Digital Commons Network^™

Leadership Roles Of Native American Women In Education In The 1990s, Linda S. Keway

Dissertations

This study of Native American women leaders in education had a twofold purpose. The first was the primary objective of the study: to develop a greater understanding of leadership as experienced by contemporary Native American women. The second was to add to the literature on experiences of Native American women leaders. The method selected for this study was a qualitative approach involving ethnographic studies of 12 selected Native American women in the field of education. Data were collected through interviews and journal recordings. Native American women interviewed were representative of various tribes across the United States. The study explored questions …

The Effects Of Eye Movement Desensitization And Reprocessing (Emdr) On Self-Reported Test Anxiety In College Students, John C. Hampel

Dissertations

Test anxiety is a common problem among students in western culture due to the importance of academic achievement and the consequences for failure. Many consider test anxiety to be primarily an issue of poor study habits and test readiness. However, some students who appear to possess excellent study habits also appear to experience severe anxiety during tests. A recent meta-analysis of test anxiety research substantiated these claims, finding that test anxiety appeared to be an emotionally-based as opposed to a cognitively-based problem. Despite these findings, the etiologies for test anxiety remain unknown. Similar to nearly all DSM-IV diagnostic categories, test …

A Robust Estimate For An Autoregressive Time Series, Jeffrey Terpstra

Dissertations

A weighted rank-based estimate for estimating the parameter of an auto-regressive time series is considered. When the weights are constant, the estimate is equivalent to using Jaeckel’s estimate and Wilcoxon scores. The estimate can be shown to be asymptotically normal at rate y/n. In a linear regression setting this estimate has the desired properties of a continuous totally bounded influence function and a positive breakdown point. It is shown via examples and Monte Carlo that these properties are preserved in an autoregressive time series setting.

Groundwater-Kalamazoo River Interaction Near The Parchment City Wellfield, Parchment, Michigan, W. Richard Laton

Dissertations

A detailed hydrogeologic study of the Kalamazoo River and its interaction with the groundwater was completed near Parchment, Michigan. The Kalamazoo River between Portage Creek and Allegan Dam is a Federal superfund site due to PCB contamination trapped in its sediments. The City of Parchment pumps all of its drinking water from a glacial aquifer 850 feet from the Kalamazoo River. This study focused on the hydrogeology and groundwater/surface interaction of the area through the use of surface and downhole geophysics, installation of monitoring wells and peizometers, seepage meters and chemical sampling. It was determined that the Kalamazoo River is …

Domination In Digraphs, Lisa Hansen

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Do Reinforcer Surveys Enhance A Brief Parenting Skills Program For Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disordered Children?, Maria A. Channell

Dissertations

Several clinical researchers have documented the benefits of evaluating reinforcer preference prior to the implementation of behavioral parent training programs. However, this has not been specifically tested with Attention- Deficit/Hyperactivity Disordered (ADHD) population in relation to parent training. This between groups study investigated whether systematically altering parent delivered reinforcers to match children’s preferred reinforcers would result in an even greater increased compliance and decreased noncompliance.

One group received a brief (4-6 session) parenting program based on Patterson’s (1974) model. A second group received the same program with an added component wherein the child completed a reinforcer survey prior to the …

Effects Of Alternative Activities On Productivity Under Different Percentages Of Incentive Pay, Grainne A. Matthews

Dissertations

This study examined whether low percentages of incentive pay would be as effective as high percentages in maintaining work performance in the presence of competitive alternative activities. Incentives may increase performance primarily by decreasing time spent performing alternative activities. Although the link between performance and pay is tighter when the percentage of incentive pay is higher, laboratory studies have not found the expected difference. It is possible that previous simulations of work settings have not offered realistic competing contingencies. This study used a computer simulation of a quality inspection task and provided computer games as alternative activities to participants who …

The Efficacy Of Pediatric Pain Management Techniques For Infants During Inoculation Procedures, Kimberly K. Wisdorf-Houtkooper

Dissertations

In this study four different pre-immunization interventions were compared with respect to their effects on modifying arousal level before an immunization and their effects on the level and duration of distress after the immunization. In addition, the study evaluated whether the infants’ pre-inoculation behavioral state affected their response to a painful stimulus. Data consisting of facial expression, presence or absence of cry, cry duration, and behavioral state were collected prior to, during, and after the inoculation. Forty-two subjects were randomly assigned to one of four soothing conditions. These included: rocking, swaddling, sucking on a pacifier, and a control group.

