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Design, Fabrication And Testing Of A Fiber Optic Stress/Strain Sensor For Soft Stretchable Materials Using Polarization Imaging Technique, Jianjun Zheng

Dissertations

The polarization imaging technique has been used to obtain high quality surface images of turbid media. This technique can be slightly modified and used for noninvasive sensing of strain and stress in soft stretchable materials, such as latex and human tissues. Previously this sensing method was developed with free space bulk optics. In this study, a fiber optic based system is developed to investigate the potential application of this technology on the strain/stress as well as surface roughness measurements of stretchable materials. In this system, polarizers are simply attached to the fiber ends to form a polarizing three-fiber probe. Furthermore, …

Parental Decision Making In The Administration Of Stimulant Medication For Their Latency Age Children With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Randye Kay Phd, Msn, Rn

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine parental decision making in the administration of stimulant medication to their latency age children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Research has shown that psychostimulants, used to treat ADHD are effective for 75-90% of children (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2001), however children do not take their medication from 20-65% of the time. A qualitative study using a type of grounded theory, dimensional analysis (Schatzman, 1991), was conducted to study the experiences of fourteen parents whose children began medication treatment between the ages of 5 and 12. Semi stuctured, audiotaped …

The Effects Of Instructor Immediacy In Online Learning Environments, Maria Schutt Edd

Dissertations

The rising number of adult learners interested in online distance education, coupled with the increasing competition between educational institutions have forced universities to identify alternative options for course offerings, such as online or blended learning. Instructor immediacy (the measure of the psychological distance which an instructor puts between himself and his students) received significant attention in the communication literature and several studies reported that instructor verbal and nonverbal immediacy behaviors are associated with learning outcomes, satisfaction, and motivation. However, few researchers have examined instructor immediacy in distance learning settings. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of …

A Post-Marxist Perspective On Chuck Palahniuk’S Early Novels And The Four Plays Of Incarcerated, Ron Riekki

Dissertations

Incarcerated: a collection of four plays includes the plays Home Schooling, Good Behavior, 2 Mics, and All Saints' Day. Incarcerated explores Foucault's carceral networking and Althusser's Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses as exemplified in characters faced with such cataclysmic events as the Holocaust (Home Schooling and All Saints' Day) and the degradation/slavery of the American prison system (Good Behavior and 2 Mics). In this RCG-centered working class playwriting, we see how performativity is in inherent in carceral sociology, where each character in all four plays has to take masks and costumes and roles in order to …

A Phenomenological Study Assessing African American Women’S Perspectives On Successful Heterosexual Relationships, Shamika Yolanda Latrell Hall

Dissertations

This study seeks to understand successful African American relationships from the perspective of African American females. Recognizing the impact of structural factors on African Americans, as well as the limits of imposing Eurocentric definitions of successful relationships, this study seeks to understand how African American women themselves describe successful relationships and to identify factors that have influenced their ideas about what is required for them to have healthy, happy, long-lasting, nurturing relationships. Design of the present study is informed by findings from Stephens-Williams' (1992) study of successful African American relationships, as well as a broader review of structural, sociological, and …

Evaluation Of A School-Based Program Targeting Pediatric Asthma Self-Management Skills In An Urban Population, Dawn J. Dore-Stites

Dissertations

Asthma is the most commonly diagnosed chronic disorder in childhood and is linked with several problematic outcomes including frequent school absences, increased hospitalizations and decreased quality of life. Further, urban populations struggling with low socioeconomic status are disproportionately represented in prevalence statistics and suffer from increased functional morbidity relative to other children with asthma. These findings exist in the midst of largely effective pharmacological interventions.

