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The Impact Of No Child Left Behind (Nclb) On School Achievement And Accountability, Glenn Maleyko

Wayne State University Dissertations

Spurred by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, virtually every educational reform program now includes an accountability component that requires sound data collection and reporting (NCLB, 2002, section 101). Drawing from empirically based and theoretical literature in the field, this dissertation examines Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and the accountability provisions found in Title One of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reform. States have the ability to statistically manipulate their AYP implementation, which may give a false impression to the public that AYP is a consistent measure of school effectiveness across the country. The literature review (which was …

Effective Semantic-Based Keyword Search Over Relational Databases For Knowledge Discovery, Sina Fakhraee

Wayne State University Dissertations

Keyword-based search has been popularized by Internet web search engines such as Google which is the most commonly used search engine to locate the information on the web. On the other hand while traditional database management systems offer powerful query languages such as SQL, they do not provide keyword-based search similar to the one provided by web search engines. The current amount of text data in relational databases is massive and is growing fast. This increases the importance and need for non-technical users to be able to search for such information using simple keyword search just as how they would …

Linear And Non-Linear Deformations Of A Wind Turbine Blade Considering Warping And All Aeroelastic Load Couplings, Fouad Mohammad Mohammad

Wayne State University Dissertations

The structural dynamics behavior of the blade of a horizontal axis wind turbine that reacts to the different components of the aerodynamic loading were studied by many researchers using different approaches and assumptions. In the present research, the author considered all the extensional, torsional and flexural loadings acting on the blade with their couplings, variable airfoil cross sections with warping effects, shear deflection, rotary inertia and with or without blade's pretwist for both the linear small deformation case and the nonlinear large deformation case. To the best knowledge of the author the simultaneous inclusion of all these factors has not …

Making Mathematics Matter: Professional Development Improving Outcomes In High-Poverty Environments, Carolyn A. Siebers

Wayne State University Dissertations

This research study is a mixed – methods quantitative and qualitative study that analyzed data from an intensive, long – term professional development project named, " Project : Making Mathematics Matter. (PM³) " carried out in two low – performing, high – poverty districts. Two of the districts served as treatment districts and ALL teachers (general education, special education, ELL) who taught mathematics to students in grades 4-8 participated in a four-year PM³ mathematical intervention.

Three elements identified in the research as effective components in mathematics professional development served as foundational for this project. They were: teachers …

The Mental Model Comparison Of Expert And Novice Performance Improvement Practitioners, Sacip Toker

Wayne State University Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to reveal performance improvement practitioner expert and novice mental models and identify differences and similarities between these models. The secondary purpose was to analyze the potential relationships of the professional profile characteristics of performance improvement practitioners with their mental model of expertise derived from Pathfinder scaling algorithm. The study was stemmed from one of the critical research trends in the field of Human Performance Technology (HPT).

There are two phases of the study. In the first round of the first phase, experts, who were selected based on several criteria, were contacted to identify …

Examining The Factors Of A Technology Professional Development Intervention, Kelly L. Unger

Wayne State University Dissertations

In response to the ever increasing demand to compete in a global economy, the United States needs to prepare its students with the appropriate technical knowledge and communication skills to be competitive in the 21st century (Watson, 2007). Students must begin utilizing current technology tools during their K-12 educational experience and online learning can assist students with developing these skills. Teachers with online technology skills and equipped with effective pedagogical strategies for teaching in an online environment are the keys to achieving this goal. To ensure teachers are keeping pace with changing teaching and learning environments, and effectively utilizing new …

Changing The Way We Build Games: A Design-Based Research Study Examining The Implementation Of Homemade Powerpoint Games In The Classroom, Jason Paul Siko

Wayne State University Dissertations

This design-based research study examined the effects of a game design project on student test performance, with refinements made to the implementation after each of the three iterations of the study. The changes to the implementation over the three iterations were based on the literature for the three justifications for the use of homemade PowerPoint games in the classroom: constructionism, microthemes, and question writing. A review of the literature for the justifications found that the game project, as implemented in previous studies using homemade PowerPoint games, did not align well with the justifications. After three iterations of the study, students …

Estimating The Efficiency Of Michigan's Rural And Urban Public School Districts, Rita Ann Maranowski

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study examined student achievement in Michigan public school districts to determine if rural school districts are demonstrating greater financial efficiency by producing higher levels of student achievement than school districts in other geographic locations with similar socioeconomics. Three models were developed using multiple regression analysis of student achievement for high school graduation rates and student proficiency rates for eleventh grade students in mathematics and English language arts as reported from the Michigan Merit Examination results. These models compared student achievement by geographic location which included a selection of 10 independent variables and a sample size of 496 Michigan public …

Robustness Of The Achievable Benchmark Of Care Method, Jeff Arthur Capobianco

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Achievable Benchmark of Care Method is a process of care performance improvement measurement approach for identifying top performing healthcare providers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the robustness of the method. This was achieved by comparing the robustness of the standard ABC method, which uses the mean to calculate the benchmark, to versions of the ABC method where the mean was replaced with either a 5%, 10%, or 20% trimmed mean, a 15% Winsorized mean or the one-step Huber ø1.28 calculation. Monte Carlo simulations where conducted using publically available, Medicare process of care data. The mean was …

