Digital Commons Network^™

The Relationship Between Demographic And Attitudinal Characteristics Of Primary-School Teachers And Implementation Of The Continuous Assessment Program In Swaziland, Hibajene Monga Shandomo

Dissertations

Problem. The purposes of this study were to determine the extent to which primary school teachers were implementing the Continuous Assessment Program (CAP) and to examine personal and institutional factors that may be related to the implementation of the program.

Method. A questionnaire designed to measure degree of implementation and attitude toward the Continuous Assessment Program was administered to a stratified random sample of 600 Grade 1 to Grade 7 teachers from 54 schools. Personnel from the National Curriculum Center (NCC) delivered and collected the questionnaires from each school. Completed questionnaires were then forwarded to the researcher. Data were coded …

The Design, Implementation, And Assessment Of Initial Change And Growth In A Local Voluntary Organization And Its Members, Tracy Ann Weber

Dissertations

Problem. During the past 30 years, Americans have steadily reduced their participation in the traditional forms of community involvement, such as clubs, associations, and organizations, that bring people together to effectively pursue a shared objective. In this postmodern society, leaders of community and nonprofit organizations find they are asking themselves difficult questions about the most effective methods of fulfilling their mission and simultaneously meeting members' changing needs. Participatory volunteer-run organizations, such as a local branch or chapter of a national organization, face many challenges, making it hard to establish and maintain there organizations. They demand great energy of leaders, …

A Descriptive Multiple Case Study Of Caucasian Female Suicide Attempters: Risk And Protective Factors, Janice Johnson Browne

Dissertations

Problem

Suicide is a problem globally and in the United States. Suicide rates for youth have remained particularly high. Caucasian men complete more suicidal acts than women, but women are more frequent suicide attempters. To gain information about the phenomenon of female suicide attempting, it is important to study the attempter. Awareness of risk and protective factors is necessary to intervene and prevent future incidences of suicide and suicide attempting.

Methodology

For this research a descriptive case study design was utilized. Three suicide attempters who had attempted suicide one or more times in the past was the sample population for …

A Study Of The Reported Long-Term Attitudinal And Behavioral Effects Of An Eighth-Grade Environmental Education Project And The Development Of An Innovation Configuration To Promote Environmental Education, Jean Lomino

Dissertations

Problem. Increasing scientific evidence reveals that this planet is in serious environmental jeopardy. Since 1977, when an international group of K-12 educators met in the USSR and established goals for teaching environmental education worldwide, many schools have endeavored to fulfill these goals through the use of various curricula and teaching strategies. Although some progress has been made, most K-12 public schools have not done enough to meet the demands of environmental problems. In 1996, my co-teacher and I designed and implemented an environmental project, called Mission Environment, that we hoped would help our students develop long-term positive environmental attitudes …

Study Of The Efficacy Of A Christian-Based Inpatient Hospital For Treating Eating Disorders, Depression, And Spiritual Distress, Robert Alan Darden

Dissertations

Problem . Outcome studies continue to indicate that a substantial proportion of individuals with eating disorders have a dangerously limited response to treatment. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if a Christian cognitive-behavioral-based inpatient hospital that specializes in eating disorders was an effective program for treating eating disorders. Next, this study sought to determine if this inpatient hospital was effective in treating both depression and spiritual distress. Finally, this study examined the relationship between depression and spiritual distress with treatment outcome.

Method . Five hundred and eighty-two patients were admitted to an inpatient hospital between July 1, …

Women And Combat: Impediments To The Total Integration Of Women In The Military, Sylvia Marie Rafels

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Visionary Leadership: The Importance In The Public Sector From The Perspective Of City Managers, Nancy L. Quarles

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative study is to apply Sashkin’s Visionary Leadership model to City Managers, with an emphasis on how the city manager puts the vision into action in local government. There is much talk that government leaders need to have a vision so that their organization will work more efficiently and effectively. More government agencies should seek to instill visionary leadership, much as a growing number of businesses have done. The City Manager must cope with sweeping changes in city government that have resulted from rapid growth, elected officials’ expectations, new technology, unions, citizen demands, and the need …

Binge Drinking And Salutogenesis: Sense Of Coherence, Stress, Religiousness And Spirituality, Jeanne C . Debruyn