Asthma self-management programs (SMPs) target several behaviors linked to improved outcomes and are often used as an adjunct to medication management. SMPs have been employed using a variety of techniques and treatment targets in a …

Wireless Passive Surface Acoustic Wave (Saw) Sensing System, Sridevi Krishnamurthy

Dissertations

Due to their small size and ruggedness, Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) devices have been widely used as part of wireless sensing or identification system especially in inaccessible and inhospitable environments. In addition, SAW devices find widespread applications as filters in communication systems and also as physical, chemical and bio-sensors and ID tags. The passive wireless SAW sensing system mainly consists of a passive SAW sensor and an interrogation unit which sends a burst signal to the SAW sensor and processes the sensor response. Theobjectives of this work were designing, prototyping and fabricating the interrogation unit on a PCB and also …

Metaevaluation Case Study Of Four Evaluations Of Osha Vpp Programs, Jafar Momani

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the controversy about shifts in the U.S. Administration's policy related to the Labor Department (OSHA) shift from enforcement to partnerships and voluntary protection programs (VPP). A metaevaluation of four OSHA VPP evaluation reports was conducted and included the investigation of objectives, methodologies, strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement. Conducting a crosswalk of the 1994 Joint Committee evaluation standards (JCS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) standards was an opportunity to provide additional validity to the evaluation standards, evaluation reports findings and conclusions, and to highlight the importance of the shared elements between …

The Effect Of Influence Tactics And Contingency Factors On The Adoption And Diffusion Of Is/It Innovations In Social Networks, Anand Jeyaraj

Dissertations

Despite considerable research on the adoption and diffusion of information systems (IS)/ information technology (IT) innovations by individuals in organizations, very little is known about the processes underlying the adoption of innovations, and how those processes contribute to the diffusion and assimilation of innovations within organizations. Viewing processes as sequences of actions, this research conducted two studies to: a) uncover the adoption and influence processes employed by individuals, and b) identify the factors that influence diffusion and assimilation within social networks. The first study, situated at the individual level, involved field interviews with 27 individuals from ten organizations in a …

Creating Culturally Relevant Techonological Operas In An Urban School, Dianna Isaac-Johnson

Dissertations

The project described in this study developed due to the gap in achievement between African-American and white students. As music teacher I noticed my urban students could rap all the words of popular songs. Therefore I incorporated the use of technology with an authentic need to learn reading, writing, and lyric development for science and history content within a "hip-hop opera". This study details the instructional sequence, in which students watched musical performances, learned songs with a karaoke machine, and wrote new lyrics for the songs based on history and science material. I combined the students' lyrics into new versions …

Four Roads: A Novel, Kelly Daniels

Dissertations

An American tourist is attacked by peasants, who suspect her of stealing infants to sell on a shadowy organ donation market. Several other attacks follow, prompting a travel advisory, which in turn causes tourists to flee the country, fracturing the already weak economy, and creating more chaos still. Meanwhile, death squads patrol the mountains to "disappear" anyone suspected of harboring sympathy for the rebels, and the usual assortment of criminals use any means available to make a buck. This is Guatemala, hardly a vacationer's paradise; yet several Americans have elected to remain in country amidst such turmoil.

Four Roads, a …

Laboratory Based Chemical And Isotopic Investigations On Biotic (Microbial) And Abiotic Reduction Of Iron And Oxidation Of Organic Compounds, Tsigabu Asmelash Gebrehiwet

Dissertations

Studies using chemical and isotopic techniques have been conducted to investigate experimental microbial (biotic) iron reduction and abiotic redox processes. In the microbially mediated study Fe(III) reduction and lactate oxidation at circum-neutral pH and anaerobic conditions were used to characterize the metabolic pathways followed by dissimilatory Fe⁺³ -reducing bacterium Shewanella putrefaciens strain 200R. Iron (II), Iron (III), dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and carbon isotope ratios were measured under bicarbonate and phosphate buffered conditions. Carbon isotope disproportionation among organic carbon substrate (lactate), biomass and respired carbon dioxide at the lag to stationary phase of the microbial growth curve showed …

The Global Hepatic Transcriptional Response Of Male Fisher Rats To Dietary Aroclor 1254 Exposure, Trisha M. Basford

