Digital Commons Network^™

From Canter To Cantor: Negotiating Constraints, And The Perceptions Of Elitism In Serious Leisure Pursuits : The Experiences Of A High Performing Athlete And Artist, Lorraine O'Neill

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Everyone experiences leisure differently but, for people who excel in a chosen field, a hobby can become a serious goal-oriented leisure pursuit. Many talented people, however, fail to reach their leisure goals due to constraints. This study explored individual life experiences of serious leisure participants. It focused on the lived experiences of individual event [horse] riders and opera singers who successfully negotiated their constraints, enabling them to reach their high performance goals.

The purpose of this study was to explore positive personal strategies that individuals used to negotiate constraints in serious leisure. This was done by exploring intrapersonal, interpersonal and …

Conceptualising Bullying In An Aboriginal Context As Reported By The Yamaji Community, To Inform The Development Of A Bullying Prevention Program That Is Culturally Sensitive To The Needs Of Aboriginal Students, Juli Coffin

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The Solid Kids Solid Schools project aimed to capture the unheard voices of Aboriginal children and community members on the issues surrounding ‘bullying’. In an Aboriginal context bullying is different and the outcomes are different, yet mainstream programs are utilized to combat the issue. We need to know how bullying is different for Aboriginal children and young people, why it is different and what does this difference mean in terms of addressing this issue in a school and community setting? A community based steering group guided the direction of this study and the larger Solid Kids Solid Schools project. Snowball …

Learning A Foreign Language With A Collaborative Web-Based Task, Processes And Performances. Apprendre Une Langue Étrangère À Partir D'Une Tâche Collaborative Sur Internet : Processus Et Performances, Frédérique Penilla

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Within language teaching and learning, tasks have been advocated for use as they are thought to set up ideal conditions for language acquisition to occur. With the emergence of the Internet in the last decade, and the deployment of technology in schools, Web-based tasks, referred to as Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) are being used by an increasing number of teachers. Teachers who employ Web-based tasks in their classrooms, commonly set these up so that learners complete them in a collaborative mode. This requires learners engaging in a process of task negotiation and, at times, task redefinition, which in turn requires …

Functional Coefficient Estimation With Both Categorical And Continuous Data, Liangjun Su, Ye Chen, Aman Ullah

Research Collection School Of Economics

We propose a local linear functional coefficient estimator that admits a mix of discrete and continuous data for stationary time series. Under weak conditions our estimator is asymptotically normally distributed. A small set of simulation studies is carried out to illustrate the finite sample performance of our estimator. As an application, we estimate a wage determination function that explicitly allows the return to education to depend on other variables. We find evidence of the complex interacting patterns among the regressors in the wage equation, such as increasing returns to education when experience is very low, high return to education for …

Personal Exposure Of Children To Formaldehyde In Perth, Western Australia, Victoria S. Lazenby

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Formaldehyde is a common air pollutant that tends to be found in elevated concentrations in indoor air. Exposure to formaldehyde has the potential to impact on respiratory health, particularly amongst sensitive individuals and populations, including children. Children spend most of their time indoors at home, however, there are very little data on the contribution of formaldehyde concentrations in homes to personal exposure in children. The principal aim of this cross sectional study was to investigate whether the domestic environment is the most significant source of personal exposure of formaldehyde in children. Forty-one primary school children (aged between 8 and 12) …

The New International Arbitration (Amendment) Bill – A Broader Framework For Interim Relief Or Just A Tune-Up?, Mahdev Mohan, Eu-Yen Tay

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore aspires to retain its place as a trusted arbitration hub for commercial parties all around the world. The recently proposed amendments to the International Arbitration Act seek to bring Singapore closer to meeting international standards in relation to the arbitration procedure. While the initiative should be applauded, those amendments relating to interim measures fall somewhat short of expectations of a new, broader framework of curial assistance in aid of arbitration. This article explores the uncertainties that could arise from the proposed amendments, either because of phrasing or of an omission to embrace the Model Law. It is hoped that …