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Self-Esteem And Impostor Phenomenon Of Female Teachers For Kindergarten Through Grade 12, Sheila F. Matthews

Dissertations

Some researchers have recognized the importance of understanding women’s experiences. Some psychosocial characteristics, such as low levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy, and low success expectations have been identified as barriers for women’s career development (Betz, 1994). Because many women have continued to select careers that are considered as female-dominated (e.g., teaching) and because psychosocial characteristics and experiences of teachers such as self-esteem and the impostor phenomenon can have an influence on their students’ self-esteem, this researcher believed that this is an important topic for continued research. Although these two concepts, self-esteem and impostor phenomenon, have been documented as two unrelated …

Floating Holidays: A Novel, Christopher Joseph Torockio

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Saturation Routing For Asynchronous Transfer Mode (Atm) Networks, Jose Luis Ucles

Dissertations

The main objective of this thesis is to show that saturation routing, often in the past considered inefficient, can in fact be a viable approach to use in many important applications and services over an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network. For other applications and services, a hybrid approach (one that partially uses saturation routing) is presented. First, the minimum effects of saturation routing are demonstrated by showing that the ratio, defined as f, of routing overhead cells over information cells is small even for large networks. Second, modeling and simulation and M/D/l queuing analysis techniques are used to show that …

Structural, Transport And Magnetic Studies Of Perovskite Bi1-X Cax Mn O3, Hyungje Woo

Dissertations

This dissertation presents an investigation of the fundamental physics of the perovskite system Bi_1-xCa_xMn0₃. This material belongs to a group of simple perovskites called the manganites which are of technological importance for magnetic device applications as read-head sensors.

The Bi_1-xCa_xMnO₃ system is known to exhibit charge ordering (and high sensitivity to magnetic fields) for a much broader range of x than the well-characterized La_1-xCa_xMnO₃ system. However, the properties of Bi_1-xCa_xMnO₃ over the entire doping range are not well understood. …

High Solid Loading Aqueous Base Metal/Ceramic Feedstock For Injection Molding, Mohammad Behi

Dissertations

Increasing volume fraction of metal powder in feedstock provided lower shrinkage. Reduction of the shrinkage results in better dimensional precision. The rheology of the feedstock material plays an important role to allowing larger volume fractions of the metal powder to be incorporated in the feedstock forinulations. The viscosity of the feedstock inainly depends on the binder viscosity, powder volume fraction and characteristics of metal powder.

Aqueous polysaccharide agar was used as a baseline binder system for this study.The effect of several gel-strengthening additives on 1.5wt% and 2wt% agar gel was evaluated. A new gel-strengthening additive was found to be the …

New Teachers’ Perceptions Of Discipline-Related School Problems And Teacher Satisfaction, Amy L. Kavanaugh

Dissertations

Satisfaction The public is concerned with school safety because of recent school shootings resulting in multiple deaths. Educators are concerned that perceptions of school safety may affect new teacher attrition.

Three questions were examined in this study: (1) What is the trend of new teachers’ perceptions of discipline-related school problems? (2) Do new teachers’ perceptions of school problems vary by teacher gender, school level, size, location, and percentage of minority students?, and (3) Are new teachers’ perceptions of school problems related to their professional satisfaction?

National data gathered by the National Center for Education Statistics through the Schools and Staffing …

The Politicization Of Ethnicity As A Prelude To Ethnopolitical Conflict: Croatia And Serbia In Former Yugoslavia, Agneza Bozic-Roberson

Dissertations

This interdisciplinary research develops a framework or a model for the study of the politicization of ethnicity, a process that transforms peaceful ethnic conflict into violent inter-ethnic conflict. The hypothesis investigated in this study is that the ethnopolitical conflict that led to the break up of former Yugoslavia was the result of deliberate politicization of ethnicity. The model consists o f three variables— ethnic entrepreneurs as actors, and mass media and political rhetoric as their tools for politicization of ethnicity. Ethnic entrepreneurs, with a conscious interest in mobilizing ethnicity, are given this opportunity in transitional societies in which politicized ethnicity …

Aging Beauty: The Adaptive Reconstruction Of The Aging Process In Women, Sheila Marie Bluhm

Dissertations

The youth-based, patriarchal culture in which we live bestows valuable status, power and prestige upon young, beautiful women. Within the standards of this society, the natural aging process progressively deteriorates a woman's beauty, and, therefore, her social worth. A vast network of media and societal messages prompt middle-aged women to react to this devaluation. Several pathways or behavioral alternatives are available as reactions, adaptive reconstructions, and/or the medicalization of the aging process in women. The goal of this sociological/gerontological exploratory research is to identify, examine, label, and categorize the multiple options available to midlife women.

