Digital Commons Network^™

Adolescent Technology Usage During Sleep-Time: Does It Influence Their Quality Of Sleep, Attention Difficulties And Academic Performance?, Kristin Dehmler

Theses

Many adolescents use the Internet, cell phones, television, and computer and video games on a daily basis. Therefore, an important question for educators is: how is technology affecting adolescents' quality and quantity of sleep, their attention difficulties, and their academic performance? The purpose of the current project was to examine the relationships between adolescent self-reports of technology usage, sleep patterns, attention difficulties and academic achievement. Results indicated that nocturnal technology use has a negative impact on adolescents' quality and quantity of sleep. Furthermore both technology use in general and reported attention difficulties have a negative impact on adolescents' academic achievement. …

Website Compliance With Ethical Guidelines By Psychologists And Professional Counselors, Joseph Iii Yazvac

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is currently very little research investigating the ethical practice of e-therapy, and none that distinguishes between types of therapists in terms of their compliance with ethical codes pertaining to e-therapy. The American Psychological Association does not have ethical standards specific to the provision of e-therapy but the American Counseling Association does. The purpose of this study was to assess differences in ethical compliance for e-therapy websites sponsored by psychologists and e-therapy websites sponsored by professional counselors. Specific ethics codes for the practice of e-therapy of the American Counseling Association were used to generate an assessment instrument, which served as …

Project Management: A Simulation-Based Optimization Method For Dynamic Time-Cost Tradeoff Decisions, Radhamés A. Tolentino Pena

Theses

Project managers face difficult decisions with regard to completing projects on time and within the project budget. A successful project manager not only needs to assure that the project is completed, but also desires to make optimal use of resources and maximize the profitability of the project. The goal of this research is to address the time-cost tradeoff problem associated with selecting from among project activity alternatives under uncertainty. Specifically, activities that make up a project may have several alternatives each with an associated cost and stochastic duration. The final project cost is a result of the time and cost …

The Effects Of High Vibration On The Steam Turbo-Generator Machine Of The Unit B1 339 Mw In Thermal Power Plant “Kosovo B” : [Presented August 2009], Jonuz Saraci

Theses

This Capstone Project will address the analysis and diagnosis of the Steam Turbo-Generator (STG) vibration problems in the “Kosovo B” Thermal Power Plant (TPP) that are degrading the normal operations of the unit B1 339 MW. This Steam Turbo-Generator is a steam turbine directly connected to an electric generator for the generation of electric power and where unplanned shut downs can have catastrophic consequences for the production of electricity. The purpose of my analysis of the high level of vibrations in the STG-B1 machine is to extend the life of the machine and preventing any catastrophic failures. This implies not …

The Elimination Of Erosion Phenomena In The Main Cooling Water Pumps In Thermo Power Plant (Tpp) “Kosova B” : [Presentation Given October 7, 2009], Abedin Kabashi

Theses

This Capstone Project will address the erosion phenomena on the impeller blades of the main cooling water pumps in Thermal Power Plant (TPP) “Kosova B”. These are vertical mixed flow pumps and are part of the cooling system that play an important role in TPP “Kosova B”. In this investigation I will study the line between the cooling tower basin and the pumps intake. This line includes the pipe with a 2220 [mm] diameter through which the water, from the cooling tower basin, goes into the pumps intake. In fact we have two lines where one is for unit B1 …

Assessment Of A Proposed Project For Improving The Quality Of Industrial Water For The Thermal Power Plant - “Kosova B” : [Presentation Given May 20, 2009], Visar Beqiri

Theses

This Capstone Project will produce an implementation plan that addresses the problem of low industrial water quality from the water treatment plant (WTP) for use in the thermal power plant - “Kosova B” (TPP-KB) in Kosovo. The project will have special importance because the quality of water is one of the most dominant problems in the TPP-KB. The problem of low industrial water quality is due to an old WTP system and manually controlled water treatment process. Since water in thermal power plants is transformed into steam, low quality water produces low quality steam. Low quality of steam causes foliation …

The Role Of Information And Communication Technologies In Managing Transition And Sustaining Women's Health During Their Midlife Years, Julie Dare

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research has been motivated primarily by a desire to extend and enrich existing research on women’s uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to manage relationships, and access and construct social support during their transitional midlife years. In doing so, this research addresses a gap in the literature on women’s consumption of such technologies. Since the late 1980s, when several landmark studies investigated women’s use of the telephone, there has been little systematic evaluation of the degree to which newer communication technologies have become integrated into women’s communication practices.