Taking Justice Into Your Own Hand: The Tbi Mechanism In China, Henry Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

To protect the trade interests of their firms in foreign markets, several countries have established various institutional arrangements. For example, the United States has the section 301 procedure, while the EU has the Trade Barrier Regulation (TBR). Learning from their experiences, China also established its own Foreign Trade Barrier Investigation (TBI) mechanism in 2002. This article starts with a discussion on the background for its establishment as well as the substantive and procedural requirements for investigations under TBI. In the next part, the article discusses how TBI has worked in practice by reviewing the Japan – Quantitative Restrictions on Laver …

Agency And Partnership Law [2009], Pearlie Koh, Stephen Bull

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The laws relating to the creation of an agency, implied authority, holding out and apparent authority, duties of the agent in relation to Agency law are discussed. The laws relating to partnership law and issues such as relationship of partners to third parties, relationships of partners between themselves and capacity to be a partner are highlighted.

Evaluating The Impact Of The Un Convention On The Use Of Electronic Communications In International Contracts On Domestic Contract Law: The Singapore Example, Eliza Mik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (CUECIC or Convention) was adopted on 23 November 2005. Its essential objective is to establish uniform rules intended to “remove obstacles to the use of electronic communications in international contracts, including obstacles that might result from the operation of existing international trade law instruments, with a view to enhancing legal certainty and commercial predictability.” The Convention relies on the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (MLEC), which constitutes an e-commerce flagship project dating back to 1995. It also resembles UNCITRAL’s Convention …

Notice Of Assignment And Discharge By Performance, Chee Ho Tham

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Notice plays an important role in the equitable assignment of legal choses in action, such as a contractual debt. As noted in a recent treatise, once the debtor is given notice of the equitable assignment: (i) should she pay the sum owed to her creditor, she is not discharged from her obligation but will have to make payment again to the assignee [the 'no discharge after notice' rule]; (ii) the assignee’s right against the debtor has priority against subsequent assignments by the assignor, in order of precedence of notice [the rule as to priorities]; and (iii) the debtor is no …

Testing Linearity In Cointegrating Relations With An Application To Purchasing Power Parity, Seong Hyun Hong, Peter C. B. Phillips

Research Collection School Of Economics

This article shows that when applied to nonstationary time series, the conventional Regression Error Specification Test (RESET) leads to severe size distortion and its asymptotic distribution involves a mixture of noncentral chi(2) distributions. Nonstationarity introduces bias terms in the limit distribution, and appropriate corrections for the bias are presented leading to a modified RESET test that has a central chi(2) limit distribution. In simulations, this modified test is shown to have power not only against nonlinear cointegration but also against the absence of cointegration. In an empirical illustration, the linear purchasing power parity (PPP) specification is tested using five Organization …

The Constructive Trust In Singapore: Five Persistent Puzzles, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This paper investigates some persistent difficulties surrounding the constructive trust. The five persistent puzzles relating to the constructive trust that are considered in this paper are: the terminology puzzle, the institutional and remedial puzzle, the explanatory puzzle, the bankruptcy puzzle and the Torrens puzzle. It is the author’s thesis that these five enduring puzzles must be addressed and ultimately unravelled in order to ensure the coherent development of the law in this area.

Oxygen And Carbon Dioxide Transmission Rates In Mineral Oil And Carnuba Wax-Based Fruit Coatings., Eva Grace Quejadas Parcon

Undergraduate Theses

Two types of fruit coatings (mineral oil and carnauba wax-based) were used to determine the effect of temperature and formulation on the O2 and CO2 transmission rates (O2TR and CO2TR). In the study, polyethylene (PE) film was used as the carrier film for the two coatings. The samples were tested under three different temperatures (10oC, 15oC and 25 oC). The O2TR and CO2TR were calculated from Moyls (1992) Exponential Decay method of Gas Transmission Rate of Films. Based on the computed values, O2TR was slowest in carnauba wax-based coating with 233.2mL/m2 hr while CO2TR was slowest in PE film having …

