Digital Commons Network^™

Tool Condition Monitoring: A Computational Approach, Anthony Clinch

Dissertations and Theses

Tool Condition Monitoring offers a new approach to reducing the costs associated with catastrophic tool failure. The manufacturing process is becoming more computationally oriented all the time. Computational methods of determining the condition of cutting tools will lend themselves to easy integration with current and forthcoming manufacturing techniques. Coupling the results of this computational approach with a cost analysis will provide a means of maximizing the investment in cutting tools, while minimizing the damage caused by tool failure. Tool Condition Monitoring, as defined here, is a method of computationally determining the condition of a cutting tool. The problem of determining …

A Case Study Of Twelve Japanese Esl Students' Use Of Interaction Modifications, Darin Dooley

Dissertations and Theses

This case study examines Japanese ESL students' use of interaction modifications in a content based course. Twelve female subjects were observed and recorded during a nine week period. Their use of interaction modifications (clarification requests, confirmation checks, and comprehension checks) and responses to interaction modifications (single word, full or partial repetition, or reformulation), during teacher-fronted and small group situations, were recorded and coded using the COLT observation instrument.

The study found that the subjects used clarification requests over four times more often in small group or pair-work situations than in teacher-fronted classes. Also, the subjects used confirmation checks over five …

From The Printing Press To The Guillotine: Gracchus Babeuf And The Revolutionary Language Of Thermidor, David Brian Audley

Dissertations and Theses

The traditional history of Franc̦ois-Noel 'Gracchus' Babeuf has been centered on politics and socialism. Since his death in 1 797 historians have attempted to show the foundations of nineteenth and twentieth-century social revolution and communism in the polemical works of Babeuf. One result of this method of research has been an assumption of contradiction within Babeuf's writings in the months immediately following the fall of Maxmilien Robespierre. Historians have assumed that the seemingly anti-Robespierrist rhetoric found from September 1794 to February 1795 was both a product and an evidence of the 'Thermidorization' of Babeuf. However, a close textual analysis of …

Automatic Synthesis Of Vlsi Layout For Cmos Continuous-Time Filters, Wei Han

Dissertations and Theses

Automatic synthesis of digital VLSI layout has been available for many years. It has become a necessary part of the design industry as the window of time from conception to production shrinks with ever increasing competition. However, automatic synthesis of analog VLSI layout remains rare.

With digital circuits, there is often room for signal drift. In a digital circuit, a signal can drift within a range before hitting the threshold which triggers a change in logic state. The effect of parasitic capacitances for the most part, hinders the timing margins of the signal, but not its functionality. The logic functionality …

State Funding For Special Education In Oregon : Calculating Cost Differentials Of Special Education For Handicapped Students In Oregon School Districts, Kyung-Sup Kim

Dissertations and Theses

A general principle of school finance is that the cost of the educational program is influenced by varying characteristics of students and school districts. This raises the question of whether state allocation policies should reflect the additional costs associated with particular educational programs, such as special education for handicapped students, vocational, compensatory, bilingual education, and gifted and talented education programs as well as cost differences associated with size, salaries, and related issues. Thus, it is essential for state government to identify cost differentials for special education programs in terms of various school districts to determine the importance of such differences …

The Importance Of Time For Processing In Second Language Comprehension And Acquisition, Jennifer Lee Watson

Dissertations and Theses

Research findings on the positive impact of interaction on comprehension have led to questions regarding both the connection between comprehension and acquisition and the qualities of interaction which facilitate understanding (Ellis et al. 1994). Ellis et al. found that a high degree of comprehension on an activity which contained unknown words correlated with a high rate of vocabulary acquisition. The present study replicates the activity and testing procedures used by Ellis et al. The main focus of the Ellis et al. study was the connection between second language comprehension and acquisition. This study differs from Ellis et al. in that …

"Sin Decidirlo Me Volví Distinta": Gender, Deception And Development In Angeles Mastretta's ArráNcame La Vida, Luisa Samaniego

Dissertations and Theses

With this research I locate Angeles Mastretta's novel Arráncame la vida in the Bildungsroman genre, examine the particular forces influencing the protagonist's development and gain insight into her process of identity formation. This modern Bildungsroman portrays the fate of a woman in the male dominated world of post-revolutionary Mexico. I analyze how class, gender, historical moment, psychological and cultural influences are woven into the intriguing formation of the heroine, Catalina, variously constraining or propelling her forward in her quest for development.