Another key feature of this research is an examination of …

Law School And The Making Of The Student Into A Lawyer: Transformation Of First Year Law Students In The National University Of Singapore, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper examines the impact of legal education and law school on the student's moral development and conception of professional identity, through an empirical study of first year law students of the Class of 2010 at the National University of Singapore. The project aims to increase consciousness of how law school remakes students and develops the moral and professional identity of future lawyers, and to facilitate a dialogue that reshapes legal education to achieve its aims. Given that legal education in Singapore is similar to that in other law schools in common law jurisdictions, the analysis is, with allowances for …

Using Blogs As A Teaching Tool In Negotiation, Ian Macduff

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article reports on the experimental use of blogs as a teaching tool in a course on negotiation and mediation. The blogs were of two kinds: individual journal blogs accessible only by the student author and the course instructor, and a class or collective blog, accessible by all members of the course. The use of blogs builds on the familiar use of journals as a tool for reflection and personal review and adopts the technology of online communication with which the student body is increasingly familiar and comfortable. The article reports on the student response to this development and the …

Women's Magazine Editors: Story Tellers And Their Cultural Role, Kathryn Davies

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This is an ethnographic study of contemporary Australian women's magazine editors and their perceptions about their role and function within their workplaces, and, as creators of media products, within culture itself.

Factors That Influence The Decisions Parents Make When Choosing A Secondary School For Their Children, Rosemary Cahill

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The impetus for this portfolio is the accelerating drift of Australian school students from state-run, free government schools to fee-paying independent and/or Catholic schools within the non-government sector. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data show that between 1996 and 2006, student enrolments in non-government schools grew by 21.5% compared with 1.2% in government schools (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2007). In this portfolio, a sociological lens reflective of the pragmatic paradigm is applied to the question of school choice in order to understand parents' thinking behind the choices they are making and, moving forward, how the funding and governance of …

Organisational Effectiveness In Selected Grass Roots Sport Clubs In Western Australia, Elissa J. Burton

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Grass roots sport clubs are the foundation for sport in Australia, they cater for mass participation across all ages and are predominantly managed by volunteers. The benefits of being involved in sport and in particular a sport club, both from a health and social capital perspective are well documented (Houlihan & Green, 2006; Hoye & Nicholson, 2008; Stewart, Nicholson, Smith, & Westerbeek, 2004). Australian governments at every level, provide funding for sport to support these benefits and often directly to sport clubs. Yet there is little published research on what makes a grass roots sport club effective (Koski, 1995), particularly …

A Comparison Of Development Times For Protophormia Terraenovae (R-D) Reared On Different Food Substrates, J.-A. Warren, G. S. Anderson

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Experiments were conducted to determine whether a specific larval substrate impacted immature development rates. Protophormia terraenovae was raised on beef organs and compared with whole carcasses (rat), to determine if discrepancies in development times were observed. The minimum development time on beef liver was the most consistent with the rat carcass but a significant difference between all substrates was found after the third instar. These differences can be explained by the differences found between heart and muscle and the other substrates. Often length of the larvae is used to estimate insect age and so Day 2 measuring of weight, length, …

A Framing Analysis Of Al-Jazeera's Coverage Of The Palestinian Fatah-Hamas Conflict., Mohammed Z. Abou Ramadan

Master's Theses

By utilizing both framing and descriptive analysis, this study examined how an Arab media outlet, Al-Jazeera, with an increasingly global reach framed the Palestinian-Palestinian conflict. The 2006 Palestinian legislative elections and the 2007 fall-of-Gaza under the control of Hamas were two critical Palestinian events that warranted an examination of how coverage of these two periods was framed. Thirty frames were found in Al-Jazeera's coverage of the two mentioned critical events. These frames were categorized into seven major sets of frames. The civil war and the politics' sets of frames dominated Al-Jazeera's coverage in the fall-of-Gaza period, and the elections and …