Dissertations

Dietary intake is a primary route for biomagnification of environmentally persistent polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) within humans and animals. Aroclor 1254, a mixture of PCBs, is associated with a variety of toxic responses including alterations in blood and lipid biochemistry and tumor promotion. Measurement of the transcriptional responses to low-level dietary exposure to A1254 has not been reported to date, and is important given the persistence of PCBs, and range of effects associated with exposure. The aims of this study were to characterize changes in rat hepatic global gene expression due to sub-acute and sub-chronic dietary exposure to A1254, and to …

Thereby Become A Monster: Complex Organizations And The Torture At Abu Ghraib, Janine A. Bower

Dissertations

Reasearch and theory on organizational crime and deviance suggest organizational offending includes aspects of the environment, organizational characteristics (such as tasks, structure, and processes), and cognition, and is systematically produced by the combination of these three. This research is an examination of the organization of the Abu Ghraib detention and interrogation facility in Iraq, the location of prison abuses now made infamous following their public disclosure in 2004. An ethnographic content analysis of documents was performed to probe organizational culture, structure and processes, and their intersection with individual biographies and contextual forces. While public questions focused on why seemingly ordinary …

Structure-Function Studies Of Self- Assembling Flagellin Proteins Fromsalmonella Typhimurium And Aquifex Pyrophilus, Venkata Raghu Ram Malapaka

Dissertations

The eubacterial flagellum is a complex structure with an elongated extracellular filament that is primarily composed of a single protein termed flagellin. The highly conserved N-and C- termini of flagellin are important in its export and assembly, whereas the middle "hypervariable" region is highly variable in size across different species and is largely dispensable. InSalmonella typhimurium phase 1 flagellin (FliC), this hypervariable region encodes two solvent-exposed D2 and D3 domains. The functional role of this knob-like structural feature in motility remains unclear. The structural and physiological role of the hypervariable region in flagellar assembly, stability and cellular motility was investigated. …

A Study Of Career Preparation Activities Used In Michigan’S Public High Schools, Brian L. Pyles

Dissertations

This study assessed the status of Michigan's Career Pathway high schools 2 years after state Career Preparation funding was terminated early, in order to determine the institutionalization of Career Pathway activities. In particular, this study examined the use of Career Pathway curriculum guides, Educational Development Plans (EDPs), student Career Pathway designations, student career assessments, work-based learning activities, alternative scheduling, college credits earned in high school, instructional strategies, teacher professional development, and Career Pathway high school planning committees. This study also ascertained the perceived helpfulness of having students declare a Career Pathway and using EDPs as a guide in the selection …

Formation Of Rdx Nanoparticles By Rapid Expansion Of Supercritical Solution : In Situ Characterization By Laser Scattering, Takuya Matsunaga

Dissertations

Cyclo-1,3,5-trimethylene-2,4,6-trinitramine (RDX), a well-known energetic material, is highly explosive. Reduction of the sensitivity of RDX is desired for safe handling and

storage in military applications. Data on the sensitivity of RDX in the 10-1000 µm crystal size range suggested that the impact sensitivity could be further reduced by reduction of the crystal size to the sub-micron or nano-scale (Armstrong, 1990). Recent research with nano-RDX obtained using Rapid Expansion of Supercritical Solutions (RESS) confirmed these expectations (Stepanov, 2005).

RESS process appeared to be one out of a few techniques of production of nanoscale energetic materials free of the risk of explosion. …

Synthesis And Analysis Of Reactive Nanocomposites Prepared By Arrested Reactive Milling, Swati M. Umbrajkar

Dissertations

Different types of reactive nanocomposites have been synthesized by Arrested Reactive Milling (ARM). The technical approach was to increase the interface area available for heterogeneous reaction between solid fuel and oxidizer components. Using aluminum as the main fuel and different metal oxides as oxidizers, highly energetic reactive nanocomposites with different degrees of structural refinement were synthesized. Specifically, stoichiometric Al-MoO₃, Al-CuO, and Al-NaNO₃ material systems were studied in detail.