I argue that the heroine transcends the limiting factors in her patriarchal environment, struggling against culturally sanctioned deception, confining …

Effects Of Lifestyle Change And Satisfaction With Voice On Psychosocial Adjustment Of Laryngectomees, Susan M. Nicks

Dissertations and Theses

This research sought to examine the level of psychosocial adjustment in a sample of laryngectomees by describing demographic characteristics, alcohol consumption, and tobacco use pre-cancer diagnosis and currently, satisfaction with voice, and by examining the relationship between each subject's level of psychosocial adjustment and lifestyle change, i.e. cessation of tobacco and/or alcohol consumption, and satisfaction with voice.

Twenty-one subjects completed (a) Demographic Questionnaire, (b) Lifestyle Questionnaire, (c) Satisfaction with Voice Scale, and (d) Psychosocial Adjustment to Illness Scale-Self Report (PAIS-SR). Descriptive and inferential statistics were completed.

The average age of the subject group (16 males, 5 females) was 72.5 years, …

Numerical Simulation Of Contaminated Sediment Transport In The Upper Columbia Slough System, Binghong Wu

Dissertations and Theses

An integrated modeling system has been developed to simulate sediment and contaminated sediment transport in the Upper Columbia Slough System during the Flood of 1996. The modeling system consists of a hydrodynamic model, a sediment transport model, and a contaminant transport model. The hydrodynamic model predicts the Slough flow dynamics and sediment transporting power; the sediment transport model predicts flow-induced sediment transport; and the contaminant transport model predicts the migration of contaminated sediments in the Slough system.

The Upper Columbia Slough modeling system is characterized by its recognition of the complex interplay of Slough hydrology, hydrodynamics, sediment transport, contaminant transport. …

A Telescopic Approach To Modeling Leachate Dynamics And Migration At The St. Johns Landfill, Portland, Oregon, Thomas Stephen Lowry

Dissertations and Theses

The St. Johns Landfill is a 225-acre site that lies near the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, in the North Portland Industrial District of Portland, Oregon. A slough system surrounds the landfill on three sides with the fourth side adjacent to a shallow lake. The landfill first opened in 1930 when it was operated as an open dump. It operated as an open dump until 1969 when it was converted to a sanitary landfill, employing daily cover and compaction. The landfill was closed in 1991.

The landfill sits directly on top of a thick layer of silty overbank …

Voice Measures And Listener Acceptance Of Tracheoesophageal Speech, Heidii Ilona Roberts

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of perturbation measures, jitter and shimmer, and ratings of acceptability by naive listeners. Six tracheoesophageal (TEP) speakers and 14 naive listeners participated in the study. Each speaker was recorded while reading The Rainbow passage. The six samples of voice were then presented to the listeners for rating. The naive listeners used an equal appearing seven pint scale to rate voice acceptability. No significant correlation was found between the perturbation measures and the ratings of acceptability. Due to the small subject size in this study, the findings are inconclusive. The results …

A Simplified Approach To Reduce Blocking And Ringing Artifacts In Transform-Coded Images, Jianping Hu

Dissertations and Theses

Presently Block-based Discrete Cosine Transform (BDCT) image coding techniques are widely used in image and video compression applications such as JPEG and MPEG. At a moderate bit rate, BDCT is usually a quite satisfactory solution to most of practical coding applications. However, for high rate compression it produces noticeable blocking and ringing artifacts in the decompressed image. It has been an active research area for a decade for reducing these artifacts. In this thesis, a novel post-processing algorithm is proposed to remove the blocking and ringing artifacts at low bit rate. It is non-iterative and uses both spatial and transform …