Caring For Orphans In The Pilgrim Wesleyan Church Of Zambia, Alfred Mateyo Kalembo

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Defining Health Law Or The Edgewood Syndrome, Paula Lobato De Faria, Wendy K. Mariner, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The authors' main purpose is to present ideas on defining Health Law by highlighting the particularities of the field of Health Law as well as of the teaching of this legal branch, hoping to contribute to the maturity and academic recognition of Health Law, not only as a very rich legal field but also as a powerful social instrument in the fulfillment of fundamental human rights. The authors defend that Health Law has several characteristics that distinguish it from traditional branches of law such as its complexity and multidisciplinary nature. The study of Health Law normally covers issues such as …

Layering, Aimee Pickett

Theses

It is my belief that furniture has the potential to store worlds. It can protect the china inherited from a grandmother. It can display porcelain bowls collected on a trip through Asia. It can bear the scratches from a pet, or carry the hallmarks of its previous owner. These are merely a few examples of how furniture can store personal history. In the same vein, I believe that a piece of furniture has the potential to become a metaphor of oneself through daily interaction. Ideally what is chosen for a home reflects one self, and as a result each home …

Inside All-Optical Networks, Sana Tariq

Theses

Imagine a world where lightning speed Internet is as common as telephones today. Imagine when light, the fastest moving thing in the universe, is the signal-carrying transport medium. Imagine when bandwidth no more remains a constraint for any application. Imagine when imagination is the only limit! This all can be made possible with only one technology and that is optical communication. Optical networks have thus far provided a realization to a greater extent to the unlimited bandwidth dreams of this era, but as the demands are increasing, the electro-optic conversions seem to become bottlenecks in blended optical networks. The only …

Content-Based Addressing In Hierarchical Distributed Hash Tables, Joseph Srebro

Theses

Peer-to-peer networks have drawn their strength from their ability to operate functionally without the use of a central agent. In recent years the development of the structured peer-to-peer network has further increased the distributed nature of p2p systems. These networks take advantage of an underlying distributed data structure, a common one is the distributed hash table (DHT). These peers use this structure to act as equals in a network, sharing the same responsibilities of maintaining and contributing. But herein lays the problem, not all peers are equal in terms of resources and power. And with no central agent to monitor …

Securing Location Discovery In Wireless Sensor Networks, Wisam F. Kadhim

Theses

Providing security for wireless sensor networks in hostile environments has a significant importance. Resilience against malicious attacks during the process of location discovery has an increasing need. There are many applications that rely on sensor nodes' locations to be accurate in order to function correctly. The need to provide secure, attack resistant location discovery schemes has become a challenging research topic. In this thesis, location discovery techniques are discussed and the security threats and attacks are explained. I also present current secure location discovery schemes which are developed for range-based location discovery. The thesis goal is to develop a secure …

A Framework For Data Decay In Client-Server Model, Matthew Taber

Theses

Data breach incidents are a growing concern in both the private and public sector. As an increasing amount of sensitive information is made available through information systems, the number of occurrences and the potential damage as a result of these breaches will continue to expand. There is a clear need for a framework to mitigate the dangers of leaking data while simultaneously allowing authorized individuals to gain access to necessary information. This thesis presents the concept of data decay, applied to a client-server model for retrieval of sensitive data. In this framework, files tagged by the framework and stored on …

The Impact Of Sovereign Wealth Funds On The Regulation Of Foreign Direct Investment In Strategic Industries: A Comparative View, Maya Steinitz, Michael Ingrassia

Faculty Scholarship

Investments by sovereign wealth funds ('SWFs') - pools of capital accumulated by and under the control of sovereign states, mostly from the Persian Gulf and East Asia - in European and North American companies have changed dramatically both in scope and in nature in the last few years. In terms of scope, SWFs are estimated to currently control USD$2-3 trillion in assets - more than all hedge funds and private equity funds combined - and within the next five years, they are expected to direct USD$6-10 trillion in assets.' In terms of the nature of the investments made, these funds …

Mobile Web Resource Tracking During A Disaster Or Crisis Situation, Phavanhna Douangboupha