An …

Perceived Support For Change And Implementation Of Title I Of The Ada In Michigan’S Public School Districts, Truman S. Forest

Dissertations

Data for this study were gathered by survey from public school districts in the state of Michigan that employed more than one central office administrator. The survey was sent to human resource administrators as well as assistant superintendents and other central office administrators in 339 school districts. A total of 188 valid responses were received for a response rate of 55.8 percent.

The study tested five relational hypotheses. Ha1 through Ha4 were tested to determine if a relationship existed between the category of school district readiness to implement Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA Readiness) and such …

Bandwidth, Edgesum And Profile Of Graphs, Yung-Ling Lai

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Estimating Ibnr Reserves With Robust Statistics, Daniel Cheung

Dissertations

There is often a considerable time lag between an incurred of an accident, such as medical malpractice or product liability, and the time it is reported to the insurance company. These Incurred But Not Reported (IBNR) losses need to be predicted in order to determine the necessary loss reserves. Many actuarial methods have been developed for IBNR reserves estimation. However, none of the methods being used for loss reserving is robust to outliers, nor do they provide adequate statistical inferences to support the actuarial decisions. The rank-based method proposed in this thesis is robust to outliers, and provides statistical inference …

Localization And Transport Effects In The Disordered Materials, Vladislav Malyshkin

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Design, Simulation, Fabrication And Testing Of Microprobes For A New Mems Wafer Probe Card, Yanwei Zhang

Dissertations

A new type of MEMS cantilever wafer probe card consists of an array of microcantilevers individually actuated by bimorph heating to make contact with the test chip was designed and fabricated. This probe card is called the CHIPP (Conformable, High-Pin count, Programmable ) card and can be designed to contact up to 800 I/O pads along the perimeter of a 1 cm² chip with a microprobe repeat distance of ~50 µm. Each microcantilever had an internal heater and a separate electrode carrying the signal under test and contained four separate layers plus a fifth material for the contact tip …

Design Fabrication And Characterization Of High Performance In Gaas/Inp Focal Plane Array In The 1-2.6 Μm Wavelength Region, Krishna R. Linga

Dissertations

This research thesis describes a new In_xGa_1-xAs/InA_ysP_1-y/InP technology for long wavelength photodetectors and photodetector arrays. A unique and novel detector structure was designed and fabricated using Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy, for low leakage current photodetector arrays in the 1-2.6 µm wavelength region. Potential applications of InGaAs focal plane arrays include near-infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence, remote sensing, environmental sensing, space and astronomical applications. The unique design concepts included the step grading of InAsP layers, lower lattice mismatch between the two InAsP graded layers, lattice matched InAsP cap layer and InGaAs absorption layer, sulphur doping …

The Design And Fabrication Of A Thermal Microprobe Integrated On An Atomic Force Microscope Probe Tip, Yongxia Zhang

Dissertations

A thermal microprobe has been designed and built for high resolution temperature sensing. The thermal microprobe consists of a very-thin-film thermocouple junction confined to the very end of a low mass Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) probe tip. Essential to high resolution temperature sensing is the confinement of the thermocouple junction to a short distance at the AFM tip. This confinement is achieved by controlled photoresist coating.

Experimental prototypes have been made with the junction confined to within 0.3 µm of the tip. The couple is made of Au/Pd, and the two metals are electrically separated elsewhere by a thin insulating …

Efficient Parallel Processing With Optical Interconnections, Lili Hai

Dissertations

With the advances in VLSI technology, it is now possible to build chips which can each contain thousands of processors. The efficiency of such chips in executing parallel algorithms heavily depends on the interconnection topology of the processors. It is not possible to build a fully interconnected network of processors with constant fan-in/fan-out using electrical interconnections. Free space optics is a remedy to this limitation. Qualities exclusive to the optical medium are its ability to be directed for propagation in free space and the property that optical channels can cross in space without any interference. In this thesis, we present …

Distribution Of Velocities And Velocity Gradients In Mixing And Flocculation Vessels : Comparison Between Ldv Data And Cfd Predictions, Changgen Luo

Dissertations

Flocculation is an operation of significant industrial relevance commonly encountered in many processes, including water and wastewater treatment. The physico-chemical phenomena of this process is strongly affected by the magnitude of the velocity gradients generated, typically through agitation, in rapid mix devices and flocculation vessels.