Bilingual Spanish-English Speaking 4-Year-Old-Children: English Normative Data And Correlations With Parent Reports, Brooke Leann Powers

Dissertations and Theses

Many bilingual Spanish-English preschool aged children are impacted by speech sound disorders; and research has shown that bilingual speech sound systems develop differently than monolinguals'. Research has also shown that, for monolingual English and Spanish speakers, parent reports can be a valid tool for identification and single-word assessments can effectively diagnose speech disorder, yet little, if any, normative data or information about the validity of parent reports as an identification tool exists for bilingual Spanish-English speakers. The purpose of the present study was to create bilingual speech normative data for English single-word assessment scores for percent consonants correct (PCC), percent …

The Development Of Embedded Dram Statistical Quality Models At Test And Use Conditions, Satoshi Suzuki

Dissertations and Theses

Today, the use of embedded Dynamic Random Access Memory (eDRAM) is increasing in our electronics that require large memories, such as gaming consoles and computer network routers. Unlike external DRAMs, eDRAMs are embedded inside ASICs for faster read and write operations. Until recently, eDRAMs required high manufacturing cost. Present process technology developments enabled the manufacturing of eDRAM at competitive costs. Unlike SRAM, eDRAM exhibits retention time bit fails from defects and capacitor leakage current. This retention time fail causes memory bits to lose stored values before refresh. Also, a small portion of the memory bits are known to fail at …

Genetic Patterns Of Dispersal And Colonization During Initial Invasion And Spread Of An Invasive Grass, Brachypodium Sylvaticum, Alisa Paulsen Ramakrishnan

Dissertations and Theses

Evolution of genotypes during range expansion is driven in part by colonization dynamics. I investigated genetic patterns of colonization and dispersal during initial expansion of an invasive bunchgrass, Brachypodium sylvaticum, into Oregon. Using microsatellite markers, I sampled plants at two different scales: at regular intervals along three parallel roads spanning about 30km, and in populations identified throughout Oregon. I also collected field-generated progeny from a subset of populations and used molecular identification of outcrossing events to estimate selfing rates in both central and peripheral populations. Dispersal patterns were similar at both scales, with non-contiguous dispersal responsible for colonization of new …

Achieving Congruence: Building A Case For Implementing A District-Wide Interim Benchmark Assessment That Is Aligned With A Balanced Literacy Framework, Theodore Feller

Dissertations and Theses

For generations--and certainly for the last 30 years--proponents of traditional and progressive philosophies have argued over how best to educate our children. Although this debate is often carried out in the political and academic spheres, the difficulties created by not being able to resolve the differences between the two belief systems become blatantly clear in the pedagogy of early literacy. On the one hand, traditionalists argue for a direct and explicit instructional methodology, and on the other hand, progressives advocate for Whole Language or Balanced Literacy instruction. The classroom often becomes a battlefield as advocates of these opposing schooling paradigms …

Comparison Of Microshear Bond Strength And Morphological Changes Between Active And Passive Application Of 4th Generation Etch-And-Rinse Etchant On Enamel, Sophia Tuyet-Nhi Trieu

Dissertations and Theses

Over 200 million dental restorations are performed each year in America. A dental restoration require a strong bonding of restoration to tooth structure and relies on the dental adhesive to create this mechanical and chemical bonding. Dental adhesion or bonding is the process of forming an adhesive joint between the composite and tooth substrate: dentin or enamel. Clinical problems such as microleakage at the restoration tooth interface, influx of fluids, or bacteria growth at the cavity wall can be prevented with adhesives that obtain a more intimate bonding. Longevity of the restoration can be enhanced by the adhesive that creates …

