Digital Commons Network^™

Solid Rock Physical Rehabilitation Center, Stephanie Louis

Architecture Theses

This thesis explores some possible answers to the question, “What is the correlation between physical, social, and emotional attributes?” The typology examined for this thesis is a physical rehabilitation facility. People’s physical, social, and emotional attributes and behaviors affect both them and the environment in which they inhabit on a daily basis. The Theoretical Premise/Unifying Idea which guides the research is, “The physical environment is changed because of the changes in the day to day behavior of people.” The Project Justification is, “People change others and the environment in ways they may not see and by ways they do not …

Preparation For Teaching In Urban Schools: Perceptions Of The Impact Of Traditional Preparation Programs, Crystal Timmons

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During 2 decades of debate about teacher preparation education practitioners and policymakers have called for a more skilled professional teaching force (Darling- Hammond, 2010). Of particular concern has been poverty’s impact on education -- specifically in struggling urban schools -- prompting legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which shifted funding formulas in an effort to directly target poor students and struggling schools (Talbert-Johnson, 2006). The major purpose of this study was to explore novice teachers’ (teachers in their second to fourth year of teaching) perceptions of their preparedness to teach in urban schools following completion of …

The Positive And Negative Effects Of Jealousy On Relationship Quality: A Meta-Analysis, Melissa Ann Newberry

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Several theories have been posited regarding the role of jealousy on romantic relationships. However, they differ in terms of predictions which when confirmed has resulted in conflicting results. One way to sort out mixed results is to conduct a meta-analysis. Thus, the current investigations conformed to a meta-analysis of studies wherein the association between jealousy and relationship quality had been examined. In the present investigation jealousy had a negative relationship with relationship quality. Type of jealousy experienced moderated the effect on relationships, with anxious jealousy having a stronger negative relationship. Future directions for research in the field of jealousy and …

Tales Of The Tribe Of Ishmael, Brian Siegel

Anthropology Publications

This is a history of the Tribe of Ishmael, a famous and the only urban cacogenic family in the American eugenics movement.

When The Supreme Court Came To Michigan, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

It is an arcane and curious chapter in the history of the federal courts. Under the terms of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the members of the Supreme Court of the United States were obligated to travel around the country and hear cases that were brought before the lower courts in their assigned circuits. This resulted in what the justices condemned as a "painful and improper situation. "

Service Innovation In The Non-Profit Sector, Gabriel Boon Siong Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Non-profit organisations are valued because they provide services that address unmet needs. Nonprofits who engage in social entrepreneurship augment their contributions through new services, programmes, enterprises and revenue generated. It is not surprising, therefore, for policy makers to encourage social entrepreneurship, service innovations and social enterprises. However, not all nonprofits seek to innovate by creating revenue-generating social enterprises. They may continue to devote themselves to specific fields and existing practices through other forms of service innovations instead. The intent of nonprofits in starting new services is investigated through a two-pronged quantitative and qualitative research approach.

In the quantitative section, a …

Discounts And Termination Of Close-End Funds, Chen Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Based on an extensive sample of U.S. closed end funds undergoing termination, this study offers a comprehensive analysis of closed end fund exiting behaviors. There are four ways for a fund to exit: merger into other closed-end fund, liquidation, conversion to open-end mutual fund and merger into open-end mutual fund. Closed-end funds that exit must choose the most efficient and optimal mechanisms corresponding to funds‟ characteristics and organizational forms. In this study, I find that closed-end funds exit optimally. First, funds with persistently larger discount and smaller size are more likely to exit and consistent with rational expectation, market incorporates …

Short-Selling Prior To Analyst Recommendations, Can Qu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper investigates short-selling five days prior to analyst recommendations by using a complete data set from Reg SHO database during January, 2005 to July, 2007. Empirical tests uncover the evidence that short-sellers significantly increase their short positions prior to negative analyst recommendations, which is consistent with the informed trading hypothesis. This finding is robust to model specification. Further, this paper also examines which of the two competing hypotheses-prediction and tipping-could better explain short-sellers’ informative front-running. The tests indicate that short-sellers use book-to-market ratio as a filter to narrow down their pool of candidates, while market capitalization doesn’t play a …