Theses

This paper proposes a prototype solution for a mobile web resource tracking system using mobile devices during an emergency situation. The system provides real time data to a decision maker so that he/she can effectively and efficiently monitor resources and assess the situation accordingly. Mobile devices (i.e., smart phones) support the ease of use for any location and at anytime. The Internet technology is selected to enable multiple or cross platform technology solutions for different mobile devices. Resources in the scope of this project are human resources (e.g., a doctor, a police officer) and a chemical list in a room. …

Scientific Visualizations, Nick Kochakian

Theses

Visualizations for three different categories of problems are presented: measurements of object parameters as they vary over time, constructing surfaces from unorganized sets of points, and representing the internal structure of volumes using isosurfaces. Problem backgrounds are discussed as well as the operational details of each visualization. Visualizations were written with ease of use in mind for Spiegel, a programmable visualization environment.

Towards Virtual Machine Integrity Using Introspection, Sammy Lin

Theses

The Integrity Measurements Architecture (IMA) provides attestation and integrity for Linux hosts. But what if an administrator wants to provide IMA functionality to an older (non-IMA capable) or a non Linux-based OS? If the system is deployed on top of a hypervisor, IMA functionality can be provided at the hypervisor level. This paper applies Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) to provide IMA functionality to virtualized guest OSes. We implement a proof of concept library (using a shallow shadow filesystem) and integrate it with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. The modifications provide the Linux host OS the ability to see when …

Data Center Design & Enterprise Networking, Christian Mahood

Theses

Today’s enterprise networks and data centers have become very complex and have completely integrated themselves into every facet of their represented organization. Organizations require Internet facing services and applications to be available at any part of the day or night. These organizations have realized that with centralized computing and highly available components, their technological presence with customers can be greatly enhanced. The creation of an infrastructure supporting such high availability takes numerous components and resources to function optimally. When an organization makes the decision to design a data center, they utilize resources to provide insight into what components to deploy. …

Hierarchical Task Allocation In Robotic Exploration, John Hawley

Theses

Autonomous robotic exploration has long been a topic of interest in robotics research. Robotic exploration promises the ability to explore otherwise unreachable or hostile environments. Autonomous exploration is particularly useful in distant or hostile environments in which real-time communication with a human controller may not be practical, such as deep sea or planetary exploration. In order to more effectively explore a large unknown area, multiple robots may be employed to work cooperatively. While cooperation among multiple robots allows for increased exploration potential, it also entails significantly more complex planning. This complex planning involves allocation of exploration tasks to the robots …

Vibrational Control Of Chaos In Artificial Neural Networks, Ralph Bean

Theses

Neural networks with chaotic baseline behavior are interesting for their experimental bases in both biological relevancy and engineering applicability. In the engineering case, the literature still lacks a robust study of the interrelationship between particular chaotic baseline network dynamics and 'online' or 'driving' inputs. We ask the question, for a particular neural network with chaotic baseline behavior, what periodic inputs of minimal magnitude have a stabilizing effect on network dynamics? A genetic algorithm is developed for the task. A systematic comparison of different genetic operators is carried out where each operator-combination is ranked by the optimality of solutions found. The …

Improving Dodgson Scoring Techniques, Jason A. Covey

Theses

The Dodgson score problem is part of the Dodgson election scheme invented by Charles Dodgson and presented in his manuscript. One of the system's strengths (and motivations for its study) is that it satisfies the Condorcet criterion (which states that any candidate who defeats all other candidates in pairwise elections will be declared the winner). It is unfortunate, though, that in a given election no Condorcet winner may exist. Dodgson's election system chooses the winner "closest" to being the Condorcet winner in the sense that it requires the shortest sequence of edits (swapping of adjacent candidates in the voters' preference …

Assessing Instructional Strategies At Barbados Community College Hospitality Institute In A Dynamic Global Environment, Juiann Young-Lovell

Theses

Today, there are educational institutions whose offerings highlight the value of a blended learning experience. Such organizations design their curricula to enhance students' knowledge, skills and attitudes. These institutions integrate several elements into the learning experience. The subject mater is taught, provision is made for students to practice and this all takes place in the traditional or virtual classroom or in a real world setting. Instructional practice is the bridge between the student and the teacher. At the Barbados Community College Hospitality Institute (BCCHI), there is no evidence that the faculty has conducted formal assessment of the organisation's instructional practices …