Digital Commons Network^™

The Bears Banter : Freshers Mag. Vol. 2 Ed. 1, 1998, Dit Bolton Street Students' Union

DIT Student Union

Freshers Mag. A magazine for students of DIT Bolton Street.

The Orientation Toward Domestic Labor Questionnaire: Exploring Dual-Earner Wives' Sense Of Fairness About Family Work, Alan J. Hawkins, Christina M. Marshall, Sarah M. Allen

Faculty Publications

This study explored the psychometric properties of the Orientation Toward Domestic Labor Questionnaire (ODL-Q) with a sample of 622 dual-earner wives. Adequate internal consistency reliability was obtained for most of the construct in the ODL-Q. In addition, construct validity for the ODL-Q was provided with multiple regression and discriminant analyses of the constructs' relationships to wives' sense of fairness about family work. The ODL-Q scales accounted for 57% of the variance in wives' sense of fairness. Effective communication about domestic labor (expressions of appreciation, sympathetic listening, mutual decision making) was by far the most powerful predictor and discriminator of fairness. …

A Corba-Base Integration Of Distributed Electronic Healthcare Records Using The Synapses Approach, Jane Grimson, William Grimson, Damon Berry, Gaye Stephens, Eoghan Felton, Dipak Kalra, Pieter Toussaint, Onno Weir

Articles

The ability to exchange in a meaningful, secure, and simple fashion relevant healthcare data about patients is seen as vital in the context of efficient and cost-effective shared or team-based care. The electronic healthcare record (EHCR) lies at the heart of this information exchange, and it follows that there is an urgent need to address the ability to share EHCR's or parts of records between carers and across distributed health information systems. This paper presents the Synapses approach to sharing based on a standardized shared record, the Federated Healthcare Record, which is implemented in an open and flexible manner using …

Annual Report 1 September 1997 - 31 August, 1998, Dublin Institute Of Technology

DIT Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Reimbursing Insurers’ Defense Costs: Restitution And Mixed Actions, Douglas R. Richmond

San Diego Law Review

The pejorative “Indian giver” describes a person who, having given a gift to another, takes it back or demands its return. This childhood insult arguably has surfaced in the law of liability insurance. A liability insurer that provides its insured with a defense to a lawsuit, but that later seeks to recover from the insured the costs associated with the defense of uncovered claims, might be described by the insured or by an insensitive court as an Indian giver. Having promised to defend its insured even against suits that are “groundless, false or fraudulent," an insurer that later seeks the …

Personal Jurisdiction And The Internet Quagmire: Amputating Judicially Created Long-Arms

San Diego Law Review

This Comment will explore the expanding power courts have given the word “haled” and its relationship to computer communication: a relationship that is confusing, contradictory, and sometimes downright troubling. Personal jurisdiction via the internet is a rapidly expanding area of American jurisprudence that has developed, and is developing, in response to the explosive growth of computer communications. While the hypothetical internet disclaimer contained above could be viewed as little more than unsubstantiated fears of the legally paranoid, in the future it may be the disclaimer of the legally prudent.

Gagging Physicians: Is That What The Legislature Intended?

San Diego Law Review

In 1996, the California legislature took steps to modify existing contractual relationships between physicians and managed care organizations (“MCOs”).Legislative action was prompted by skyrocketing medical malpractice verdicts, cries from physicians about unfair treatment caused by new payment systems, and media hysteria. Regardless of which straw broke the proverbial camel’s back, the result was no fewer than four bills that promise to forever change health care in California.

Patient Advocates Or Patient Adversaries? Using Fiduciary Law To Compel Disclosure Of Managed Care Financial Incentives, Kim Johnston

San Diego Law Review

This Article advocates disclosure as a compromise between wholeheartedly embracing financial incentives and flatly prohibiting them, and suggests using fiduciary law to compel such disclosure. This Article also argues that courts should recognize a cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty when a physician fails to disclose managed care financial incentives to her patients. Part I gives a brief overview of fiduciary law and fiduciary duties. Part II examines the fiduciary nature of the physician-patient relationship and looks at court cases that have characterized the physician-patient relationship as a fiduciary relationship. Part Ill discusses the only two published opinions …

Why I Am A Lawyer, Joseph L. Daly

San Diego Law Review

With so little honor associated with the law profession these days, one must wonder why any person aspiring to do something respectable with her or his life7 would choose to be a lawyer.8 To become a lawyer today, students must have a firm desire to be an attorney and a steadfast willingness to accept social opprobrium.9

Amalgam In The Americas: A Law School Curriculum For Free Markets And Open Borders, Mark A. Drumbl

San Diego Law Review

This Article addresses this lacuna by investigating ways in which the American and Canadian common law curriculum could become more responsive to the changing realities of legal practice under NAFTA.