A Comparison Of Single Word Identification, Connected Speech Samples, And Imitated Sentence Tasks For Assessment Of Children With A Ssd, Emily Katherine Snyder

Dissertations and Theses

Speech-language pathologists are constantly trying to use the most efficient and effective assessments to obtain information about the phonetic inventory, speech sound errors, and phonological error patterns of children who are suspected of having a speech sound disorder. These assessments may involve a standardized measure of single words and/or sentences and a non standardized measure, such as a spontaneous speech sample. While research has shown both of these types of assessments to give clinicians information about a child's speech production abilities, the use of delayed imitation tasks, either words or sentences, has not been a widely studied topic and has …

Characterization Of Novel Functions And Topologies In Rna, Aaron Steven Burton

Dissertations and Theses

The RNA World hypothesis describes a period of time during the origins of life in which RNA molecules performed all catalysis and were the only form of information storage. A great deal of evidence has been obtained in support of this hypothesis, however a few key demonstrations are lacking. The first demonstration is of a molecule capable of self-replication that could have plausibly arisen from the prebiotic soup. Previously in the Lehman Laboratory, a 198-nucleotide RNA was discovered that could be fragmented into as many as four pieces ranging from 39 - 63 nucleotides in length. When these pieces were …

Cyclic Behavior Of Screen Grid Insulated Concrete Form Components, Carl Scott Werner

Dissertations and Theses

The principle of sustainability in the built environment has become much more significant in the past decade, resulting in a push to develop building systems that are more energy efficient, durable, and use fewer natural resources. For residential and light commercial buildings, insulated concrete forms (ICF) have enjoyed increasing popularity for their ability to meet these new demands. ICFs are a stay-in-place concrete formwork system for building structural walls that are also highly insulated, among other benefits. Screen-grid ICFs (SGICF) are a small subset of ICFs that tend to use less concrete than standard ICFs and are sometimes made of …

Child Welfare Workforce Turnover: Frontline Workers' Experiences With Organizational Culture And Climate, And Implications For Organizational Practice, Melanie Dawn Sage

Dissertations and Theses

Public child welfare agencies experience front line worker turnover rates as high as 25% a year. Worker turnover has significant financial costs to agencies, and has been linked to negative outcomes for children in care. Prior research has linked organizational factors, such as organizational climate, culture, and supervisor satisfaction, to turnover intent in child welfare populations. This research uses an empowerment framework to turn to workers directly to answer the question, "What are the organizational factors that lead frontline child welfare workers to stay or leave the agency, and what, then, are the implications for agency administrators?" This study relies …

Synthesis Of Reversible Functions Using Various Gate Libraries And Design Specifications, Nouraddin Alhagi

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation is devoted to efficient automated logic synthesis of reversible circuits using various gate types and initial specifications. These Reversible circuits are of interest to several modern technologies, including Nanotechnology, Quantum computing, Quantum Dot Cellular Automata, Optical computing and low power adiabatic CMOS, but so far the most important practical application of reversible circuits is in quantum computing. Logic synthesis methodologies for reversible circuits are very different than those for classical CMOS or other technologies. The focus of this dissertation is on synthesis of reversible (permutative) binary circuits. It is not related to general unitary circuits that are used …

The Design Of A Novel Tip Enhanced Near-Field Scanning Probe Microscope For Ultra-High Resolution Optical Imaging, Derek Brant Nowak

Dissertations and Theses

Traditional light microscopy suffers from the diffraction limit, which limits the spatial resolution to λ/2. The current trend in optical microscopy is the development of techniques to bypass the diffraction limit. Resolutions below 40 nm will make it possible to probe biological systems by imaging the interactions between single molecules and cell membranes. These resolutions will allow for the development of improved drug delivery mechanisms by increasing our understanding of how chemical communication within a cell occurs. The materials sciences would also benefit from these high resolutions. Nanomaterials can be analyzed with Raman spectroscopy for molecular and atomic bond information, …