The primary method used for …

A Systems Approach To Designing An Internship Model That Benefits The Sponsoring Organization, Peter-Cornelius Dams

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

E-Docspros : Exploring Texpros Into E-Business Era, Zhenfu Cheng

Dissertations

Document processing is a critical element of office automation. TEXPROS (TEXt PROcessing System) is a knowledge-based system designed to manage personal documents. However, as the Internet and e-Business changed the way offices operate, there is a need to re-envision document processing, storage, retrieval, and sharing. In the current environment, people must be able to access documents remotely and to share those documents with others. e-DOCPROS (e-DOCument PROcessing System) is a new document processing system that takes advantage of many of TEXPROS's structures but adapts the system to this new environment. The new system is built to serve e-businesses, takes advantage …

Waqs : A Web-Based Approximate Query System, George Jyh-Shian Chang

Dissertations

The Web is often viewed as a gigantic database holding vast stores of information and provides ubiquitous accessibility to end-users. Since its inception, the Internet has experienced explosive growth both in the number of users and the amount of content available on it. However, searching for information on the Web has become increasingly difficult. Although query languages have long been part of database management systems, the standard query language being the Structural Query Language is not suitable for the Web content retrieval.

In this dissertation, a new technique for document retrieval on the Web is presented. This technique is designed …

Broadband Whole Package Fdtd Simulation, Shenjun Li

Dissertations

Whole package analysis is becoming more and more important with the rapid expansion of high frequency electronics. The motivation of this thesis is to find and implement a new method for broadband whole package simulation. 3-dimension (3-D) whole package Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) simulation result was first reported in detail in this thesis.

The FDTD method is a widely used full-wave time-domain simulation method used in the design and analysis for electromagnetic (EM) systems, such as antennas, wave propagating, and microwave circuits. Absorbing boundary condition (ABC), such as the perfect matched layer (PML) method, makes it possible to accurately …

Augmenting Applications With Hyper Media, Functionality And Meta-Information, Roberto Galnares

Dissertations

The Dynamic Hypermedia Engine (DHE) enhances analytical applications by adding relationships, semantics and other metadata to the application's output and user interface. DHE also provides additional hypermedia navigational, structural and annotation functionality. These features allow application developers and users to add guided tours, personal links and sharable annotations, among other features, into applications. DHE runs as a middleware between the application user interface and its business logic and processes, in a n-tier architecture, supporting the extra functionalities without altering the original systems by means of application wrappers.

DHE automatically generates links at run-time for each of those elements having relationships …

Fractionation & Segregation Of Suspended Particles Using Acoustic And Flow Fields, Nazhat Aboobaker

Dissertations

The fractionation of particles by size or by density has many applications in a variety of technologies. Decontamination and separation of fine sediments is useful in treating sediments. The application of acoustic standing wave fields for the fractionation and segregation of suspended particles was studied.

The above technology was implemented at the bench scale by building a Plexiglas chamber. Two ultrasound transducers were fixed to opposite sides of the chamber to generate the acoustic standing wave field. The technology was evaluated using silica dioxide (Si02) (1-5 ~tm) and silicon carbide (SiQ (5-20 ~tm) particle suspensions in deionized water. Due to …

Volume Change Behavior Of Clay Soils And The Effect On Discrete Fractures, Heather Ann Hall

Dissertations

This study examines the behavior of subsurface fractures in fine-grained soil such as clays in response to changing environmental conditions. Fractures serve as conduits for moisture transfer, which can lead to substantial shrinking and swelling of the surrounding fracture boundary soils. These volume changes, in turn, affect fracture geometry and moisture transmission rates. A new predictive model, termed the 'Fracture Volume Change Model' (FVC Model), has been developed to relate moisture transfer, soil volume change and associated changes in fracture aperture. The model assumes a discrete horizontal fracture in a laterally-infinite, saturated, expansive clay with rigid, outer no-flow boundaries and …

Knowledge-Based Document Retrieval With Application To Texpros, Fang Sheng

Dissertations

Document retrieval in an information system is most often accomplished through keyword search. The common technique behind keyword search is indexing. The major drawback of such a search technique is its lack of effectiveness and accuracy. It is very common in a typical keyword search over the Internet to identify hundreds or even thousands of records as the potentially desired records. However, often few of them are relevant to users' interests.