In this work the fluid dynamic characteristics of mechanically agitated systems, namely three different types of stirred tanks, which can be used as flocculation vessels, were studied. Both the mean and fluctuating velocities in all three directions were measured by using a Laser-Doppler Velocimeter (LDV). The velocity distribution, fluctuating velocities, power consumption and local velocity …

Adaptive Space-Time Processing For Digital Mobile Radio Communication Systems, Amit Shah

Dissertations

The performance of digital mobile radio communication systems is primarily limited by cochannel interference and multipath fading. Antenna arrays, with optimum combining (OC), have been shown to combat multipath fading of the desired signal and are capable of reducing the power of interfering signals at the receiver through spatial filtering. With OC, the signals received by several antenna elements are weighted and combined to maximize the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SLNR). We derive new closed-form expressions for (1) the probability density function (PDF) of the SINR at the output of the optimum combiner, (2) the average probability of bit error rate …

An Investigation Of The Oxygraphic Response Of Stressed Bovine Blood, Cristin Mckenna

Dissertations

Oxygraphic profiles of stressed bovine blood in a temperature controlled 2 ml reactor vessel provide the basis for an investigation of blood's response to various conditions. This response is broken down into an initial response (within 3 seconds), the response over 1 hour and the response over 24 hours. Fast-assay runs which investigate the initial response display a dose-response relationship when chemically stressed by phenol. Phenol concentrations in the 1,000 ppm range indicate a decrease in dissolved oxygen (DO) and higher phenol concentrations of over 20,000 an increase in DO. In addition to phenol concentration, other factors investigated with respect …

Multi-Wavelength Pyrometric Systems For Emissivity-Independent Non-Contact Temperature Sensing, Michael B. Kaplinsky

Dissertations

A Multi-Wavelength Imaging Pyrometer (M-WIP) for real-time remote sensing of temperature profiles of targets with unknown emissivity was developed and demonstrated. To measure the spectral radiance of a target at several distinct wavelengths an M-WIP system was implemented based on an 320x122-element PtSi IR-CCD imager with an assembly of 7 narrow-band 1k filters in the range from 1790nm to 4536nm. A real-time algorithm for simultaneous estimation of the temperature and model parameters of the target emissivity from the least-squares fit of the theoretical model of 1k camera output signal to the experimental spectral measurements was developed and implemented. This rea1-time …

Development Of A Mathematical Model Of Gait Dynamics, Tae Ho Choi

Dissertations

There exists hypothesis that gait selection is strongly correlated with mechanical energy efficiency in normal subjects. The hypothesis is experimentally proven, and intuitively taken for granted. However, it is not mathematically proven that the minimum energy consumption hypothesis is the underlying principle for the normal human gait. To prove the hypothesis we have developed a mathematical model of human walking, in which it is possible to predict an optimal gait at any given speed of walking based on the principle of minimum mechanical energy consumption.

This improved model, which includes the double-support phase of walking as well as the swing …

Particle Deposition From Turbulent Flow In A Divergent Channel, Wai-Ting Huang

Dissertations

This dissertation presents a numerical analysis of particle deposition from a dilute gas-solid two-phase suspension in a divergent channel. The Lagrangian governing equations for particle motion include inertia force, viscous force, gravity force and image force from electrostatic charge on the particle. The incompressible two-dimensional turbulent flow field in a divergent channel is solved by employing a Κ-ε modeling technique with FIDAP finite element CFD software. A computational procedure is developed to incorporate the flow field into numerical simulation of particle trajectories from which the fraction of deposition is determined. Several divergent channels (half divergent angles of 0°, 7.5°, 10° …

Scheduling In Assembly Type Job-Shops, Nutthapol Asadathorn

Dissertations

Assembly type job-shop scheduling is a generalization of the job-shop scheduling problem to include assembly operations. In the assembly type job-shops scheduling problem, there are n jobs which are to be processed on in workstations and each job has a due date. Each job visits one or more workstations in a predetermined route. The primary difference between this new problem and the classical job-shop problem is that two or more jobs can merge to foul' a new job at a specified workstation, that is job convergence is permitted. This feature cannot be modeled by existing job-shop techniques. In this dissertation, …

Motion Compensation And Very Low Bit Rate Video Coding, Shu Lin

Dissertations

Recently, many activities of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Standard Organization (ISO) are leading to define new standards for very low bit-rate video coding, such as H.263 and MPEG-4 after successful applications of the international standards H.261 and MPEG-1/2 for video coding above 64kbps. However, at very low bit-rate the classic block matching based DCT video coding scheme suffers seriously from blocking artifacts which degrade the quality of reconstructed video frames considerably. To solve this problem, a new technique in which motion compensation is based on dense motion field is presented in this dissertation.