Firm And Industry Characteristics Of Exchange Rate Exposure And Optimal Hedging Strategy: Evidence On China, Fen Yan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Understanding the effect of foreign exchange rate movements on the value of firm is a critical element for the purpose of risk management. In this thesis, firm and industry specific exposures to exchange rate movements in the Chinese market before and after the exchange rate regime reform in 2005 are examined. We observe that at the one-week return horizon, among all the firms listed in the China Exchange Market before the year 2001, less than 10% of the firms exhibit significant "residual exposure" to bilateral exchange rate movements against China’s major trading partners before the reform. In contrast, the proportion …

Security And Performance Analysis For Rfid Protocols, Bing Liang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an advanced object identification technology that has already been applied in various industries. However, the insecure nature of the communication channel between readers and tags makes RFID systems vulnerable to various kinds of attacks. In recent years, many new methods have been proposed to improve the security of RFID systems, such as disabling tags, agent management and establishing cryptographic protocols. Among them, we focus on the last approach, which is more economic and convenient in certain cases. The first part of our work is to categorize typical existing RFID protocols according to their security levels. …

Why "Democracy" And "Drifter" Firms Can Have Abnormal Returns: The Joint Importance Of Corporate Governance And Abnormal Accruals In Separating Winners From Losers, Koon Boon Kee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Do managers exercise accounting discretion in an opportunistic or efficient manner? Good governance structures, which mitigate agency costs, are necessary to ensure that the accounting information supplied by management is not opportunistically manipulated. The output of quality accounting information, in turn, serves as an input to better governance structures. Thus, governance and earnings quality (EQ) are inexorably linked through a complementarity relationship. This suggests two previously unexamined relationships. Firstly, the governance effects on performance in the influential paper by Gompers, Ishii and Metrick (2003) is overrated without good EQ, measured by the magnitude of abnormal accruals (AA), as an input. …

Why Does Corporate Governance Matter? Evidence From Seasoned Bond Offerings, Fang Wang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

To examine the importance of corporate governance, I look at how management and investors behave in the event of seasoned bond offerings, controlling for the corporate governance structure of issuing firms. I find that companies with the weakest governance structure aggressively manipulate their earnings upwards during the two years prior to the debt issuances. And when the bond offerings are announced to the market, these same firms experienced positive abnormal returns over a three day event period, indicating that investors of poorly governed firms value a debt financing for the alleged decrease in agency cost.

Does Corporate Governance Matter, Evidence From Earnings Management Practices In Singapore, Lingxu Hu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This paper addresses two questions. First, do good corporate governance practices add values to company or does it lead to higher stock returns in Singapore? Second, does poorly governed listed company in SGX tend to manage their earnings by using discretionary accruals? Following the approach of Gompers et al. (2003), we formed two portfolios consisting of well-governed and poorly governed companies. Well governed companies are able to maintain a higher return relative to poorly governed companies. I also look at the firm valuation from the adoption of corporate governance practices. Our result shows a positive relationship between firm valuation and …

News Which Moves The Market: Assessing The Impact Of Published Financial News On The Stock Market, Yu Chiang Soon

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Recent years have seen a large increase in the volume of financial news available to investors daily. What has traditionally been restricted to print media has now evolved to include the internet and satellite television as important media sources for financial news. With this overwhelming flow of information available to investors, the impact of financial news on market prices is at best uncertain. In this paper, a computational text-scoring methodology will be employed to uncover behavioral responses by investors to negative news. The empirical methodology employed in this paper will consist of three parts. Firstly, through the General Inquirer (GI) …

Risk Response Strategies In The Supply Chain: Examining Attributes Of Stakeholders And Risk Attitude, Shu Jian Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Supply chain management is about managing flows of material, information and funds in a complex network of entities of suppliers, manufacturers, distributors and customers. Companies are now connected in this network as an extended enterprise and any company may be involved in more than one such extended enterprises. But, such a network of relationships is very much vulnerable to disruptions of all sorts ranging from internal to inter-firm and to external turbulences. Companies now need to be prepared for risks associated with their participation in the supply chain network. Not many works in the literature have used theories to study …