Potentially the following modifications could be introduced on a gradual basis: 1. Introduction of a course to familiarize common law lawyers with the method, principles and practice of civil law, with a directed focus on Mexico; 2. Initiation of a broader NAFTA curriculum, potentially leading to a certificate or designation; and 3. Development of a new law degree, universally recognized in all three NAFTA jurisdictions as a prerequisite to bar …

Automated Interpretation Of The Background Eeg Using Fuzzy Logic, Edward Peter Riddington

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

A new framework is described for managing uncertainty and for deahng with artefact corruption to introduce objectivity in the interpretation of the electroencephalogram (EEG). Conventionally, EEG interpretation is time consuming and subjective, and is known to show significant inter- and intra-personnel variation. A need thus exists to automate the interpretation of the EEG to provide a more consistent and efficient assessment. However, automated analysis of EEGs by computers is complicated by two major factors. The difficulty of adequately capturing in machine form, the skills and subjective expertise of the experienced electroencephalbgrapher, and the lack of a reliable means of dealing …

Image Analysis And Prenatal Screening, Jian'an Luan

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Information obtained from ultrasound images of fetal heads is often used to screen for various types of physical abnormality. In particular, at around 16 to 23 weeks' gestation two-dimensional cross-sections are examined to assess whether a fetus is affected by Neural Tube Defects, a class of disorders that includes Spina Bifida. Unfortunately, ultrasound images are of relatively poor quality and considerable expertise is required to extract meaningful information from them. Developing an ultrasound image recognition method that does not rely upon an experienced sonographer is of interest. In the course of this work we review standard statistical image analysis techniques, …

The Fatigue Properties Of Spring Steel, Daniel Gerhardus Hattingh

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The nature and scope of this thesis can be divided into three categories, namely stress distribution modelling in coil springs; fatigue and failure analysis, an investigation into measurement of residual stresses and the relation to fatigue life. The operation of springs is directly concerned with the theories of torsion and bending which makes the better understanding of these theories essential. The first part of the thesis is involved with a mathematical evaluation of these theories and a case study of an isolated loop of a coil spring. The mathematical modelling is verified by measuring the strain levels in a coil …

Latent Variable Generalized Linear Models, Jane Creagh-Osborne

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) (McCullagh and Nelder, 1989) provide a unified framework for fixed effect models where response data arise from exponential family distributions. Much recent research has attempted to extend the framework to include random effects in the linear predictors. Different methodologies have been employed to solve different motivating problems, for example Generalized Linear Mixed Models (Clayton, 1994) and Multilevel Models (Goldstein, 1995). A thorough review and classification of this and related material is presented. In Item Response Theory (IRT) subjects are tested using banks of pre-calibrated test items. A useful model is based on the logistic function with …

The Manufacture Of Marine Propellers In Moulded Anisotropic Polymer Composites, Timothy John Searle

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

This thesis examines the feasibility of manufacturing small marine propellers from continuous fibre reinforced polymer composite materials. An appraisal of some current applications of composite materials in the marine industry is given, together with the moves shown towards the use of composites in the area of propeller design. It has been shown that manufacturing propellers in composite materials is theoretically more cost effective than traditional materials. The manufacturing route investigated is Resin Transfer Moulding, where some detailed investigations have highlighted some of the critical processing parameters necessary for successful production of laminates suitable for propellers and other high performance marine …

Investigation Into The Materials And Manufacturing Of A New Thin Film Magnetoresistive Sensor, Yong Qing Ma

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

There is increasing interest in utilising very thin anisotropic magnetoresistive films (typically in the range of a few nano-metres) to make magnetic sensors which can be made very small and with a high signal-to-noise ratio. In this thesis, a new type of sensor is investigated which has a pair of thin film MR stripes whose magnetisation is switched alternately in opposite directions using bias fields from currents in overlay conductor films. The investigation considers in particular the Barkhausen noise in these sensors and its relationship with factors such as sensor film thickness. The effect of thickness and grain size on …

Enhanced Coding, Clock Recovery And Detection For A Magnetic Credit Card, Daniel Felix Smith