Four efficient new …

Performance Optimization Of Very High Frame Rate Ccd Burst-Image Sensors, Zeynep M. Pektas

Dissertations

The primary objective of this work was to demonstrate the feasibility of an image sensor that is capable of capturing images at 10⁷ frames per second. Such high frame rate operation is based on storage of a certain (N) number of frames into the BCCD memory registers and readout at a slower rate at the end of the frame collection period. To accommodate an optical frame time of 100ns, a high-speed virtual-gate photodetector with six multiple n-type implants was proposed and a novel design strategy was developed. The feasibility of this design was demonstrated by simulating the entire photodetector …

Multi-Wavelength Infrared Imaging Computer Systems And Applications, Jun Li

Dissertations

This dissertation presents the development of three computer systems for multi-wavelength thermal imaging.

Two computer systems were developed for the multi-wavelength imaging pyrometers (M-WIPs) that yield non-contact temperature measurements by remotely sensing the surface of objects with unknown wavelength-dependent emissivity. These M-WIP computer systems represent the state-of-art development in remote temperature measurement system based on the multi-wavelength approach. The dissertation research includes M-WIP computer system integration, software development, performance evaluation, and also applications in monitoring and control of temperature distribution of silicon wafers in a rapid thermal process system.

The two M-WIPs are capable of data acquisition, signal processing, system …

Modeling Of 3d Swept Volumes Using Sde/Sede Methods And Its Application To Five-Axis Nc Machining, Liping Wang

Dissertations

This research falls in two important areas in solid modeling and manufacturing automation: (1) swept-volume modeling; (2) computer-based NC (Numerically controled) machining simulation and verification. The swept volume is defined as the volume swept by an object undergoing an arbitrary motion. Modeling of 3D swept volumes includes the boundary computation and representation of a swept volume generated by a general object undergoing general motion in three dimensional space. The Sweep Differential Equation (SDE) and Sweep Envelope Differential Equation (SEDE) methods are two of the important swept volume modeling methods employed in this dissertation. They exploit differential equations to obtain the …

High Speed Protocols For Dual Bus And Dual Ring Network Architectures, Yaling Zhou

Dissertations

In this dissertation, two channel access mechanisms providing fair and bandwidth efficient transmission on dual bus and dual ring networks with high bandwidth-latency product are proposed. In addition, two effective priority mechanisms are introduced to meet the throughput and delay requirements of the diverse arrays of applications that future high speed networks must support.

For dual bus architectures, the Buffer Insertion Bandwidth Balancing (BI_BWB) mechanism and the Preemptive priority Bandwidth Balancing (P_BI_BWB) mechanism are proposed. BI_BWB can significantly improve the delay performance of remote stations. It achieves that by providing each station with a shift register into which the station …

Sampling And Analysis Of Trace Level Volatile Organic Compounds From Air Via Membrane Permeation, Naihong Zhu

Dissertations

The objective of this study is to develop air sampling techniques using membrane permeation. Two novel techniques for sampling and analysis of trace level VOCs from air via membrane permeation are presented:

1. selective concentration of VOCs into a canister using a membrane permeator;
2. on-line membrane extraction for direct introduction of VOCs from air emissions into a gas chromatograph.

In the membrane permeator-canister sampling system (MPCS), the air sample containing trace level VOCs as well as some interferences such as moisture are passed through the membrane module. Polydimethyl siloxane membrane used in this research is highly permeable to organic compounds, but …

On Document Filing Based Upon Predicates, Zhijian Zhu

Dissertations

This dissertation presents a formal approach to modeling documents in a personal office environment, proposes a heterogeneous algebraic query language to manipulating objects (folders) in the document model, and investigates a predicate-driven document filing system for automatically filing documents.

The document model was initially proposed in [38] which adopts a very natural view for describing the office documents using the relational and object-oriented paradigms. The model employs a dual approach to classifying and categorizing office documents by defining both a document type hierarchy and a folder organization. This dissertation extends and specifies formally the document model. Documents are partitioned into …