Ownership Structure, Financial Structure And R&D Investment: Evidence From Korean Firms, Yanghua Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Understanding factors that can enhance a firm‟s innovativeness is of critical concern in management research. Prior studies in strategy and financial economics have advanced our understanding of how resource allocation into innovation is shaped in a firm, mainly from the perspectives of ownership and financial structures. However, the extant literature is incomplete, because it treats ownership and financial structures as separate determinants, even though theoretical arguments and empirical evidences suggest that they are interdependent. This study investigates the determinants of firm‟s R&D investments by bridging ownership and financial structures. Ownerships held by inside and external owners are considered for ownership …

Procure Financing For Shipping By Auctions, Kekun Wu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

We study a risk management problem in the scenario of ship procurement. A shipping firm faces a certain financing pressure for the procurement of a new ship. On the other hand, the capacity of the ship excesses the demand requirement of the firm. The firm wants to reduce the payment and control the risk by selling a percentage of capacity to another shipping company. We introduce an auction mechanism for the firm to select the partner and determine the sharing percentage. Acting as the auctioneer, the firm announces a certain percentage of capacity to a set of buyers. The payment …

The Relationship Between Product And International Diversification: The Effect Of Asset Dispersion And Asset Diversity On Firm Performance, Yulia Muzyrya

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

There is little consensus on the diversification-performance relationship in the diversification literature. We aim to contribute to this literature by looking simultaneously at product and international diversification and the relationship between both. Furthermore, we distinguish theoretically and empirically between two different components of any diversification strategy, i.e. the degree of diversification and the type of diversification. We test our hypotheses on panel data covering 115 firms. We find that the dispersion of a firm’s activities, both internationally and in different product markets, results in higher levels of performance. Contrary, we find that higher levels in the diversity of the firm’s …

The Impact Of Employees' Perception Of Corporate Social Responsibility On Job Attitudes And Behaviors: A Study In China, Dan Zheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is regarded as voluntary bahaviors that contribute to the soceity welfare. Based on the concept of sustainable development, corporations should not only stress on their economic and business outcomes, but also pay attention to their effect on the society and environment. Corporations are expected to engage in the improvement of their employees' quality of life, as well as the well-being of employees' families, local communities, and the overall society. With the acceleration of global integration, CSR has become a main concern by the public, and is considered as an essential part of the business strategy. It …

Recent Theoretical Progress In Treating Electron Impact Ionization Of Molecules, Ola A. Al-Hagan, Chuangang Ning, Kate L. Nixon, Andrew James Murray, Christopher J. Colyer, Mark A. Stevenson, B. Lohmann, Don H. Madison

Physics Faculty Research & Creative Works

(e,2e) ionization differential cross sections are presented for several molecules. We will compare experimental results with theoretical calculations using the molecular three body distorted wave (M3DW) approximations for H ₂, N₂, H₂O and Formic Acid (FA) using better wave-function for the molecules than we had in previous works. Generally, good agreement is found between the M3DW approach and experiments.

Impedance Spectroscopy Of Batio₃ Cubes Suspended In Lossy Liquids As A Physical Model Of Two-Phase System, Piotr Z. Jasinski, Vladimir Petrovsky, Fatih Dogan

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Impedance spectroscopy techniques were used for analysis of the physical model in a two-phase system toward determining of dielectric constant of dielectric particles suspended in liquids at various solids loading (volume fraction) levels. Model experimental studies were conducted using BaTiO3 as a dielectric material that was prepared as small cubes of uniform size (2×2×1 mm). Barium titanate (BT) cubes having a dielectric constant of 3850 were immersed in liquids of low dielectric constant and moderate electrical conductivity. Measured impedance spectra consisted of two semicircles, which were fitted for (R∥C)(R∥C) equivalent circuit. The parameters obtained from fitting were compared with the …

System For Rapidly Boring Through Materials, W. A. Berger, J. A. Carter, C. Davey, Marian Mazurkiewicz, R. M. Pell, R. A. Spalletta

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The present invention is a self-contained, high-energy liquid rock-boring system that will bore a small-diameter access hole [5] several hundred meters through hard granite and other obstacles within minutes of deployment. It employs a land unit [100] platform subsystem [1000] with an energetic fluid fuel reservoir [1300] and a boring subsystem [3000] having a plurality of pulsejets [3100]. Each pulsejet [3100] repeatedly ignites the energetic fluid [7] causing a plurality of rapidly-expanding gas bubbles [3250] which create and force a plurality liquid slugs [10] ahead of them rapidly out through a nozzle [3260] causing the slugs [10] to impact against …