The correlation of heterogeneous exothermic reactions occurring in the nanocomposite powders upon their heating at low rates and ignition events observed for the same powders heated rapidly was of …

Construction Of Fasr Subsystem Testbed And Application For Solar Burst Trajectories And Rfi Study, Zhiwei Liu

Dissertations

The construction of the Frequency Agile Solar Radiotelescope (FASR) Subsystem Testbed (FST) and observational results are described. Three antennas of Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA) have been upgraded with newly designed, state of art technology. The 1-9 GHz RF signal from the antenna feed is transmitted via broadband (45 MHz-9.5 GHz) optical fiber links to the control room. The RF is then downconverted to a 500 MHz, single-sideband signal that can be tuned across the 1-9 GHz RF band. The data are sampled with an 8-bit, 1 GHz sampling-rate digitizer, and further saved to a computer hard disk. The full-resolution …

In Vitro Studies Of Degradation And Bioactivity Of Aliphatic Polyesther Composites, Georgia Chouzouri

Dissertations

In spite of numerous publications on the potential use of combinations of aliphatic polyester composites containing bioactive fillers for bone regeneration, little information exists on the combined in vitro mechanisms involving simultaneously diffusion for polymer degradation and bioactivity through nucleation and growth of apatite in simulated body fluid (SBF) solution. The objective of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the fundamentals in designing non-porous, solid materials for bone regeneration, from experimental data along with their engineering interpretation.

Bioactivity, in terms of apatite growth, was assessed through several experimental methods such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive …

Comparative Immune Function In Wild Birds, Kevin David Matson

Dissertations

Over the last several decades, interest in quantifying immune function in comparative studies of wild animals has grown appreciably. Now, the field of ecological immunology is undergoing a transition, and ¿second generation¿ studies are being designed and carried out. With a greater appreciation of the complexity of immune systems, these second generation studies are commonly distinguished from their antecedents by making comparisons using multiple assays and including multiple species. I worked to advance this transition by developing novel approaches to comparative immunology, exploring the interrelationships among indices of immune function, and applying multiple indices to a question of comparative avian …

Factors That Motivate Or Discourage Movement Into School Leadership Positions And The Implications For Recruitment Policy And Practice, Ginger Lee Blackmon Edd

Dissertations

Public schools in the United States are facing one of the most extensive transformations in school leadership. Districts face the difficult challenge of recruiting and training school leaders who have the capacity to deal with the growing demands and responsibilities placed on school site administrators. Despite a surplus of people certified for administration, the changing demands of the principal's job precipitated by national reform efforts have left a shortage not only of qualified applicants, but also in the total number of applicants (qualified and unqualified) willing to carry the burden of the job. This study investigated the factors that influence …

An Empirical Study Of Employee Relations And Managerial Malpractice Risks In A Four-Year Public Higher Education System, Robert Lee Brown Edd

Dissertations

Over the last decade, the rapid rise in college tuitions and fees has become a national priority, with congressional committees and scholars interested in solving this persistently stubborn and often intractable problem. Although a number of reasons for this phenomenon have been discussed, one theoretically plausible but untested explanation involves the extent to which campus climate may be empirically linked to the costs of managing various legal claims against the university, including workers' compensation, employment practice, and stress claims. To test the empirical validity of this hypothesis, this study gathered campus climate and claims data from 23 campuses and 25 …

Effect Of Computer-Aided Instruction On Grades In Middle School Algebra, Patricia A. Taepke Edd

Dissertations

Computers and targeted software are increasingly common in the middle school algebra classroom, but the efficacy of computer-aided instruction on classroom achievement in middle school algebra remains unclear. Participants were 1452 middle-school algebra students who were seldom, occasionally, or often exposed to the algebra modules of Destination Math, an interactive mathematics software designed to be appropriate for in-school use. Data were collected over three years (2002–04) and included the cooperation of the algebra teachers, who were subsequently interviewed. Data were analyzed with ANOVA, ANCOVA, and multiple regression. Statistically significant effects were localized using pairwise tests with Bonferroni correction for multiple …