Inequality In Health Care Utilization And Equity: A Cross-Country Comparision Of Low And Middle Income Countries, Satis Chandra Devkota

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation identifies the sustainable policies that can reduce disparity in health care utilization, education and income from the low and middle income countries represented by Albania, Nepal, Tajikistan and Tanzania. Concentration indices are used to calculate the income related inequality in health care utilization and education, and Gini index is used to calculate the inequality in income. Likewise, horizontal inequity index is used to test whether the principle of equal treatment for equal need and equal schooling for equal need is maintained in all countries under study. Finally, a mechanism is proposed for the first time in the literature …

Miblsi Program Evaluuation Of Participatory Elementary Schools From 2003-20009, Marvin Gibbs

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation details the use of the Program Evaluations Metaevaluation Checklist (PEMC), Stufflebeam, 1999, which is for performing final, summative metaevaluations. It is organized according to the Joint Committee Program Evaluation Standards. For each of the 30 standards the checklist includes 6 checkpoints drawn from the substance of the standard. It reports the use of the PEMC in evaluating the use of So, How Are We Doing? A MiBLSi Evaluation Study. The study shows that the PEMC could be a functional tool for a metaevaluation if modified for a specific evaluation. The results of the Kruskal- Wallis one way analysis …

The Dependent Samples T And Wilcoxon Sign Rank Maximum Test, Saverpierre Maggio

Wayne State University Dissertations

A maximum test using the parametric dependent samples t-test and the non-parametric Wilcoxon sign rank test was created using a FORTRAN program and various subroutines of the International Mathematical and Statistical Libraries (IMSL, 1980). Two tailed critical values were derived from a mixed normal distribution. Critical values obtained were at the 0.05, 0.025, 0.01 and 0.005 alpha levels via sample sizes (n) 8 through 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120. Critical values were compared to values obtained through the application of the Bonferroni correction method. It was concluded that the Bonferroni is an unnecessary method. Findings of the study are …

A Multi-Agent Intelligent System For Detecting Unknown Adverse Drug Reactions Through Communication And Collaboration, Ayman Mohammad Mansour

Wayne State University Dissertations

Several thousands of drugs are currently available on the U.S. market. A complete understanding of the safe use of drugs is not possible at the time when drug is developed or marketed. At that time, the safety information is only obtained from a few thousand people in a typical pre-marketing clinical trial. Clinical trials are not capable of detecting rare adverse drug reactions (ADRs) because of limitations in sample size and trial duration. Early detection of unknown ADRs could save lives and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations. Current methods largely rely on spontaneous reports which suffer from serious underreporting, latency, and inconsistent …

Systems Support For Genomics Computing In Cloud Environments, Tung Thanh Nguyen

Wayne State University Dissertations

Genomics research has enormous applications in many areas such as health care, forensic, agriculture, etc. Most recent achievements in this field come from the availability of the unprecedented genomic data. However, new sequencing technologies in genomics keep producing data at a faster pace resulting a very huge amount of data. This poses great challenges on how to store, manage, process and analyze the data efficiently. To deal with these, genomics research groups often equip themselves with a small scale server room composed of high storage capacity and computing ability machines. This solution is not only costly, unscalable but also inefficient. …

Differential Modeling For Cancer Microarray Data, Omar Odibat

Wayne State University Dissertations

Capturing the changes between two biological phenotypes is a crucial task in understanding the mechanisms of various diseases. Most of the existing computational approaches depend on testing the changes in the expression levels of each single gene individually. In this work, we proposed novel computational approaches to identify the differential genes between two phenotypes. These approaches aim to quantitatively characterize the differences between two phenotypes and can provide better insights and understanding of various diseases. The purpose of this thesis is three-fold. Firstly, we review the state-of-the-art approaches for differential analysis of gene expression data.

Secondly, we propose a novel …

Rethinking The Design And Implementation Of The I/O Software Stack For High-Performance Computing, Xuechen Zhang

Wayne State University Dissertations

Current I/O stack for high-performance computing is composed of multiple software layers in order to hide users from complexity of I/O performance optimization. However, the design and implementation of a specific layer is usually carried out separately with limited consideration of its impact on other layers, which could result in suboptimal I/O performance because data access locality is weakened, if not lost, on hard disk, a widely used storage medium in high-end storage systems.

In this dissertation, we experimentally demonstrated such issues in four different layers, including operating system process management layer and MPI-IO middleware layer on compute server side, …

Bringing To Life An Ancient Urban Center At Monte Albán, Mexico: Exploiting The Synergy Between The Micro, Meso, And Macro Levels In A Complex System, Thaer W. Jayyousi

Wayne State University Dissertations

In this dissertation, agent-based models of emergent ancient urban centers were constructed through the use of techniques from computational intelligence, agent-based modeling, complex systems, and data-mining of existing archaeological data from the prehistoric urban center, Monte Albán. This real world application was selected because of its importance in understanding the emergence of modern economic and political systems. Specifically, Cultural Algorithms was used to evolve models of early Monte Alban, models that can then be compared with existing models of ancient and modern urban centers.