Modeling Terahertz Diffuse Scattering From Granular Media Using Radiative Transfer Theory, Kyung Moon Nam

Dissertations and Theses

Terahertz (THz) spectroscopy can potentially be used to probe and characterize inhomogeneous materials, however spectroscopic identification of such materials from spectral features of diffuse returns is a relatively underdeveloped area of study. In this thesis, diffuse THz scattering from granular media is modeled by applying radiative transfer (RT) theory for the first time in THz sensing. Both classical RT theory and dense media radiative transfer (DMRT) theory based on the quasi-crystalline approximation (QCA) are used to calculate diffuse scattered intensity. The numerical solutions of the vector radiative transfer equations (VRTE) were coded and calculated in MATLAB. The diffuse scattered field …

Anatomy Of Mishima's Most Successful Play Rokumeikan, Mami Harano

Dissertations and Theses

Mishima Yukio premiered the play Rokumeikan in 1956 and published it in 1957. For more than half a century, this play has been praised as one of the finest Japanese plays in the Post-War period. Rokumeikan is a multi-act tragic melodrama, set in 1886 (Meiji Period) in the Rokumeikan building. The play intertwines complex political cabals, intense loves and hatreds, and multiple deceptions embodying the conflict between political power and love. This essay explores the reasons why Rokumeikan has maintained its popularity over its fifty year long performance history and examines the critical reception of the play. My analysis of …

Between Non-Intervention And Protection: A Study On The Case Of Darfur And The Responsibility To Protect, David Ryan Lucas

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores the obstacles in establishing a consistent and effective response framework for humanitarian catastrophe and the importance of maintaining a sustained dialogue to this end. It does so by recognizing the underlying conflict between two positions: the norm of non-intervention of states into the affairs of others, and the protection of individuals caught in the middle of violent conflict. The importance of working towards a resolution of this conflict is illustrated through the case study of Darfur, where a divided international community led an insufficient response to the crisis that can ultimately be judged as a failure. Lastly, …

Transformative Teacher Evaluation: Self Evaluation For High Performing Teachers, Carla Ann Sosanya-Tellez

Dissertations and Theses

Public schools are in crisis, as educators and legislators seek to provide high quality education to diverse students in a measurement-driven environment. The public educator's moral imperative is to assure that all children are literate when they leave school so they can thrive in our democracy (Dewey, 1944; Freire, 1998a; Giroux & Giroux, 2004). Yet, the achievement gap persists, as poor African-American and Latino students under-perform as compared to white middle-class students (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Additionally, public school teachers are predominately middle-class and White, while they teach increasingly diverse children of poverty. In legislation, student assessment, teacher licensure, and …

Symmetric Near-Field Probe Design And Comparison To Asymmetric Probes, Jeffrey Jon Doughty

Dissertations and Theses

Tip Enhanced Near-field Optical Microscopy (TENOM) is a method for optically imaging at resolutions far below the diffraction limit. This technique requires optical nano-probes with very specialized geometries, in order to obtain large, localized enhancements of the electromagnetic field, which is the driver behind this imaging method. Traditional methods for the fabrication of these nano-probes involve electrochemical etching and subsequent FIB milling. However, this milling process is non-trivial, requiring multiple cuts on each probe. This requires multiple rotations of the probe within the FIB system, which may not be possible in all systems, meaning the sample must be removed from …

Stochastic Orders In Heterogeneous Samples With Applications, Maochao Xu

Dissertations and Theses

The statistics literature has mostly focused on the case when the data available is in the form of a random sample. In many cases, the observations are not identically distributed. Such samples are called heterogeneous samples. The study of heterogeneous samples is of great interest in many areas, such as statistics, econometrics, reliability engineering, operation research and risk analysis.

Stochastic orders between probability distributions is a widely studied concept. There are several kinds of stochastic orders that are used to compare different aspects of probability distributions like location, variability, skewness, dependence, etc.

In this dissertation, most of the work is …