Promotion Of Verbal Interaction Through Structured Pair Activities, Vidya Rangachari

Dissertations and Theses

Group work has come to play an increasingly significant role in the second language classroom due to its myriad advantages. Researchers have found that bringing language learners together for various activities provides them with greater opportunities to improve on the quality as well as the quantity of their linguistic output. A small group size and a structured activity are believed to be extremely beneficial to the language learners. In this study, eight ESL students were brought together in dyads and asked to interact verbally for the purpose of performing three types of goal-oriented activities within a specified time limit. The …

Orwellian Socialism And The Myth Of The Working Class, Malcolm P. Ringo Iv

Dissertations and Theses

George Orwell left behind a rich body of political writings. Most scholars until now have confined research on Orwell to one of three areas: his reaction to the British class system; his criticisms of left-wing intellectuals; and the contrasting visions of the future that contended for supremacy in his consciousness. Scholars have overlooked the fact that the very foundation of Orwellian socialism rested on the creation of a political myth - the myth of the northern British working class. The northern British proletariat held specific traits, such as generosity and decency, that were created and shaped by particular socio-historical conditions. …

Non-Literate Students In Adult Beginning English As A Second Language Classrooms - A Case Study, Sandra Lynn Banke

Dissertations and Theses

The development of literacy in English is facilitated by second language students' ability to read in their first language, particularly if that language employs a Roman alphabet. These students' literacy abilities may also influence their development of oral proficiency when their primary instructional environment is the classroom. Yet there have been few successful studies of non-literate students' progress, behaviors and learning preferences in classrooms with literate students. This is primarily because the transient nature of non-literate students' attendance in formal learning environments results in sample sizes too small for experimental research with reliable generalizations.

The purpose of the present study …

Postwar Vice Crime And Political Corruption In Portland, Robert Christian Donnelly

Dissertations and Theses

The present thesis describes the connection between political corruption and vice crime in Portland as it was portrayed by media and public institutions and agencies in the 1940s and 1950s. The main body of the thesis discusses attempts to rid Portland of its vice problem through the City Club's crusade against crime and crooked politicians in the late 1940s and early 1950s and Mayor Dorothy McCullough Lee's subsequent reform movements against gambling and prostitution. The thesis will analyze The Oregonian's expose' on bootlegging, gambling, prostitution and links drawn by the newspaper to the Teamster's Union and Oregon politicians. From there, …

Drug Testing And Oregon Workers : Is Perceived Fairness Of Corporate Drug Testing Moderated By Drug Use?, Leslie James Normandy

Dissertations and Theses

This study proposed that two predictors of perceived fairness of organizational drug testing would be moderated by drug use. These two predictors, outcome of a positive drug test and whether respondents were ever previously tested for drug use, had been found to be predictors of perceived fairness of drug testing. It was expected that the theories of organizational justice and cognitive dissonance would explain these relationships. Additionally, it was proposed that drug users would perceive drug testing as less fair than would non-drug users.

Participants were 191 adults randomly selected throughout the state of Oregon. The survey items measuring the …

Robert Francis Kelley And The Eastern European Division Of The State Department: 1917-1933, Agnes Eileen Olsen

Dissertations and Theses

This study traces the career of Robert Francis Kelley and his influence on American-Russian Relations during the nonrecognition period (1917-1933). The focus of this examination is Kelley's role in formulating, implementing, and sustaining America's anti-communist policy developed and solidified during the 1920s and 1930s. Particular attention is given to the senate recognition hearing of 1924, Kelley's training of future diplomats (George Kennan, Charles Bohlen, et al.), and his contributions to the preparations leading to the United States' recognition of Russia in 1933. Using Kelley's papers and personal correspondence, this study shows the growth of a man and the evolution of …

Virtue, Liberty, And The Good : A Critical Analysis Of Civic Republicanism, Nathan Douglas Austin