Features of a complex system were used to help interpret the archaeological data. The analysis went …

Techniques For Sensor-Integrated Robotic Systems: Raman Spectra Analysis, Image Guidance, And Kinematic Calibration, Luke Anthony Reisner

Wayne State University Dissertations

Robotics and sensor technology have made impressive advancements over the years. There are now robotic systems that help perform surgeries or explore the surface of Mars, and there are sensors that detect trace amounts of explosives or identify diseased human tissue. The most powerful systems integrate robots and sensors, which are natural complements to each other. Sensors can provide information that might otherwise be unavailable due to indirect robotic manipulation (e.g., images of the target environment), and robots can provide suitably precise positioning of an analytical sensor.

To have an effective sensor-integrated robotic system, multiple capabilities are needed in the …

Location Privacy In Emerging Network-Based Applications, Yong Xi

Wayne State University Dissertations

With the wide spread of computer systems and networks, privacy has become an issue that increasingly attracts attention. In wireless sensor networks, the location of an event source may be subject to unintentional disclosure through traffic analysis by the attacker. In vehicular networks, authentication leaves a trail to tie a driver to a sequence of time and space coordinates. In a cloud-based navigation system, the location information of a sensitive itinerary is disclosed. Those scenarios have shown that privacy protection is a far-reaching problem that could span many different aspects of a computer/network system, especially on a diversified landscape of …

Morphine And Clonidine Synergize To Ameliorate Low Back Pain In Mice, Maral Tajerian, Magali Millecamps, Laura S. Stone

Publications and Research

Chronic low back pain (LBP) is a debilitating condition associated with signs of axial and radiating pain. In humans with chronic LBP, opioids are often prescribed with varying outcomes and a multitude of side effects. Combination therapies, in which multiple pharmacological agents synergize to ameliorate pain without similar potentiation of adverse reactions, may be useful in improving therapeutic outcome in these patients. The SPARC-null mouse model of low back pain due to disc degeneration was used to assess the effects of opioid (morphine) andα2-adrenergic agonist (clonidine) coadministration on measures of axial and radiating pain. The results indicate that systemic morphine …

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Quantification Of Heterosubtypic Immunity Between Avian Influenza Subtypes H3n8 And H4n6 In Multiple Avian Host Species, Kim M. Pepin, Kaci K. Vandalen, N. L. Mooers, J. W. Ellis, H. J. Sullivan, J. Jeffrey Root, Colleen T. Webb, A. B. Franklin, Susan A. Shriner

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Low-pathogenicity avian influenza virus (LPAIV) can lead to epizootics that cause economic losses in poultry or the emergence of human-infectious strains. LPAIVs experience a complex immunity landscape as they are endemic in numerous host species, and many antigenically distinct strains cocirculate. Prevention and control of emergence of detrimental strains requires an understanding of infection/transmission characteristics of the various subtypes in different hosts, including interactions between subtypes. In order to develop analytical frameworks for examining control efficacy, quantification of heterosubtypic immunity interactions is fundamental. However, these data are scarce, especially for wild avian subtypes in natural hosts. Consequently, in this study, …

Optimal Advance Detector Location For Green Termination Systems On High-Speed Isolated Rural Intersections, Lili Du, Anuj Sharma, Srinivas Peeta

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

This study seeks to identify the optimal location of an advance point traffic detector (APTD) to support green termination algorithms for enhanced dilemma zone protection systems at high-speed isolated signalized rural intersections. This is done by developing a nonlinear optimization model with the objective to maximize the opportunities to predict empty dilemma zones during a look-ahead time period subject to the prediction accuracy which is manifested through prediction efficiency and safety constraints in the model. The distance of the APTD from the stop bar of the intersection represents the decision variable. The Golden-Section line search algorithm combined with numerical integration …

Standoff Laser Interferometric Photoacoustic Spectroscopy For The Detection Of Explosives, Logan Marcus

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There will unfortunately always be a pressing need to detect and identify explosive materials. Performing detection at a standoff distance is much safer and this is the impetus for this work. Photoacoustic spectroscopy is well suited to the task of explosive detection at a standoff distance. A detailed theory of the standoff measurement of the physical response of a system to photoacoustic excitation with an interferometric sensor has been constructed and tested. The use of this methodology to measure the standoff photoacoustic spectrum of TNT with an interferometric sensor has clearly been demonstrated. This methodology and the tested theory can …

An Ssvep Brain-Computer Interface: A Machine Learning Approach, Fei Teng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) provides a bidirectional communication path for a human to control an external device using brain signals. Among neurophysiological features in BCI systems, steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP), natural responses to visual stimulation at specific frequencies, has increasingly drawn attentions because of its high temporal resolution and minimal user training, which are two important parameters in evaluating a BCI system. The performance of a BCI can be improved by a properly selected neurophysiological signal, or by the introduction of machine learning techniques. With the help of machine learning methods, a BCI system can adapt to the …