Digital Commons Network^™

Supporting The Management Of Electronic Engineering Design Teams Through A Dynamic Contingency Approach, Richard David Parsons

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

The contribution to knowledge presented in this thesis is the dynamic contingency approach, supported through software, which supports the management of the early, conceptual stages of electronic engineering team design. 1he term contingency pertains to the design environment being in a contingent state, that is "dependent on uncertain issues" (Hayward & Sparkes, 1991). These issues are typically dynamic, that is ''pertaining to forces not in equilibrium, forces that produce motion" (Hayward & Sparkes, 1991). The concept for the dynamic contingency approach was developed through a soft systems analysis. This analysis drew upon an ethnographic study conducted in parallel with the …

The Influence Of Belief Bias On Syllogistic Reasoning, Nicola-Jane Lambell

School of Psychology Theses

The syllogistic evaluation task paradigm requires participants to assess whether a conclusion is logically determined by its premises. The inability to ignore beliefs when attempting to comply with this requirement is the phenomenon known as ‘belief bias’. This research programme primarily examines this phenomenon and is motivated by conflicting accounts of how it arises. This research also examines the relative believability of the logical quantifiers which are used to construct the syllogistic task.

An Investigation Into The Development Of Engineering Students' Conceptual Understanding Of Mathematics, Wendy Mary Maull

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics Theses

Following widespread concern over an apparent decline in the mathematical skills of engineering students, this study employed survey and observation methods to investigate the ways in which engineering students understand mathematical concepts, and to compare these with the concepts held-by students of mathematics. It was found that the engineering students employ a different vocabulary from mathematics students in discussing mathematics, and that their understanding of mathematical concepts develops differently from mathematics students both in response to teaching (which appears to be a transitory effect) and as their experience gives meaning to the ideas in life outside study. These findings are …

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.

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

DIT Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

The Dit Examiner : The Newspaper Of The Dublin Institute Of Technology Students' Union, January, 1998, Dit : Students' Union

DIT Student Union

The DIT Examiner : the Newspaper of the Dublin Institute of Technology Students' Union.

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.

Threshold Order: Bilateral Law Enforcement And Regional Public Safety On The U.S./Mexico Border, Alan D. Bersin

San Diego Law Review

The Mexican/United States border region presents a study in contrast and ambivalence in both countries as well as between them. The border marks the collision of international boundaries--the beginning and end of nations as well as a merger of them. It composes a binational corridor and channel where currents of free trade, family ties, migration, cultural exchange, illegal firearms, and drug trafficking boil most actively in tandem. Cross-border perspectives and organizations that promote and share a sense of regional identity are, therefore, increasingly essential to a satisfactory working relationship between the United States and Mexico.

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 …

Pretrial Detention In The Ninth Circuit, Thomas Bak

San Diego Law Review

In 1992, the Judicial Conference of the United States ("JCUS") adopted a resolution encouraging the examination of bias based on race, ethnicity, gender, age and disability in the federal judiciary. The Ninth Circuit responded to the JCUS resolution with a study of gender bias, completed in 1993.2 Subsequently, the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference authorized a second study, establishing the Task Force on Racial, Religious, and Ethnic Fairness in 1993.' This study of pretrial detention in the Ninth Circuit was undertaken as part of the research commissioned by the Task Force.

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 …

Extraterritorial Application Of Antitrust Laws And The U.S.-Eu Dispute Over The Boeing And Mcdonnell Douglas Merger: From Comity To Conflict? An Argument For A Binding International Agreement On Antitrust Enforcement And Dispute Resolution

San Diego Law Review

Due to the increase of "mega-mergers" between corporations trying to compete in the global economy, cross-border regulation of mergers and acquisitions by both the United States and the European Union has become much more common. 5 Until recently, such reviews and regulatory acts by foreign regulators only rarely caused trade disputes or tensions in diplomatic relations.' In order to maintain cooperation and prevent serious disputes over regulation of each other's domestic corporations, the United States and the European Union entered into an agreement on the application of antitrust laws in 1991.

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 …

Nwca Information

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Understanding "Spirit" In The Writing Center, Lynn Briggs

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.

Review: The Writing Center Resource Manual, Peter Carino

The Writing Center Journal

No abstract provided.