pneumatic Fracturing Of Geologic Formations, Brian Michael Sielski

Dissertations

The objective of this study was the development of a new computer program called PF-Model to analyze pneumatic fracturing of geologic formations. Pneumatic fracturing is an in situ remediation process that involves injecting high pressure gas into soil or rock matrices to enhance permeability, as well as to introduce liquid and solid amendments. PF-Model has two principal components: (1) Site Screening, which heuristically evaluates sites with regard to process applicability; and (2) System Design, which uses the numerical solution of a coupled algorithm to generate preliminary design parameters.

Designed as an expert system, the Site Screening component is a high …

Fdtd-Based Full Wave Co-Simulation Model For Hybrid Electromagnetic Systems, Tong Li

Dissertations

In high-frequency ranges, the present electronic design automation software has limited capabilities to model electromagnetic (EM) systems where there are strong field effects influencing their characteristics. In this situation, a full-wave simulation tool is desired for the analysis and design of high-speed and non-linear EM systems. It is necessary to explore the interaction between the field and electronic components during a transient process when field effects are more significant. The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique receives growing attention in the area of EM system analysis and simulation due to its simplicity, flexibility and robustness. It is a full-wave simulation method that …

Pattern Discovery In Trees : Algorithms And Applications To Document And Scientific Data Management, Chia-Yo Chang

Dissertations

Ordered, labeled trees are trees in which each node has a label and the left-to-right order of its children (if it has any) is fixed. Such trees have many applications in vision, pattern recognition, molecular biology and natural language processing.

In this dissertation we present algorithms for finding patterns in the ordered labeled trees. Specifically we study the largest approximately common substructure (LACS) problem for such trees. We consider a substructure of a tree T to be a connected subgraph of T. Given two trees T₁, T₂ and an integer d, the LACS problem is to find …

Observers For Discrete-Time Nonlinear Systems, Walter D. Grossman

Dissertations

Observer synthesis for discrete-time nonlinear systems with special applications to parameter estimation is analyzed. Two new types of observers are developed. The first new observer is an adaptation of the Friedland continuous-time parameter estimator to discrete-time systems. The second observer is an adaptation of the continuous-time Gauthier observer to discrete-time systems. By adapting these observers to discrete-time continuous-time parameter estimation problems which were formerly intractable become tractable.

In addition to the two newly developed observers, two observers already described in the literature are analyzed and deficiencies with respect to noise rejection are demonstrated. improved versions of these observers are proposed …

A New-Generation Class Of Parallel Architectures And Their Performance Evaluation, Qian Wang

Dissertations

The development of computers with hundreds or thousands of processors and capability for very high performance is absolutely essential for many computation problems, such as weather modeling, fluid dynamics, and aerodynamics. Several interconnection networks have been proposed for parallel computers. Nevertheless, the majority of them are plagued by rather poor topological properties that result in large memory latencies for DSM (Distributed Shared-Memory) computers. On the other hand, scalable networks with very good topological properties are often impossible to build because of their prohibitively high VLSI (e.g., wiring) complexity. Such a network is the generalized hypercube (GH). The GH supports full-connectivity …

Modeling Controlled Vocabularies Using Oodbs And Multilevel Area Diagrams, Li-Min Liu

Dissertations

A Controlled Vocabulary (CV) is a software system of domain knowledge that consolidates and unifies the terminology of a large application domain. With a common, centralized CV, costly and time-consuming translations can be eliminated between pairs of organizations and pairs of software systems. Unfortunately, the more knowledge we put into a CV, the harder it is to understand and maintain it. In this dissertation, a comprehensive theoretical methodology for modeling CVs using Object-Oriented Database (OODB) technology is presented. We present two methods for representing a semantic network CV as an equivalent OODB, which we call an Object-Oriented Vocabulary Repository (OOVR). …