Dissertations and Theses

Dissatisfaction with liberalism is nothing new. As the longstanding dominant force in Western political thought, it has been subject to unending hostile critiques from a variety of sources. Of the criticisms of liberalism advanced in recent years, some of the most persistent and scathing have been levied by scholars identified with civic republicanism. Civic republicanism has adopted the pose of a counter philosophy to liberalism. Civic republicans, such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, and Cass Sunstein, argue that liberalism is an impoverished political conception that is unable to provide or sustain the moral energies necessary for a vital democratic life. …

Potential For Coastal Flooding Due To Coseismic Subsidence In The Central Cascadia Margin, Elson T. Barnett

Dissertations and Theses

Interpretations made from compilation of existing core and cutbank data for Oregon and Washington are used to evaluate the potential flooding impact from regional coseismic subsidence. Estimates of regional subsidence are based on tidal level indicators including plant macrofossils, peat development, and diatoms. A compilation of existing late Holocene stratigraphic records shows multiple burial events in all bays of Oregon, however some coastal sites in central Oregon show continuous submergence. Tests of tidal level indicators using modern Cascadia wetlands indicate that paleosubsidence can be estimated to 0.0 ± 0.5m, 1.0 ±0.5m, and 2 m ± 0.5m. An AMS date from …

Urban Sprawl, Media Monopoly, And Citizen Participation : A Longitudinal Case Study Of Daily Newspapers In Portland, Oregon, Andrew David Butz

Dissertations and Theses

The process and consequences of global economic expansion are the subject of increasing scholarly and popular attention. Emerging patterns of globalization are of particular interest from a sociological standpoint. This study establishes a theoretical and methodological approach for examining, within a framework of competing values, locally observable effects of the widely recognized global trend -- of increasingly concentrated news media ownership. Recent patterns of development in Portland, Oregon provide the specific context for this study. As in most American cities within the past generation, Portland experienced a shift from having independent, competing daily newspapers to having one conglomerate-owned monopolistic daily. …

The Summit Vegetation Of Saddle Mountain, Oregon Coast Range, Charles Thomas Carlson

Dissertations and Theses

Saddle Mountain (1000 m) is the highest peak in the Northern Oregon Coast Range. Meadows are found to occur at and near the summit of the mountain which contain abundant wildflowers. Although the majority of these meadow species have been collected and identified in the past no formal study has been done to classify them into communities. The purpose of this study is to examine the character and origin of the plant communities located at or near the summit of Saddle Mountain. Data were collected on 4 study sites during the Summer of 1996 and analysis of the data lead …

Purification And Characterization Of Catalase From Enterococcus Faecalis, Zhenghong Zhu

Dissertations and Theses

Catalase is an important biological enzyme that most organisms employ during aerobic growth to catalyze the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide, a toxic reduction product of oxygen, into water and molecular oxygen. Traditionally, the bacterium Enterococcus faecal is is considered to have no cytochrome system and to be catalase negative. However, certain strains of E. subsequent studies have shown that faecalis are capable of producing catalase when grown aerobically in a medium containing hematin.

The goals of this study were to purify and characterize catalase from a clinical strain of E. faecalis. The organisms were grown under aerobic conditions in a …

Simulating Migration Of Contaminated Sediments In The Lower Columbia Slough System, Min Chen

Dissertations and Theses

Recent screening-level risk assessment of Slough sediments initiated by the City of Portland identified five contaminated areas in the Slough as posing the greatest potentially significant risks to human health. These five areas were recommended for accelerated remedial action.