Characterization Of The Neutron Flux Spectrum At The Missouri University Of Science And Technology Research Reactor, Zachary Andrew Kulage

Masters Theses

"A new remotely accessible shielded cell is being constructed at the Missouri University of Science and Technology Research Reactor (MSTR). The heavily shielded cell will be able to receive highly irradiated specimens directly from the reactor and will be equipped with radiation-hardened cameras, remote manipulators and gamma spectroscopy. The cell will allow the manipulation and monitoring of highly activated specimens from both a workstation at the MSTR and at remote locations using a Webbased internet interface. The ability to access and control the shielded cell via a remote internet connection will make it useful to a wide variety of users. …

Fabrication Of A Memory Device Using Polyaniline Nanofibers And Gold Nanoparticles, Krunal R. Waghela

Masters Theses

"Fabrication of a memory device using one-step/one-pot synthesis for making a PANI (polyaniline)/Au nanocomposite is reported. Although various devices with horizontal and vertical electrode structures were made, the basic structure used consisted of a PANI/Au thin film sandwiched between two electrodes. The ratio of the current in the OFF state to the current in the ON state was seen to be as high as 5000. These devices showed a bistable behavior, which is typical of memory devices. The PANI/Au nanocomposite thin film was constructed right on the electrode using microfabrication techniques with ultraviolet irradiation. The fabrication techniques discussed in this …

Comparing The Chelating Abilities Of N-Acetylcysteine And N-Acetylcysteine Amide In Vitro For Lead Poisoning Treatment, Weiqing Chen

Masters Theses

"Lead poisoning is a perennial and serious health problem around the world. The daily widespread use of lead has dramatically increased the degree and longevity of its exposure to humans, exacerbating the task of lead poisoning treatment. Lead exerts adverse effects on cardiovascular, central nervous, renal, gastrointestinal, and reproductive systems. The common treatment for lead poisoning is chelation therapy. Chelators were proposed to treat lead poisoning a very long time ago. However, chelators have severe side effects that could cause more problems, in addition to lead poisoning. Therefore, another group of drugs has been suggested --- antioxidants. This type of …

Cloud Security Requirements Analysis And Security Policy Development Using A High-Order Object-Oriented Modeling Technique, Kenneth Kofi Fletcher

Masters Theses

"Security continues to be a major challenge for cloud computing, and it is one that must be addressed if cloud computing is to be fully accepted. Most technological means of securing non-cloud computing systems can be either applied directly or modified to secure a cloud; however, no integrated model-based methodology is yet available to analyze cloud security requirements and develop policy to deal with both internal and external security challenges. This work proposes just such a methodology and demonstrates its application with specific cases. Cloud assets are represented by high order object models, and misuse cases together with malactivity swimlane …

Power Distribution Network Inductance Calculation, Transient Current Measurement And Conductor Surface Roughness Extraction, Fan Zhou

Masters Theses

"The first part in the thesis discussed the modeling of the mid-frequency inductance for Zpp type plane pairs in power distribution networks (PDN). It is a key step for the placement of the decoupling capacitors. This paper gives an efficient approach for the calculation of the inductance for different capacitor placements. The PEEC based formulations takes advantage of the opposite currents in the planes. This leads to compute time reductions and memory savings for both the element calculation and the matrix solve step. A formulation is used where placement of capacitors leads to only small changes in the circuit matrix. …

A Hybrid Problem-Based And Just-In-Time Inductive Teaching Method For Failure Analysis Instruction, Ryan Michael Arlitt

Masters Theses

"When engineers retire, they take their expert knowledge with them. Preservation of this expert knowledge in a usable form is beneficial for the advancement of any engineering field. Risk in Early Design (RED) is one method for preserving expert risk analysis knowledge. The first purpose of this paper is to examine the usability of RED when incorporated with a hybrid problem-based and just-in-time inductive teaching method for failure analysis instruction. The second purpose of this paper is to propose and perform steps toward verification and validation of the RED methodology and implementation. Evaluation metrics were developed, and several of these …

Improving Rule 1: A Master Rule For The Federal Rules, Robert G. Bone

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

Refocusing Away From Rules Reform And Devoting More Attention To The Deciders, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.