This dissertation presents knowledge-based document retrieval architecture with application to TEXPROS. The architecture is based on a dual document model that consists of a document type hierarchy and, a …

Efficient Inversion Methods In Underwater Acoustics, Xiaoqun Ma

Dissertations

This dissertation describes efficient methods developed and implemented for source localization and sound speed and bottom depth estimation using sound propagation in the ocean. The proposed inversion techniques are based on the linearization of the generally non-linear inverse problem of parameter estimation in underwater acoustics. These techniques take into account properties of the ocean environment and are accurate in their estimation results without being prohibitively computationally intensive. For the inversion, select ray paths are taken into account: the direct, first surface bounce, and first bottom bounce. Ray travel time derivatives with respect to parameters that affect path arrival times are …

An Experimental Study Of Dry Particle Coating : Devices, Operating Parameters And Applications, Michelle Ramlakhan Mohan

Dissertations

Dry particle coating, which mechanically coats fine guest particles onto the surfaces of larger host particles, without binders or solvents, is investigated. Several systems of host and guest particles are coated in different devices to study various aspects of dry particle coating. The devices used are Magnetically Assisted Impaction Coating (MAIC) device, Mechanofusion, and the Hybridizer.

MAIC is used to coat fine SiO₂ guest particles onto the surface of larger cornstarch and cellulose host particles. This is done to simultaneously improve the flowability of the host particles, as well as reduce their hydrophilicity. Dry particle coating is used to …

Near-Field Imaging With Terahertz Pulses, Oleg Mitrofanov

Dissertations

High spatial resolution imaging is implemented with a novel collection mode near-field terahertz (THz) probe. Exceptional sensitivity of the probe allows imaging with spatial resolution of few microns using THz pulses with spectral content of 120 to 1500 microns. In the present study, the principle of the probe operation as well as the probe design and characteristics are described.

The probe performance is related to effective detection of radiation coupled into the probe aperture. Propagation of short single-cycle electromagnetic pulses through apertures as small as 1/300 of the wavelength is experimentally and numerically studied. Finite-difference time-domain method is used to …

Joint Source Channel Coding For Progressive Image Transmission, Minyi Zhao

Dissertations

Recent wavelet-based image compression algorithms achieve best ever performances with fully embedded bit streams. However, those embedded bit streams are very sensitive to channel noise and protections from channel coding are necessary. Typical error correcting capability of channel codes varies according to different channel conditions. Thus, separate design leads to performance degradation relative to what could be achieved through joint design. In joint source-channel coding schemes, the choice of source coding parameters may vary over time and channel conditions. In this research, we proposed a general approach for the evaluation of such joint source-channel coding scheme. Instead of using the …

Software And Hardware Improvements For Digital Solar Magnetograph System, Shu Yang

Dissertations

Digital solar imaging systems have been widely used in solar observations. Their high resolution, high rate of image acquisition and convenience for off-line image processing have provided significant improvements to solar physics research. In this project, two digital magnetograph systems established at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) have been described. One is used to provide a high frame rate magnetogram system, and the other provides a real-time image alignment, i.e., a correlation tracker system.

The developed correlation tracker system consists of a high-speed 64x64 CCD camera, an EDT image grabbing board, an agile mirror, a D/A board and a Sun …

Performance Analysis And Resource Allocation In Cdma Wireless Networks For Multimedia Services, Sebnem Zorlu

Dissertations

The proliferation of Internet and demand for wireless services necessitate large increases in capacity and data rates in order to support different multimedia services. Wireless systems will be required to support sources with a variety of traffic characteristics and quality of service requirements. This requires algorithms for admission control and resource allocation at the session, burst and packet levels. The purpose of this research is to develop and analyze optimal resource allocation strategies to maximize throughput of wireless systems with integrated services. Given the multimedia user requirements, the problem addressed can be formulated as a constrained optimization problem. The objective …