But one question remains, does the sediment contamination at these hot spots change over time in response to the changing Slough hydrodynamics? Specifically, will the contamination move or spread even before remedial action is taken? Will they still be there by the time when potential remedial action is taken? Will any new hot spots be created in response to nonuniform transient …

Sexual Intercourse : A Feminist Reading Of Strip Joint Discourse, Regina Marie Howard Yaroch

Dissertations and Theses

The discursively-constructed stereotype of stripper plays an important role in the ideology that sustains our system of sexual relations. This construction also interacts with and constrains the lived reality of actual women who earn their living in the stripping industry. This research attempts to examine this interaction by exploring the discourse that is generated by stripping industry participants. A long interview transcript is analyzed as a text to develop a feminist reading that focuses on the socio-cultural forces that make a particular story possible as well as necessary to tell. This story emerges, through the first-person account of a dancer-informant, …

New Approaches To Column Compatibility Checking And Column-Based Input/Output Encoding For Curtis Decompositions Of Completely Or Incompletely Specified Switching Functions, Michael A. Burns

Dissertations and Theses

Cube calculus is an algebraic model used to process boolean functions. Cube calculus operations are widely used in logic optimization, logic synthesis, image processing and recognition, machine learning, and other applications which require massive logic operations.

The cube calculus operations can be carried out on general-purpose computers. Since these operations can involve several levels of nested loops, this approach has poor performance.

A cube calculus machine which has a special data path designed to speed up cube calculus operations is presented in this thesis. This c-qbe calculus machine can execute cube calculus operations 10 to 25 times faster than the …

The Interaction Of Naphthoquinones With The Calcium Release Channel Of Skeletal Muscle Sarcoplasmic Reticulum, Ruohong Xia

Dissertations and Theses

The sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) is an intracellular membrane system which regulates cytoplasmic calcium concentration in muscle and controls the contractile state of muscle. In this thesis, the interaction between naphthoquinone and the Ca²⁺ release mechanism of SR is described. 1,4-naphthoquinone (1,4NQ) is shown to stimulate Ca²⁺ release and to modify high-affinity ryanodine binding to skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum. The interaction between 1,4NQ and the SR involves the oxidation ofcritical sulfhydryl groups associated with the Ca²⁺ release mechanism. The modulation of ryanodine binding by 1,4NQ is biphasic. At low concentrations of 1,4NQ (<10 >μM) ryanodine binding is stimulated, …

Investigation Of Transactivation Of The Human C-Myc Gene By Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1, Xian Wu

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the regulatory elements involved in the transactivation of the human c-myc gene by herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1). This study mainly focused on a major c-myc promoter P₂ (Fig. 1). Transient expression assays were carried out with a reporter plasmid, that contained either a wild type (+66wt c-myc) or mutant (+66 mt E2F, +66mt CT -I₂) c-myc promoter fused to the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene, cotransfected with effector plasmids that contained the HSV-1 immediate early (IE) genes ( encoding IE proteins, ICP4, ICP0, ICP27). The transient expression assays revealed …

The Relationship Between Self-Monitoring And Organizational Training Effectiveness And Satisfaction, Joanna Wulbert

Dissertations and Theses

The present research explored the relationship between self-monitoring and training. It was hypothesized that high self-monitors' sens ivity to social cues would improve training satisfaction and learning. This study was divided into 2 parts; a field and a laboratory study. Nine trainees and 8 peer trainers participated in the field study and 75 undergraduate psychology students participated in the laboratory study. Due to the extremely small sample size of the field study, the results were not conclusive. In the laboratory study, trainers' that were categorized as high self-monitors were associated with higher satisfaction levels among trainees. However, self-monitoring was not …

A Survey Of Swallowing Symptoms Associated With The Premenstrual Cycle, Jill Gigi Calcagno

Dissertations and Theses

Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS) has been associated with a vast number of physical, emotional, social, and behavioral symptomatology. Laryngeal disturbances invoked by hormonal imbalance may affect swallowing as a component of PMS. Previous studies regarding swallowing ability during the premenstrual cycle were nonexistent.

This study examined the relationship between PMS and swallowing disorders. One hundred thirty-seven females completed a written survey that elicited information regarding biographical data, presence and severity of cyclically recurring symptoms associated with PMS, and perceived presence and severity of dysphagia during premenstruum.

Spearman Rank (Rho) correlation coefficients were computed to determine the extent of the relationship between …