Stakeholders’ Perspectives Of A Catholic K-8 School As A Caring Community, Marci-Anne Hanks Edd

Dissertations

Many educators and researchers have found that caring school communities positively affect students’ behavior, academic achievement, and socioemotional development. Students’ basic needs of feeling cared for must be met for them to realize their full potential. The purpose of this study was to investigate stakeholders’ perceptions of a Catholic K-8 school as a caring community. Stakeholders included parents, teachers, administrators, staff members, and sixth through eighth grade students. The following research questions were posed for this study: (1) What are the different stakeholders’ perceptions of the school as a caring community? (2) Are there significant differences in perceptions between the …

Bioengineering Of Protein Nanotubes And Protein Nanomaterial Composites, Thilak Kumara Mudalige

Dissertations

Flagella of Mesophilic bacteria such as E. coli are extremely ordered structures consisting of self-assemblies of flagellin 11-mers resulting in protein nanotubes of 2--3 nm inner diameter, 23 nm outer diameter, several microns in length and 5.4 nm separation between 11-mer segments. They are as a result attractive scaffolds and templates for the generation of uniform nanotubes and ordered array of nanoparticles. In this study fusion protein of bacterial flagellin (Fli C) and core thioredoxin (Trx), pFliTrx was used as peptide display on bacterial flagella. This was accomplished in the current research by introducing various peptide loops such as cysteine, …

A Mixed Methods Study On Cbam And The Adoption Of Thin Client Computers By Adolescents, Cynthia Sistek-Chandler Edd

Dissertations

Although stages of change and adoption of innovation dynamics have been examined for adult populations, comparable research for adolescents is limited. Applying a change instrument grounded in Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) to an adolescent population, this study investigates perceptions of 45 middle school students who used thin client portable computers in a one-to-one program at home and at school for 3 years. A mixed methodology design identified which of the 7 stages of concern students passed through and why some students adopted the innovation more readily than others. The Change Facilitator Stages of Concern Questionnaire, a modified version of CBAM, …

Geophysical Monitoring Probes And Their Applications To Some Hydrogeological Problems, Laura Smart

Dissertations

Geophysical monitoring probes were constructed to monitor the vertical changes of water content and ion concentration in the subsurface. These devices contain electrodes for resistivity measurements and thermistors for temperature measurements. They are designed to monitor the resistivity and temperature of the saturated zone, the transition zone, and the vadose zone near a groundwater/surface water interface. Additional installations at the site include four monitoring wells and four Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) access tubes, each paired with the geophysical probe installations. Pole-Pole resistivity measurements with an a-spacing of 5 cm are made using a CR1000 Campbell Scientific, Inc. datalogger. Automated data …

Fabricating Freddy Vs. Jason: Understanding A Motion Picture As A Social Encounter Between Fans And Filmmakers, Jason M. Rapelje

Dissertations

The break in the mass communicative chain, which separates producers and receivers from one another in both time and space, impedes researchers from studying motion pictures as social encounters. As with face-to-face encounters, producers and receivers of motion pictures depend upon the use of "rules of relevance" (Goffman, 1961) and "typifactory schemes" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) for their encounters to take place. I examine the social encounter that takes place between some of the filmmakers and fans of Freddy vs Jason through the use of these concepts, as well as a revision of John B. Thompson's (1990) methodological framework of …

Effects Of Detectable Warnings On Individuals With Mobility Impairments, Helen Lee

Dissertations

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that environmental and architectural barriers, such as curbs, be removed to enableindividuals with disabilities to travel about in the community with increased mobility. While installation of ramps benefit individuals with mobility impairments, the absence of curbs results in the loss of information used by individuals with visual impairments for street detection. As a result, truncated domes detectablewarning surfaces were developed to alert visually impaired travelers of potential hazards and vehicular pathways. Research to date is limited and inconclusive regarding the impact of detectable warning surfaces on individuals with mobility impairments. Further, no research …