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

This thesis describes the background, investigation and construction of a system for storing data on the magnetic stripe of a standard three-inch plastic credit in: inch card. Investigation shows that the information storage limit within a 3.375 in by 0.11 in rectangle of the stripe is bounded to about 20 kBytes. Practical issues limit the data storage to around 300 Bytes with a low raw error rate: a four-fold density increase over the standard. Removal of the timing jitter (that is prob-' ably caused by the magnetic medium particle size) would increase the limit to 1500 Bytes with no other …

Reinforcement Learning In Intelligent Control : A Biologically-Inspired Approach To The Relearning Problem, Brendan D'Cruz

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The increasingly complex demands placed on control systems have resulted in a need for intelligent control, an approach that attempts to meet these demands by emulating the capabilities found in biological systems. The need to exploit existing knowledge is a desirable feature of any intelligent control system, and this leads to the relearning problem. The problem arises when a control system is required to effectively learn new knowledge whilst exploiting still useful knowledge from past experiences. This thesis describes the adaptive critic system using reinforcement learning, a computational framework that can effectively address many of the demands in intelligent control, …

Investigation Into Submicron Track Positioning And Following Technology For Computer Magnetic Disks, Baolin Tan

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

In the recent past some magnetic heads with submicron trackwidth have been developed in order to increase track density of computer magnetic disks, however a servo control system for a submicron trackwidth head has not been investigated. The main objectives of this work are to investigate and develop a new servo pattern recording model, a new position sensor, actuator, servo controller used for submicron track positioning and following on a computer hard disk with ultrahigh track density, to increase its capacity. In this position sensor study, new modes of reading and writing servo information for longitudinal and perpendicular magnetic recording …

Intelligent Pattern Analysis Of The Foetal Electrocardiogram, Nicholas John Outram

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The aim of the project on which this thesis is based is to develop reliable techniques for foetal electrocardiogram (ECG) based monitoring, to reduce incidents of unnecessary medical intervention and foetal injury during labour. World-wide electronic foetal monitoring is based almost entirely on the cardiotocogram (CTG), which is a continuous display of the foetal heart rate (FHR) pattern together with the contraction of the womb. Despite the widespread use of the CTG, there is no significant improvement in foetal outcome. In the UK alone it is estimated that birth related negligence claims cost the health authorities over £400M per-annum. An …

The Priming Of Visual Feature Integration And Illusory Conjunctions, Graham Derek Smith

School of Psychology Theses

Whether non-spatial previewing can interact with the process of integrating visual features and thereby affect the formation of illusory conjunctions was studied. A series of ten experiments were undertaken that employed methods borrowed from the illusory conjunction and visual previewing paradigms. Participants reported the identities of two briefly presented target objects. Preview stimuli were presented prior to the to-be-reported target stimuli. The preview objects and target objects were colour-filled geometric shapes. The effects of two types of non-spatial previewing were investigated; feature previewing and conjunction previewing. In feature previewing the preview stimuli were congruent or incongruent with one of the …

Performance Of A Boussinesq Model For Shoaling And Breaking Waves : A Comparison With Large Scale Laboratory Data, Francoise Ozanne

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

In this thesis, a nonlinear model predicting hydrodynamics data for waves shoaling and breaking on a beach is reproduced and extensively tested with laboratory data. The model is based on the 1D Boussinesq equations as derived by Madsen et al. (1991) and Madsen and Sorensen (1992), with the free surface elevation and the depth-integrated velocity as variables. It allows slowly varying bathymetries and contains additional high order terms to improve the frequency dispersion for shorter wave periods, and thus also to improve the shoaling properties of the model. Wave breaking is modelled using the concept of a surface roller as …

The Debate Over Generalist And Specialist Tutors: Genre Theory's Contribution, Kristin Walker

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Conference Summaries: Widening The Reach Of Writing Center Work, Jane Cogie

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Nwca Information

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Understanding "Spirit" In The Writing Center, Lynn Briggs

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Nwca Information

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 7, 1998, Ellen Hazelkorn, Nora French, Wolfgang Truetzschler

Issues

No abstract provided.

Bs News

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between The Intensity And Duration Of Extracurricular Activities And Teenage Pregnancy, Rhonda L. Drilling

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Extensive research has been done in the area of adolescent pregnancy prevention. One possible means of prevention that has not been adequately explored is involvement in extracurricular school activities. The purpose of this study was to determine if a relationship existed between the intensity and duration of participation in extracurricular school activities and the incidence of teenage pregnancy. In the study, 200 female high school students who had never been pregnant and 36 females who had become pregnant as teenagers were surveyed. All females were from Fayette County, Iowa. A 33-item questionnaire was used to survey the two groups regarding …